When we suggest blogging to our clients, many want to know the “point” or value of pouring resources into such long-form content. As a business owner, it is important to stay on top of trends and adjust to the ever-changing online landscape. And with almost 4 billion people, worldwide, connected to the internet, capturing their attention is more important than ever. Blogging, as a result, has become a critical element to any business. Not only does it drive more traffic to your website, and help promote your products and services, blogging also helps you build trust with your potential customers and clients. Today we are going to discuss why blogs are so important to your business.
The Raw Statistics on the Importance of Blogging
With the rise of social media, too many companies think that blogging has become obsolete. But nothing could be further from the truth. Every business can benefit from blogging. In fact, only 43% of online businesses don’t utilise blogging as part of their social media and marketing planning. 77% of internet users still read blogs. But only 55% of businesses use blogging as their first element of marketing strategy. And, unlike social media where there is a fast turn over in content, a well-written, quality blog will continue to benefit your business long after publication.
1: Blogging Helps Get Your Website Found
The main goal behind creating blogs is to drive as much traffic to your website as possible. Blogs are essentially informal articles, written to show your knowledge, expertise, and industry leadership on specific topics. Creating a blog means adding fresh, new content and pages on your website. This gives you more opportunities to be found in the SERP (search engine results page). Which will drive traffic to your website. Regularly creating new content shows search engines, like Google, that your website is actively updated. As a result, As a result, search engine bots check your site more frequently. This, in turn, can push your website further up the SERP.
Once you have published a blog, it can then become part of your social media campaign. Byy sharing a blog on your relevant social media. This helps strengthen your social media reach as well as help your content get found by a different demographic of users. This can drive social media users to your blog and your website as a result.
2: Blog Traffic Can Convert Visitors into Leads
Every blog is an opportunity to generate new leads, customers or clients to your website and business. Savvy businesses utilise blogs to attract new visitors to their website in order to generate new leads. This is done in a variety of ways. The simplest is adding a Call to Action or CTA to convert new visitors. 99% of blogs utilise a CTA and yours should too. A call to action can be anything from suggestions like “contact us today”, “explore our range of products”, or “visit us today”. You can place these at the bottom of the blog or throughout the blog itself. You can even add a simple button at the bottom of the blog for users to click. Buttons can take users to another website page, or even a form to fill out.
Call-to-Actions
Free e-books and other freebies are especially attractive options for CTAs. They are also a great way to capture emails to use in your email marketing campaigns. Moving users to a relevant page on your site can also help increase product sales, or provide users with more information on specific services they may be looking for. For example, a windscreen repair company writing a blog on the risk of windscreen cracks, can utilise a CTA that takes users to their page on windscreen repair. This can help convert visitors who maybe looking for solutions to damaged windscreens.
SEO Strategy
Blogs are also an integral part of your SEO strategies. It is an opportunity to utilise long-form keywords or answer common questions that users might be searching for. For those unfamiliar to how traffic-to-lead/customer/client conversion works, it is as simple as:
- A visitor comes to your website via SERP, social media, etc
- Visitor sees a CTA for a service, product or free offer
- The visitor clicks the CTA and is redirected to the product, services page, or a form to fill out for the free offer
- Visitor purchases product, contacts your about a specific service, or fills out a form, submits their information (which can then be utilised in future social media campaigns – like email campaigns) and receives the free offer
SERP
A well-written blog can remain on the first page of the SERP for an extended period of time. Some results can stay on the first page for years with the right content! This provides businesses with constant leads, all for the same amount of work as a social media post. Some blogs can even capture the coveted position 0 or Featured Snippet. These appear at the very top of the SERP and are the first thing users will see when searching a particular topic or question. Having a featured snippet not only show you are an authority on this specific information, but it is also the most common link users will click.
You may also be a result in the “People Ask” box, especially if your blog is aimed at answering a common question for the industry. This makes it even more likely to convert a user as you are showing your are the foremost expert in your industry, based on the SERP results.
3: Blogs are a Long-Term Piece of Marketing
Once search engines index your blog, it stays there in the SERP, meaning your blog can still gain traffic and generate leads weeks, months, and even years after being written. Blogs are timeless; so you need to ensure you write about topics you know will be of interest to your targeted demographics. The best business blogs answer common questions that customers and clients have. And by consistently creating valuable content and articles for your website and audience, you can establish yourself as an industry leader or authority in your industry. An educational post can have incredible impact for a prospective client. While establishing authority in your industry isn’t as concrete a metric as traffic and leads, but it is still a powerful element of marketing, sales, and social media.
Suppose prospective customers or clients find answers to their questions via one of your blog posts. They are more likely to enter the sales funnel because they trust what you have to say. Customers who enter your sales funnel from blogs will also generally have more knowledge about your products or services. This makes for more productive sales conversations for your sales department. Finally, salespeople who encounter specific questions can pull answers from your archive of blog posts. Not only will these articles help move the sales process along, they they position your sales department as a helpful resource to prospective clients, building trust.
While you might not see immediate results from every blog, over time you should be able to count on a predictable amount of traffic and leads for your business without investing any additional resources.
4: Blogging Humanises Your Business
In this modern landscape, users prefer interacting with a business. Look at the success of businesses like Wendys that actively engage with their visitors and customers online. Blogging not only allows you to share information about your business and services, but also your opinions and thoughts on certain, industry relevant, topics. It is also a great way to create a personality for your company and makes your business more approachable. Sharing blogs that discuss timely news, market trends, or educating readers on certain topics is a great way of humanising your business.
Many businesses focus so much on professionalism, they forget that potential clients and customers want to know about the real people behind the business. This is where many smaller businesses have an edge over larger competitors. You can take advantage of blogging as the personality of your business, which can then lead into social media campaigns. Not only does this create a personal connection with your clients and promote trust.
Many businesses also use their blogs and social media campaigns to build a sense of community centred around your organisation. This is the perfect way to maintain and spread the word about your products or services while creating long-lasting bonds.
5: Blogging Keeps Your Clients Engaged
Promoting your goods and services while also keeping your audience engaged is not easy, especially in highly competitive industries. This is where blogging becomes an integral part of your marketing and sales campaigns. Blogging helps with the multimedia representation of your company, keeps your growing audience engaged, and promotes your company. Videos, podcasts, interviews, and more can be incorporated into the blogging process. Content like this is beneficial and engaging to your audience. It is also great content to for your site and improves the quality of your posts.
Further, blogging is a great way of sharing news about, and promoting, your company. No matter the size of your business, sharing your company news and stories is great content for blogs. Have you hired a great new staff member? Did you interview an industry expert? Have you got a brilliant case study that helps promote your products or services? Will you be at, or hosting, an industry event? These are all great pieces of content that can be shared in your blog! It also helps humanise your brand and makes your business feel far more approachable. This can help convert more leads will continue to promote your business as long as you keep the blog online.
6: Blogging is Essential to Social Media
While social media has boomed in recent years, blogs are still one of the most popular and powerful ways a business can engage with online prospects. Research shows that around 80% of customers prefer to have an advertisement in the form of articles instead of a traditional “buy now” advertising campaign. Customers are beginning to grow tired of traditional commercials and advertising, especially the newer generations of consumers. So it is important to find creative ways through blogging and social media to reach new clients and leads in the modern commercial environment.
Blogs are also great to be repurposed for social media content. Every time you create an article or blog for your website, you are creating content for your marketing team to share via social media platforms. Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest are all great ways to expose your business to a new audience. And blog content can help keep your social media presence going. Creating new content for social media is sometimes a difficult task. A blog can serve as a huge repository for content, strengthening your social reach and driving new users to your website.
Finally, a blog is a great way to grow your email lists. If users find your blogs enjoyable to read, they will trust your email newsletters will be enjoyable and informative as well. And by offering freebies at the bottom of your blogs, you can effortlessly grow your email list. Simply ask users for their name and email in exchange for a free e-book, product discount, free consult, etc, and you’ve added a new contact to your campaign.
Email lists are perfect for reminding customers you exist. Not everyone needs your products or services now. But when they do, your email campaigns will ensure you’re the first name they recall.
7: Build Trust and Show Expertise Through Blogging
Most people trust the written word and, as a result, blogs can improve that level of trust between the user and your business. By ensuring you provide helpful, relevant, and accurate content encourages discussion, knowledge sharing, and increased confidence in your brand. You can never underestimate the importance of blogging, even with the emergence of other creative tools to support your visibility. These don’t diminish the value of what a blog can do for you. Blogs are an essential tool to create a steady stream of website traffic and new prospects, while also growing your audience.
Blogs also help to prove your expertise. With so many businesses online now, the best way to stand out from the crowd is being an expert in your industry. This doesn’t mean simply writing that you are the best business in your city. You need to show not tell. And one of the best ways to do this is by writing blogs on topics and questions important to your industry. If you provide genuine help and value to your audience, they will trust you as a credible source. Your business will become their go to resource for services or products.
Research shows your audience is more likely to win the lottery than click a banner ad. Blogs are ideal for educating your audience about your products and services, building trust and making them more likely to engage with your CTAs. For example, a company selling ceiling fans might discuss the differences between plastic and metal ceiling fans. They can use the opportunity to drop in a few lines about their own products as examples. While they’re not explicitly selling their products, they are providing their audience with valuable information that could inspire a sale.
8: Improve Your SEO Campaign with Blogging
Backlinks are among the 200 factors that the Google algorithm considers when ranking your website on the SERP. Many SEO experts believe that backlinks are the third most crucial factor for SEO. Around 40% of SEO experts say it is one of the most challenging parts of SEO campaigns. Blogs are not only valuable to potential customers, they can also be valuable to other companies that see you as industry leaders. As a result, they may wish to link to your website in their own blogs.
An example of this is a client that runs a garden centre. They produced a blog on what indoor plants are poisonous to cats. The RSPCA found this blog and now link it to all new cat owners to ensure their newly adopted pets are safe in their new home. Links from authoritative websites like this serve as a huge vote of confidence. It also signals to Google that you are not only trustworthy, but also an expert in your industry. This also helps build your domain authority, which helps improve your overall discoverability.
Google also loves fresh content. So the more you blog, the more chances you have to improve your SEO and SERP position. Blogging is also the perfect opportunity to target niche and long form/long tailed keywords that you might not rank for otherwise. Website pages should target one specific keyword, while blogs are able to target longer keywords or common questions associated with your industry. Using blogs to broaden your keyword campaign increases the amount of keywords and search queries you can rank for on the SERP. This makes it easier for potential customers to find you.
Why Blogs are So Important
There are so many benefits when it comes to blogging. An effective blog for your business can reduce your marketing spend, contribute to your SEO and social media campaigns, increase website traffic, and generate new leads. And, above all, blogging provides value to your audience, building stronger customer relations.
The copywriting team at BSO Digital provides blogging services for all our maintenance plan clients. If you would like to chat with us about how blogging can help your business, contact us today!
