How Can Blogging Help My Business?

by Volume Nine

As a business owner or marketing manager, you’ve likely been told that blogging is a powerful way for getting the word out about your company. However, when done correctly, blogging can do much more than inform consumers about your products. If you’re on the fence about the efficacy of blogging, take it from us – blogging can help your business. Here are eight benefits you’ll see from starting and maintaining a company blog:

Increase your page rankings

Each time you post a blog, you create a new web page, which means you’re building out your website more. Since search engines now have a new page to index, you may see a positive improvement in the ranking of your site. Jayson DeMers, in his Forbes column, writes that organic search visibility and website traffic can both be increased by adding new blog posts to your site.

Become a thought leader and establish authority

One of the most important things that blogging does for your business is to establish authority. Corey Wainwright at HubSpot tells us that creating content that answers questions and provides value for your readers instantly positions your company as an authority.

Thought leadership in your industry is one of the quickest ways to stand out from your competitors. Find the topic gaps in the blogs of your industry and create content around those topics. Remember that you also need to produce high-quality, engaging content on a consistent basis for this to happen.

Get content to share on social

Regular blogging can help you with your social media management as well. Your blog is a channel in itself, but it can also be extended to other channels. Populate your social calendar with shares from your blog. You can also repost a snippet of your blog content on Medium or repost your content on LinkedIn Articles.

Enhance the value of your brand

When done well, your blog can help cement your brand perception in the eyes of your customers. Make sure your brand’s essence is reflected in the tone, style, and voice of your blog by creating blogging guidelines or referring to your company’s brand book or style guide. A company blog should be an extension of your brand, so the content and tone need to reflect your brand values.

Attract new visitors

This new content that you’ll be posting in your company blog will help generate new leads. You can use analytics to see where your visitors are coming from and which topics are most engaging to them. Then you can use this data to assist in the planning of your upcoming content calendar for blogging.

Start a conversation with your audience

Blogging can help your business by allowing a forum for conversation between your company and your customers. In a blog, you can enhance interactivity with your audience by including:

Social share buttons
Comments or a forum for discussion
Quizzes
Videos, slideshares, images, and GIFs
Real-time chat to engage visitors
Links to your company’s social channels are prominently displayed (for example, a Twitter handle, Facebook company page, or LinkedIn company page.)
Contact information for the author (such as profile picture, position, email, Twitter handle, and contact information)

Provide value to the audience

Think of your blog as a platform for sharing best practices and practical tips that people can then use in their own work. Giving information away for free in the form of a blog shows your readers that you are willing to provide value without any return from them.

Of course, you can use a call to action to see if they will bite, but you may have a passive audience who are only readers for a while before you start seeing engagement in the form of comments, shares, likes, and conversions.

Boost your marketing strategy

Blogging is a serious part of every company’s marketing strategy. It provides new content and a forum where you control the topics, the messaging, and the style of the content. A blog can be used in conjunction with a variety of other actions such as landing pages, social, and digital advertising as the core of your overall marketing strategy.