We think just about every business website should have a blog where fresh content (like writing, photos, &/or video) is regularly published.
If your website hangs out quietly in the dark corner of the internet, your target audience probably won’t take the time to visit unless they are looking for an answer to a specific question they have about your business. (That’s assuming they’re thinking of your business at all.)
Blogging gives people a reason to think about your business, visit your website, and keep your brand at the forefront of their mind. Here are just five reasons why blogging is good for your business:
Blogging improves your website’s SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. At the most basic level, SEO means increasing your content’s visibility in search engine rankings, which leads to more people finding & visiting your website.
Search engines (like Google) need content, keywords, and page titles to determine what your website is about so they can recommend your site to others. Blog posts provide relevant data to those search engines, so your website listing will rise to the top of the results when people search for terms relating to your business. Consistent publishing activity on a blog shows search engines that your website is regularly updated and provides current information.
Blogging brings people onto your turf
Social media is borrowed land. You are putting your precious, original content & photos on a platform that can go away at a moment’s notice and you will lose all of your posts, photos, and the community that you’ve built. Not only that, but your social media content gets buried the more you post. Your blog content, on the other hand, can be organized, categorized, featured, reposted & repurposed, and it will improve your website’s search engine rankings for years to come.
Blogging saves you time
I know, it sounds counter-intuitive because it takes time to blog. But think about the number of questions you’ve been asked about your expertise by people who don’t actually plan on buying from you. It’s both frustrating & time consuming. They want the DIY formula to your job, so they “pick your brain” about certain topics instead of paying for your consultation.
Hey, landscaper, what kind of fungicide do you use for this type of tree? Yo, handyman, which type of flooring do you usually install in a high-traffic room? Excuse me, web designer, which platform would be best for this type of website?
Your answers to these kinds of questions probably won’t change drastically over time. By taking the time to write on the topics that non-paying “customers” bring up repeatedly, you can direct them to search the topic on your blog. Doing this will increase traffic to your website, which will boost your search engine rankings so more paying customers can find you. Win-win. You are still serving the non-paying “customer” by providing your free expertise without exchanging your valuable time, which you need in order to serve your paying customers well. Sure, blogging takes time up front, but it will actually save you from having to answer the same questions over & over in the future.
Blogging establishes you as an industry expert
Blogging gives you the opportunity to dive deeper into a specific topic where it doesn’t make sense to do so on your general website pages. If you share relevant content about the services or products that your business offers and your advice helps your target audience, you build their respect & trust in your abilities to solve their specific problems. Congratulations, you’ve positioned yourself as an industry expert!
Even if some people in your target audience aren’t resonating with the content you’re writing about right now, they’ll likely remember your posts when they are ready weeks, months, or years down the road.
Take this blog post you’re reading, for example. Blogging for your business may not have ever crossed your mind, so you skim this post real quick & click back to your newsfeed. Maybe a year from now, you have a team member that has time to manage your online presence or inspiration strikes and you think, “I’m going to start a blog for my business! But where do I start?” You could do one of two things …
- Open a search bar, ask the vast Internet “how to start a blog,” & sift through the results, or
- Find a blog post written by someone you know & trust who explains how to do the very thing you want to learn to do.
My hope is that you’ll think of the Humble Design Shop blog and choose the second option, and you search for the free resources we’re offering here.
Blogging grows your audience
I am the content creator for the East Berlin, Pennsylvania, social media & website. Typically, I write a caption, pair it with a photo, & share it on the East Berlin Facebook page, but I did it a little differently the other day. I took the time to drop the content into a blog post on the website before sharing a link to it on Facebook.
Brace yourself, I’m about to get nerdy up in here with some stats. ?Because of that one blog post, 133 unique visitors came to the community website by the end of the posting day (compared to 9 visitors the day before when I had shared nada). On top of that, 78% of those visitors had never visited the website before and 30% overall stuck around on the website to view at least one other page to see what else we had to offer. Here’s some simple math: more blogging = more first-time visitors to your website, which leads to repeat visitors to your website.
To wrap it up, blogging helps people find your website via search engines, gives people a reason to visit your website, frees up time to serve paying customers, and positions your business to be first in mind when it comes time to pay an expert to solve a problem.
So, now you know why we think just about every business should have a blog. In the next post, I’ll be sharing my favorite blogging platforms for different skill levels & some prompts to help you get started writing your first post!
Maybe you know that blogging is important for your business website, but what you’re lacking is the time. It might be time to outsource, and we happen to know a great copywriter …
