There’s a way to amplify awareness of your business in the market, position yourself as an industry leader and help turn leads into customers. It’s no secret, and it might even be something you’re already doing. It’s something called a business blog, and it should be a vital component of your inbound marketing strategy.
Many people still think of blogs as personal accounts of what someone did on their travels, but for businesses, a blog is so much more. A well-executed business blog is a form of content marketing that can be shared, promoted and repurposed to engage with your potential customers, winning you new business. However, good things take time. Publishing a single blog article on your website won’t reap you long-term rewards; instead, commit yourself to publish regular content and then watch the fruits of your efforts ripen.
Here are the top benefits of maintaining a consistent business blog.
1. More people will visit your website
Consistent blogging improves what’s known as your organic search visibility. What this means is you’re essentially creating more opportunities for people to find your website when they search on Google.
Every time you publish a new blog post on your website, the page is indexed by Google. When your blog articles are properly optimised using the most up-to-date SEO tactics, there’s a higher likelihood of someone finding you when they type a search term into Google’s search box that’s relevant to what you offer. In this way, blogging helps put you in front of people who’ve never heard of your business but are actively searching for what you offer. Of course, from there it’s up to your website to help convert strangers into customers. That shouldn’t be a problem if your blog posts and website are optimised for conversion.
2. You’ll build brand awareness
Blog content should be shared on social media channels to really have an impact. Pushing out content on platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and others helps put your business in front of people. With interesting, engaging and useful content, people will start to take notice. Professional copywriters will employ a tone and style of writing unique to your business that reflects your personality and helps your audience connect with you. Over time, regular blogs published and shared regularly with a consistent tone of voice will help to build an image of your business – your brand.
3. You’ll establish your brand as an expert
The content you want to be putting out into the world should first and foremost be valuable to whoever is reading it. This is where you’ll want to consult your user personas to identify the key interests, motivations and challenges faced by your existing and potential customers. This should be the starting point for any blog content. Let’s say you own a business offering pet grooming services in your local area. The blog content you produce should cover topics that pet owners find interesting and useful.
The long-term result of producing regular content that’s helpful to those reading it is that it establishes you as an authority on a particular subject. From authority comes trust and respect, and this is key to moving people along the customer journey. Someone who has a pet but has never used a pet grooming service before might read your content for several months before deciding that it’s something they need. This might seem like a while, but without your content they may never have come to that conclusion at all.
4. Your audience will see you as a business who cares
The other benefit of content marketing that addresses readers’ concerns and challenges is that it presents you as a business that’s not all about the hard sell, but one that genuinely cares about its customers and building relationships with them. The primary focus of a business blog shouldn’t actually be your business; it should be your audience.
You can certainly link to your products and services (and internal linking is a great SEO strategy) and mention what you offer, particularly through calls to action at the end of blog posts that invite the reader to take relevant action after consuming the information in the article. However, your topics should be focused on the reader and what they want to know and learn about, not how amazing your product is and all its tremendous features. This is in line with the inbound marketing methodology, which is all about getting people to come to you.
5. You’ll have something else to share on your social channels
There’s some great content out there, but if you’re always sharing stuff produced by others, it might make people wonder whether you’ve got anything to say. Creating your own business blog suddenly gives you a lot more you can share on your social media channels. Share the full articles, or extract key points and pair them with images so you end up with visual bite-sized tips or inspirational quotes you can share with your followers.
6. It helps generate leads
A Hubspot study found that the more pages on your website that are indexed by Google, the more likely you are to generate leads for your business – there’s certainly a link between creating blog content and generating leads. Thoughtfully placed calls to action that encourage them to do something once they’ve finished reading an article will increase the chances of your site visitors turning into leads.
Has the blog article provided a concise overview of a topic related to the services your business offers? Guide readers towards a page where they can fill out their details to receive a whitepaper or eBook which delves into the topic in greater detail. They might not be ready to buy from you just yet, but by setting up a landing page with a form where they can submit their contact details in exchange for a valuable downloadable asset, they’ll be added to your database and you’ll have more opportunities to connect with them and share more useful content down the line that could just convert them into a loyal customer.
7. The content can be repurposed and reused
There’s a lot you can do with a single blog post, especially if the subject matter is evergreen (marketing lingo for a topic that has relevance beyond a certain time frame, as opposed to a topic that is only going to be relevant at a specific time). One of the benefits of a regular blog schedule is that your articles can be repurposed into other forms for different channels.
Famous entrepreneur and digital marketing influencer Gary Vaynerchuk has an enormous following on social media and has built an empire for himself through consistent content creation over a long period of time. His content strategy involves producing one piece of “pillar content”, which his team then repurposes into smaller, bite-sized pieces of content for different channels. One vlog or podcast can be transformed into Instagram stories, LinkedIn posts and even memes.
Small businesses can easily follow this model on a smaller scale and with a smaller budget. One long-form blog post can be broken down into chunks – quotes you can pair with an image and share on social media, or an infographic. And by blogging regularly, you’ll always have a bank of content you can repurpose at any time.
Has the blog article provided a concise overview of a topic related to the services your business offers? Guide readers towards a page where they can fill out their details to receive a whitepaper or eBook which delves into the topic in greater detail. They might not be ready to buy from you just yet, but by setting up a landing page with a form where they can submit their contact details in exchange for a valuable downloadable asset, they’ll be added to your database and you’ll have more opportunities to connect with them and share more useful content down the line that could just convert them into a loyal customer.
Need some professional content marketing expertise to get your business blog up and running? Have a chat to us about how we can help.
