Today’s consumers are overwhelmed with new information and have more options to solve their problems than ever before. Consumers are also far more skeptical and distrustful and need to build trust with a business before making a purchase. This means that in order to survive as a business today you need to provide accurate, engaging, and relevant information that allows you to stand out from your competition, answer your customer’s questions, and establish trust and credibility in your offer. One of the easiest and most effective ways to do this is by starting a blog and committing to posting high-quality content on a regular basis. Here are the top five reasons why your business needs a blog:
Blogs Drive Traffic to Your Site
Businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don’t (HubSpot).
If you are looking to increase visibility and visitor traffic to your website, then a blog is a must-have for your business. Blogs help your website show up in search results because when people search the topics you blog about and find your blog post, it brings more organic traffic to your site.
Blogs also allow you to rank higher for keywords that potential customers might be searching for. The more times a keyword appears on your site, the higher the likelihood that your website will rank for that keyword on Google or other search engines.
Additionally, search engines like Google use the content on your site and the quality and length of that content to determine how relevant you are to the searches they are receiving. A blog helps build up your relevancy in the eyes of search engines.
Blogs Give Your Readers a Chance To Learn More About You (and Trust You)
70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles rather than advertisements (DemandMetric).
It’s impossible (and not recommended) to share every detail about your business, what you stand for, and who you are on the pages of your website. Get too detailed on your home page and you might risk losing your audience or confusing them with too much information. With a blog, however, you can share more about your business in bite-sized chunks that your target audience can pick and choose from.
By sharing more about your business through a blog, you are not only further educating your target audience on your offering, but you are also allowing them to get to know you a bit and begin to trust more in your solution. By answering their questions, concerns, and fears through your blog you convert more traffic to sales on your website.
Blogs Can Highlight Your Key Differentiators From Competitors
Marketers that prioritize blogging see 13 times the ROI of businesses that don’t (HubSpot).
A blog is also a great way to share how you are different from your competitors by diving further into the solutions you provide and why those solutions are better than the one next door. This is important because no matter how unique you think your product or service is, your target audience has other options to choose from to solve their problems.
For example, if you are a personal trainer your competition is not just other personal trainers, but also gyms, studios, fitness apps, or the couch. What is so unique about your offering and why should your ideal consumer care? Hopefully, your home page provides answers to this, but your blog allows you to dive in even further and convince your reader that the solution you are offering is the one that they need.
Blogs Are a Great Way To Get Live Feedback From Your Customers
Companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don’t blog (DemandMetric).
If you write a blog post on the benefits of one of your products and your readership is through the roof compared to your other posts, that means something. Unless you have another reason why readership would skyrocket, then you now know that your readers really care about that topic and you can lean into this moving forward.
By tracking the content you put out on your blog you can get a data-backed understanding of what is resonating with your readers and use that information to build far more targeted and effective solutions for your business.
Blogs also allow for comments and likes and other social interactions where you can directly talk, ask questions, and get feedback from your audience. If you are regularly getting comments or questions about one particular topic, then maybe it’s time you added the answer to that question to your Q&A page or made a dedicated blog post addressing the issue.
Blogs are more than a one-way exchange of information, but can also be a great way to simply interact with your audience and better understand who they are and what they need.
Blogs Build Up Your Email List and Bring Readers Into Your Marketing Funnel
Email marketing has the highest return on investment for small businesses (Campaign Monitor, 2019).
When you provide valuable content for your readers on your blog it is an easy ask for readers to subscribe to your blog for updates whenever new content is posted. For readers who find your content helpful, giving their email feels low risk and high reward, and for your business, it’s all reward. This is because once you have a potential customer’s email address, you can slowly build up to that purchase through a well-targeted email campaign.
Your relationship with your readers through a blog is all about providing value, and you are able to continue to provide that value while sending helpful information about your services and the solutions you offer regularly through their email.
Article originally published to Medium
Written by Megan Elizabeth Clark