If you’re still on the fence about starting a blog for your businesses, whether you are a service or product based based, hopefully this article will help you reach a decision.

Your website is more than a digital business card. It’s your digital office. Visitors arrive looking for information, whether that’s to be inspired, educated or entertained.

A blog can help you give your web visitors a valuable experience, but it also offers additional benefits.

What is a Blog?

A blog is a series of journal entries called “posts” on your website. They are timestamped which is what differentiates them from standard pages on your site.

This means people can access your posts in one place and either search by subject or date.

Because they’re time stamped google and other search entries can identify them as fresh news, which is great for you because they’re always looking to serve up the latest news in searches.

Here are some other ways, a blog can help your business.

1. Your Blog Is Your PR Manager

 If your marketing strategy involves using PR to build awareness, researchers and writers will want to know more about you and your business. They will be interested in things like what inspires you and what happens behind the scenes at your business.

A blog will act as your Public Relations Manager. When kept updated it can provide a great source of information for publicists and the media. It also demonstrates that you’re serious, a professional, whether you’re a creator, maker or coach.

Posts can also include product features, benefits and demos. If you’re a service provider consider sharing client case studies and testimonials. Here are some further content ideas:-

• behind the scenes
• product features & benefits
• client case studies
• your inspiration for starting the business
• innovations within your industry 
• a spotlight on new products
• from farm to fork – supply chain stories
• recipes
• a weekly journal

2. It Builds Authority

For me this is an important factor. Asserting your authority within your niche will help attract an audience  and sales leads, because people look to authority led businesses / leaders for inspiration and information. It’s just in our nature.

Illustrating to visitors on your website that you’re keeping ahead of trends and industry insights will demonstrate your expertise. 

Not only that, it keeps visitors on your site which helps your engagement score for SEO!

3. It Enhances Your Digital Presence

Fresh content remains king when it comes to being found and listed by the search engines.

Web crawlers are programmed to search for the most recent and up to date content to list in the results.

The idea is to publish good quality content at regular intervals (and I would recommend no less than twice a month for SEO purposes), use keywords relevant to the topic and search terms you want to be found in and include backlinks within your articles.

4. A Blog Builds Relationships

A professional digital business, provides brand news and information, but also solutions for their potential client which helps build trust.

To be truly customer centric, consider how you can use your blog to tailor and offer free advice and solutions for your audience. Compile a list of questions customers ask and build content around them.

Be creative with how you answer the question. It could be in the form of::

• A Q&A post
• A pop up questionnaire
• A checklist
• A video plus written text

In today’s digital world, posting video’s of you on your blog with a series of tips or behind the scenes broadcasts, can really help boost the relationship between you and your potential client. After all, they can see the face behind the brand. You often see this on medical websites, where the visitor needs to trust that what they’re researching or buying is from a reputable seller.

5. It helps you To Build Your Email List

Email list building is not dead, contrary to some things I hear. Your sales are certainly in your list. Sure, some sales will will come directly from Social Media but generally your list is almighty and  powerful.

When onboarding new clients its the first question I ask. How many contacts in your email list?  It remains one of the most effective ways to nurture your client base and convert a sale. Why,? These people have given you their personal details because they believe your service / your content / your product can help them.

So how does your blog do this? There are a number of email capturing opportunities. Which works depends on your business and your audience. I encourage business owners to experiment.

• lead capture pop up whilst reading an article
• pop up on exiting the page
• content upgrade -additional content related to the article in exchange for an email address

Once the visitor’s email address is captured, it’s then entered into an automated  funnel such as a welcome series, then sales series, with the aim of converting them. People buy from people and email still remains one of the most effective strategies within relationship marketing.

6. It Gives You Rich Social Media Content 

As a social media manager, I look to work with clients who actively create content. Blogs are one of those, but it could be You Tube videos, podcasts or Facebook Lives / IGTV. 

Blog content is such valuable content for social media because it can be chopped, repurposed and re-cycled time and time again.

I take all my blog posts, create a video and repurpose them for You-Tube, Instagram and Facebook. One post can be re-purposed  at least 10 times! What an amazing time-saving strategy!

If you are struggling for social media content, writing a good quality, post, even once a month to begin with will provide your audience with value.

If you can’t start a blog – why not try a VLOG?

Maybe the written word just isn’t your thing. Have you tried video? 

Creating short 10 minute videos using your mobile is a great way to get started and still achieve all of the above. Write a few bullet points, practise a few times, upload natively to Facebook, IGTV or You Tube, embed on your website and you have a VLOG! It’s that easy!

Do you blog or vlog? Have I convince you its a good idea to start one?