Blogging for business – seven reasons to do it

The truth is, whilst many people know blogging will be beneficial to their brand, few people have the time and expertise to write great pieces of content that will help them achieve their goals.

Here’s the thing:

Blogs form a kind of ‘missing link’ between your social presence and the more formal information provided by your web pages.  They’re informative and might discuss your industry, products, and services (like a web page) but they can also be more engaging, personal and value-adding (more like social media). We’re going to take a more in-depth look at blogging for your business, but first a quick stat:

Blogging for business

Blogs are considered the longest text form of social media and you will often see the RSS feed symbol next to more familiar logos such as Facebook and Twitter. There are several reasons why your company needs a blog and having a well-written, well-targeted blog can do wonders for brand awareness, reputation, SEO and ultimately, your bottom line. Let’s take a look in more detail at seven benefits to your business:

The 7 benefits of blogging

1. Your website should be a hub of information for current and potential clients and collaborators. There may be topics which are timely rather than timeless which sit better on a stream of blogs instead of static pages. This might be content that doesn’t necessarily form part of your website’s infrastructure but is important content, nonetheless (probably for some of the following reasons too).

2. A blog portrays you as knowledgeable and passionate about your business and its sector. It’s no small task to put the time aside to research and create a blog for your site and share your information, thoughts, and ideas. The vast majority of business and influencers have a regularly updated blog.

3. An updated blog demonstrates you’re staying abreast of news and developments in your industry. Adding some commentary and your own opinions can create more personality for your business. This kind of comment piece is much more suited to blog posts than web pages.

4. Givers gain. By regularly adding value to your audience, whether it is through information, thought-provoking pieces or something humorous; you’re building a sense of loyalty, gratitude and hopefully a desire to repay you! Blogging is one of the best ways to add value to your audience.

5. SEO.  Fresh, high-quality content is important for your Google ranking which is valuable to virtually all businesses. It’s important to have a clear SEO strategy in mind when it comes to content creation so speak to someone who understands SEO before you create a load of blogs around one keyword or phrase.

6. Creating your own content to share. Your social media pages can share your own content which is far more effective than simply distributing other people or companies’ second-hand content. It’s a chance to show off your content but more importantly, direct your target audience to your website.

7. Appeal to a wider audience. The reason so many platforms are used in social media for business is that brands communicate with certain members of their audience through different mediums. Longer pieces such as blogs play a key role in appealing to certain audience members, similarly to email marketing.

Blogging as part of your content strategy

Blogging should be seen as a cornerstone of your overall content strategy and they’re easy to add to most websites, especially if you’re using something like WordPress. For the reasons above and more, virtually all of our clients have a blog on their website. Blogs provide a great landing point for prospects who have navigated to your site from social media. If increasing web traffic is a core marketing goal, then the combination of blogging and social media could work as a key driver.

If required, we devise the blogging strategy based on your overall marketing goals and do all the blogging on your behalf. This can range from a single blog per month up to two per week, depending on the type of business you run and what will resonate with your audience. If you like, you can provide us with titles for blogs we will create and it also works the other way round. This is all based on your audience, your goals and how our skill-sets complement each other. 

Two quick tips for writing great blogs

1. Write long, detailed blogs for your audience. If someone is interested in the subject you’re writing about, they’ll be hungry for quality information – give it to them! Cover related topic, add some statistics, great images, quotes from authority figures, etc. Don’t be worried about people thinking it’s too long and not reading it. If it’s interesting, valuable content, they will read it! In fact:

If you take one thing from this page; avoid making this mistake:

Creating a short blog about something relating to your business in the hope it starts ranking on Google or naturally starts directing people to your shop page is a waste of time.

Short blogs (less than around 300 words) can actually damage your brand and SEO endeavours. Why? If people don’t hang around on that page very long, if they don’t start to navigate around your site having being inspired to do so, if the page competes with others on your site for a certain keyword, you will damage your SEO.

2. Don’t write blogs for yourself – write them for your audience. If you’re looking for a decent piece of information about a topic (perhaps you’re even thinking of buying a product or service!) you’d look for something detailed, useful and well-written to read. You’d probably spend five or ten minutes reading a really good article – this is exactly what you need to create for your audience.

Answer their questions, solve their problems, give them something to think about. The only way you should be promoting yourself is purely by the quality of the blog itself! A great example of a value-adding blog is the Moz blog (an SEO company). It’s brilliantly laid out, it resonates with their target audience and they add loads of value to readers; many are 5,000+ words long with dozens of actionable points.