Business blogging, particularly when combined with social media, is a powerful marketing tool to promote your small business online. Generating traffic, converting leads, establishing authority, developing a community, and driving long-term results are all attractive benefits that are achievable when you start a blog for your small business. Still not convinced? We’ve compiled 5 benefits of starting a business blog, and why you should start now if you haven’t already. 1. Blogging generates traffic to your website Raise your hand if you want more visitors to your website. Yeah, us too. But think about the ways people typically find your website: they could type your business name in their browser, but realistically, that’s an audience that you already have. You’re on their radar, so that doesn’t help you get more traffic on top of what you’re already getting. You could also use paid ads and place it everywhere, but it’s expensive. Plus, the second you run out of money, your traffic stops coming too. So generating traffic really comes down to: blogging, social media, and search engines. Without a blog, your website probably doesn’t have a ton of pages, right? By blogging, you are creating one more indexed page each time you write a blog post. And that works in your favour in the world of SEO, as websites with a blog tend to have 434% more indexed pages. Why is that important? The more content your website has for search engines to crawl and index, the easier it is for search engines to recognize that your website is a resource with plenty of information for people to consume. Plus, it’s one more opportunity for your business to show up in search engines and drive traffic to your website in organic search. Who wouldn’t want that? 2. Blogging converts traffic into leads Now that you have traffic coming to your website through your blog, this is the perfect opportunity to convert that traffic into leads. Similar to how every new blog post you write is another indexed page, each post is also a new opportunity to generate new leads. It’s simple: Add a lead-generating call-to-action to every blog post. You can do this by adding a plug at the end of a blog post, or including visual assets to complement your article. Keep in mind search engines love valuable content and will reward you for it, as SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate. That goes to show high-quality blog articles that are keyword focused and optimized for search engines can help you get discovered by more qualified individuals who are actually ready to close. Remember, you won’t convert 100% of the people who read your blog into leads, and that’s okay. If you’ve put in the effort to bring traffic to your blog post, you obviously want to funnel the traffic to the finish line. Use calls-to-action, set a visitor-to-lead conversion rate benchmark for yourself, and work to improve your business each month. 3. Blogging gives your company a voice and helps establish authority This might be a no brainer, but we’re reiterating it because it’s important. Think of your blog posts as a voice—or an extension—of your small business. They help demonstrate your expertise in a particular subject area simply by sharing high-quality and relevant content to your readers. Be it topics like content marketing, dental tips, budgeting, or even accounting—over time you can gradually build the reputation of being a go-to resource to help your readers learn, solve challenges, and grow businesses of their own! 4. Blogging develops a community around your brand An area of blogging that may often be overlooked is the comments section. However, one of the best parts of a successful small business blog is the communication, collaboration, and sharing that can take place in the comments. If you facilitate an active comments area on your blog on top of publishing consistent and relevant content, it can help create and cultivate a community with shared interests. Remember our earlier discussion about generating traffic and converting leads? Well, a likeminded readership who read your blog consistently are likely your target audience, so long as you factor in their level of intent: are they ready to purchase a product or service you provide at this very moment? On top of that, it’s a fantastic way to learn about your audience in the process. 5. Blogging drives long-term results While you may not see immediate results, over time, you’ll be able to witness a predictable amount of traffic and leads for your small business without additional resource investment. You might ask, how? That’s because the work to generate that traffic and those leads is already done through compounding blog posts. While you’re off on your Mexico vacation, your blog posts (and all the research and writing you’ve done previously) continue to drive site traffic and generate new leads largely through search engines. It’s advancing through search engine ranking—meaning that for days, weeks, months, and even years to come, you can continue to gain traffic and leads from that blog post. With blogging, the effort you put in yesterday can convert into hundreds of thousands of views and leads in the future. That goes to show just how scalable business blogging really is. Get started blogging today for your small business and be sure to browse through the topics we cover on the Kashoo blog to discover how we too, can help you grow your business—starting with your bookkeeping!
