Even
though blogging is the standard expectation of the typical consumer for every
website these days, there are a ton of other good reasons your website needs a
blog. A blog actually provides many benefits for your website beyond
sharing helpful information. When
you’re blogging regularly, how do you help your business and customer? Keep
reading to learn about the benefits of blogging:
1. You Establish Yourself as a
Thought Leader/Authority
Who
do consumers and businesses ultimately purchase from? Many times it’s the
person or business they perceive as the leader in their niche. You don’t
have to be a gigantic company to become a thought leader. You can make
yourself a thought leader simply by blogging regularly and offering intricate
detail that no other blog provides. This is one of the ways a blog levels
the competitive playing field in any niche.
You
can optimize your posts to help them rank organically for target keywords.
Although simply writing is not enough, ensuring your posts are SEO friendly is
the foundation for a well ranking blog. When you sprinkle your keywords
throughout your posts that builds your site’s overall authority for key terms
which in turn gives you a better chance of ranking – not only your blog but the
rest of the website as well. In addition, Google released the Fresh update
back in November of 2011, which gives preference in the search rankings to
websites that offer regularly updated content. Subsequent
updates like Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird also give preference in the SERPs
to websites with high quality content. The more in-depth blog posts you
create, the better the SEO benefits you receive.
3. You Connect with Your
Target Market, which Increases Sales
The
more you connect with your customer, the more you sell. Case in
point Hubspot notes
these statistics on their website:
92%
of companies who blog more than once per day acquired a customer through their
blog
40%
of all companies in the United States use blogs to market their products and
services
In
separate research, Hubspot also
found the more frequently a company blogs, the more likely they are to get a
customer through their blog. 58% of companies who blog at least once per
week are able to land a customer via their blog. You
don’t have to blog daily or multiple times per day, but if you can do so once
per week, that’s a great start.
4. Content Powers Social Media
Success
Of
all the different ways you can market online, the blog remains at the
center. Think of it as your home base from which all other digital
marketing efforts flow. Once
you blog, you have something of value to share over social media. You
definitely should share other people’s content via social media, but you will
only see valuable business results if you share some of your own high-quality,
original content through your social channels as well.
Remember
these mind-blowing stats about social (according to the Hubspot
report mentioned earlier): 77% of B2C companies and 43% of B2B companies
surveyed acquired customers through Facebook alone. And, social media has
a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than any form of outbound marketing.
In
a Nutshell:
Blogging
ensures better search engine authority and organic placement – leading to more
organic traffic to your site. Blogging
regularly gives your clients more confidence in you and your business. Blogging
and sharing your own content socially drives more referral traffic to your
site. So,
why aren’t you blogging already?
