Blogging is not just for bloggers but for businesses as well. Every online business, whether a services company, retailer, manufacturer, or wholesaler, should maintain an active blog. There are many reasons for this, and below, I will explain why every business needs a blog, what to expect from it, and how to do it correctly so that you won’t lose your money and time.
Why do you need to have a blog?
A blog is part of a well-designed content marketing strategy and, if run correctly, can quickly become a company's best source of referrals. If you think about it, the blog is the company's ‘face’ and ‘voice’ and a great direct way to reach out and communicate with your existing or potential customers. Besides that, a blog can also provide the following advantages:
Content freshness - One of the most important reasons to run a blog on your business website is content freshness. A blog will help you publish fresh content and provide another incentive for search engines and people to come back and check out what’s new.
Content on a business website is usually static. You have pages about your products and services and your Contact Us and About pages, and that’s the type of content you have on most business websites.
A blog will contribute to keeping the site active and increase the number of pages a website has, gradually generating more benefits in the long run.
Fresh content is also good for SEO and is one of the most effective practices for Google SEO.
Better internal linking - I have talked extensively about the importance of internal linking, and a blog is the best way to do it naturally. Through your blog posts, you can highlight and pinpoint the most important pages of your website and ‘assist’ users and search engine crawlers in finding them more easily.
Cross-selling and upselling - A blog can help you create new needs for your existing customers, sell them more products (cross-selling), or convince them to buy your most expensive products (upselling).
For example, let’s say you sell different types of wireless mice. A well-prepared blog post about the advantages of having a wireless mouse and the advantages of a particular type can help new customers realize that they should get a wireless mouse rather than a wired one and that spending $20 more to buy the particular type is worth it.
Customer service - A blog is another communication between you (the company) and its customers. You can use it to answer customer questions, educate them about your services, and give them another way to contact and interact with you via blog comments.
Demonstrate your expertise - A company's most valuable assets are its human resources and the expertise and experience it has in its business. A blog can help a company demonstrate its expertise to the outside World. You can use the blog to pass more messages to your audience than an advertisement, and you can do it for free and at any time you want.
To succeed on social media, you must share high-quality content regularly, and a company blog can be one of your best sources. Combining content marketing with a solid social media strategy differentiates successful online businesses from those that strive to survive online.
Announce new products and special offers – Besides enhancing customer service, a blog is another way to thank your customers, such as giving them special offers and announcing new product launches. You can use the blog to publish exclusive information about your new products or services, find beta users depending on the niche, etc.
Get Customer feedback - You can use the blog to run polls or questionnaires to get direct feedback from your customers. Remember to always incentivize people to fill in a questionnaire or poll; otherwise, participation levels will be low.
Get more traffic - I left this one for last, but one of the reasons you should run a blog is to increase traffic to your business website. If you run the blog correctly (as we will see in more detail below), it can become one of your major traffic sources.
How to run a business blog correctly
A business blog differs from a normal blog, where a blogger writes about a subject he/she is passionate about. It is more difficult to gain loyal followers for a business blog, especially if readers are not customers or are interested in becoming customers of the company. That’s why it is more important to do it correctly.
You don’t need good content - That’s correct; you don’t need good content on your business blog, but you need great content! Your business blog mirrors your business experience and expertise, which should be reflected in the published content.
Anyone reading your articles should be one step closer to becoming a customer; otherwise, you should stop thinking of having a blog altogether.
A common mistake I see in many businesses is maintaining a blog solely for the sake of having a blog and only publishing mediocre content they buy from content writers. This wastes time and money and sometimes negatively impacts the brand, services, or products.
It’s an investment - Consider your business blog a long-term investment instead of a short-term tool. As with any other investment, you must be patient and follow a specific plan with measurable targets to be effective.
Don’t look for cheap ways to publish content; look at how your published content can make a difference.
A good blog needs to have a face - Readers should know who is behind the blog, their background and expertise, and how to connect with them.
Have employees contribute - Instead of buying content, why not have all the company employees contribute to the blog? Create a policy that all employees should contribute once a month by creating relevant content related to your products or services. Maybe this is a new project they are working on or their experience with customer support… A brainstorming session during the next staff meeting can do wonders in this area.
You need to have a newsletter - A blog and a newsletter are two strongly related concepts. Email marketing has much to offer businesses, and a blog is a fantastic way to grow your email list naturally.
A nice way to stay in touch with your users is to send a newsletter whenever you update your blog. Many services like MailChimp can help you automate this task.
Make sure you reply to comments - I mentioned above that a blog is a good way to communicate with your customers, meaning you should reply to every comment on your posts. Show your readers that you care about what they say and that you respond to their requests. Finally, ensure you do not publish spam comments to increase your comment count; concentrate only on what has value for your readers.
Conclusion
A blog is a very useful tool for every business. The biggest mistake that most companies make is running a blog without having a content strategy or specific, measurable blog targets. They only have a blog because it’s good to have one or because their web designers told them they need a blog option on their website.
Although you can employ many of the ingredients of a successful blog and use them on your business blog, you should concentrate more on steadily increasing followers, loyal readers, and user interaction rather than just increasing rankings and traffic.
