5 Reasons You Must Have a Business Blog
By Andrew Patricio
July 20, 2016
Small Business & Entrepreneurship
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By the small business content developers at BizLaunch.com.
You’ve probably heard by now that a business blog is a powerful tool for helping small business owners develop and strengthen their influence, entrepreneurial skills, and brand. With all that legitimate hype, there are still those who scuttle away in fear, thinking that they should prioritize other aspects of their business before they start a blog, or who think that the effort needed to blog effectively is too demanding an endeavor.
The fact is: a business blog returns an excellent performance for the cost; whatever you put into it, you’re going to see an equal return. When an entrepreneur puts considerable investment (both energetic and financial) into her blog, the growth can even be exponential. Here’s why you shouldn’t overlook this amazing tool.
1. It captures customers.
People find all kinds of reasons for buying from one business or another. When it comes down to purchases, a customer may choose one product over another because of a discount or because of proximity. Others may make a choice based on packaging or a personal recommendation. A blog allows an enterprise to enter this equation by providing insight into the company’s ethos and approach. Your blog posts provide an opportunity for potential customers, returning customers, and those on the brink of making a purchase to connect with your company. Business websites without a blog miss this very important way of deepening the business relationship with customers.
2. A blog regulates your reputation.
Your blog provides the best means of managing your online business reputation. With a sophisticated editorial calendar, your business blog will help your company rise in search engine result pages for useful search strings related to your business, which bolsters your company’s ability to stay in front of the competition. You can use blog posts to signal to search engines that your website should be considered a primary source for relevant searches and put your company higher on the results page. This puts you in charge of your company’s reputation rather other websites who may have written about your business.
3. It produces promotional material.
A properly nurtured blog becomes an engine for producing publicity for your company. When I see companies that have a newsletter signup form on their website, but not a link for a blog, I wonder about their content marketing strategy. Think about all that great material hidden in people’s email inboxes, instead of out on the Internet for all the world to enjoy. Your blog content is a way for you to communicate the excellence of your brand and your passion for your work. That excitement is tangible and helps you tell your story, which amplifies your marketing strategy.
4. A blog unmasks your market.
While there’s no perfect recipe for creating an unqualified success right out of the starting gate in the blogging world, there are many ways to grow your blog. A blog helps you suss out your audience and see what resonates with your market. Once you have a good selection of posts that get read regularly, you’ll see certain posts rise to the top via either social media shares or search engine results. The posts that receive this attention will tell you something interesting about your market. If it takes a while to tease out this information, be persistent. Too many bloggers give up after just a few posts. The effort is demanding, but the results are staggering.
5. It provides perpetual publicity.
One of the great lures of the Internet was the ability to do business 24 hours a day. The same is true of a blog: it’s available for all the world to read any time of day, from any place with Internet access. While you might pay a pretty penny for an ad that goes live for a set period of time and then disappears, your blog posts provide enduring information regarding your company -- all of the costs are front-loaded. Once you’ve created a post, it’s available for your audience to appreciate, today or many years from now and with a smart marketing strategy, you can reignite interest in older posts via social media for years to come.
You’ve probably heard by now that a business blog is a powerful tool for helping small business owners develop and strengthen their influence, entrepreneurial skills, and brand. With all that legitimate hype, there are still those who scuttle away in fear, thinking that they should prioritize other aspects of their business before they start a blog, or who think that the effort needed to blog effectively is too demanding an endeavor.
The fact is: a business blog returns an excellent performance for the cost; whatever you put into it, you’re going to see an equal return. When an entrepreneur puts considerable investment (both energetic and financial) into her blog, the growth can even be exponential. Here’s why you shouldn’t overlook this amazing tool.
1. It captures customers.
People find all kinds of reasons for buying from one business or another. When it comes down to purchases, a customer may choose one product over another because of a discount or because of proximity. Others may make a choice based on packaging or a personal recommendation. A blog allows an enterprise to enter this equation by providing insight into the company’s ethos and approach. Your blog posts provide an opportunity for potential customers, returning customers, and those on the brink of making a purchase to connect with your company. Business websites without a blog miss this very important way of deepening the business relationship with customers.
2. A blog regulates your reputation.
Your blog provides the best means of managing your online business reputation. With a sophisticated editorial calendar, your business blog will help your company rise in search engine result pages for useful search strings related to your business, which bolsters your company’s ability to stay in front of the competition. You can use blog posts to signal to search engines that your website should be considered a primary source for relevant searches and put your company higher on the results page. This puts you in charge of your company’s reputation rather other websites who may have written about your business.
3. It produces promotional material.
A properly nurtured blog becomes an engine for producing publicity for your company. When I see companies that have a newsletter signup form on their website, but not a link for a blog, I wonder about their content marketing strategy. Think about all that great material hidden in people’s email inboxes, instead of out on the Internet for all the world to enjoy. Your blog content is a way for you to communicate the excellence of your brand and your passion for your work. That excitement is tangible and helps you tell your story, which amplifies your marketing strategy.
4. A blog unmasks your market.
While there’s no perfect recipe for creating an unqualified success right out of the starting gate in the blogging world, there are many ways to grow your blog. A blog helps you suss out your audience and see what resonates with your market. Once you have a good selection of posts that get read regularly, you’ll see certain posts rise to the top via either social media shares or search engine results. The posts that receive this attention will tell you something interesting about your market. If it takes a while to tease out this information, be persistent. Too many bloggers give up after just a few posts. The effort is demanding, but the results are staggering.
5. It provides perpetual publicity.
One of the great lures of the Internet was the ability to do business 24 hours a day. The same is true of a blog: it’s available for all the world to read any time of day, from any place with Internet access. While you might pay a pretty penny for an ad that goes live for a set period of time and then disappears, your blog posts provide enduring information regarding your company -- all of the costs are front-loaded. Once you’ve created a post, it’s available for your audience to appreciate, today or many years from now and with a smart marketing strategy, you can reignite interest in older posts via social media for years to come.