Technology has changed the way we do business. A physical space or storefront is no longer a requirement to run your business. Now, more than ever, having a solid, engaging, professional website is of the utmost importance.

Small businesses are uniquely positioned to take advantage of this new reality if they put the effort in. But it takes more than a great website. If you’re looking for a proven way to grow your small business, you should have a blog on your website.

How Will Blogging Help My Company?

Often overlooked, blogging is a tremendous tool for driving traffic and building awareness. In fact, many small businesses and budding professionals understand the need for a website but, for some reason, feel a blog is overkill.

How about you? Have you built a homepage and About Us section? Are you selling products? Have you added inventory to your ecommerce page? If you’ve done all that, what do you need a blog for? Let me answer that question with another question: Are you getting any traffic?

A blog can help your business with reach and clarity. Anecdotally, that makes sense. But where’s the proof? Right here:

• Hubspot reports blogs are one of the top three ways companies reach their audience.
• 77% of consumers regularly read blog posts. (Impact)
• 71% of B2B buyers check out blog content during their buyer journey. (Demand Gen)
• Companies that publish 16 or more blog posts per month generate 4.5 times more leads than those that publish four blogs or less. (HubSpot)

Bottom line: There are a number of reasons a blog will help grow your audience and bring in more traffic. They can increase engagement. They can help build stronger customer relationships. In addition, here are seven key benefits of creating a blog for your small business:

1. Reach a Wider Audience

The more topics you cover, the more pages you will have indexed in your website that could pop up in search engine results. With a blog, you naturally create more pages with content that will establish gateways to draw traffic to your site.

2. Increase Shareability

Blog posts are much more shareable than a stagnant web page. A blog post can target a key problem or specific topic. (And they can do it quickly so you don’t miss out on presenting your expertise on a current issue.) You can use a creative headline to make each post more captivating, encouraging clicks. You can include social sharing buttons and visual elements (images, graphics, and videos) that keep your reader engaged. You can also use your blog pages to link to reputable sources (which increases search engine optimization for better placement) and link to other sections of your site to keep your traffic moving in the right direction for a purchase.

3. Provide Customer Support

Do you get asked a lot of the same questions regularly? The blog is a perfect place to answer those questions in detail. If you can’t give an exact number or detail (like how much it would cost for a custom job), you can give points for how price is determined, how they can go about getting a quote and what they can expect from the process. Your blog home is a great place to post resources that your team can use to point customers towards when they are asking a question best answered in detail. Since the majority of people are searching for answers before they ever reach out, it saves both you and the buyer a lot of time to have those answers readily available.

4. Highlight Key Aspects of Your Company

Are you offering a special product or service? Have a seasonal deal? Want to highlight a really cool aspect of your company or team? Your blog offers you a great opportunity to create those special highlight details that build a stronger relationship with your customers.

5. Appeal to Your Audience

Different visitors will come at different stages in their buyer’s journey. Your blog can be a catch-all that covers everything.

• Use topics that present problems and potential solutions to grab visitors in their early awareness stages.
• Use in-depth solution explanations and comparisons to highlight why your option is best for those visitors in the discovery or consideration stage.
• Solidify the decision with posts that cover authentic aspects of your company, glowing customer reviews or case studies.
• Delight your customers with supportive articles that offer solutions and relevant inspiration.

6. Show Industry Authority

A blog is perfect for demonstrating your expertise in the industry. Post about topics that are related to your company and provide free value to the visitor. These are beneficial articles that don’t promote your company solutions but do increase your standing as an authority. Your blog isn’t just about solidifying the sale, it is also about building your brand reputation.

7. Effective Content Creation

Are you sending out an email newsletter or posting to social media? Blog posts are an excellent way to kill two or three birds with one stone when it comes to small business marketing. Write a great article that appeals to your audience and then a blurb that can be included in the newsletter or posted on social media with a link to your blog post. This helps you create content that draws your audience back to your site. You can use email list segmentation to send the appropriate articles to the right contacts to improve personalization based on where they are at in the buyer journey. You can also reach a larger audience by boosting your social posts to reach the users that fit a certain age range, location, profession or even those who have already visited your site once.

A blog is a fantastic way to keep content updated and show a professional range of knowledge to your visitors. And, if you are building a business, knowledge is a huge part of success.

If you would like to become a business owner, earn your degree in entrepreneurship online from JWU. For more information, complete the Request Info form, call 855-JWU-1881, or email [email protected].