Introduction
In today’s online world, small business owners can use blogging to attract new customers and establish themselves as experts. A business blog boosts your website’s visibility in search results and improves conversion rates; a visitor taking an action. This article will cover the benefits of blogging, define a business blog, and offer practical tips for creating one that drives traffic and builds client loyalty.
What is a Business Blog?
The word “blog” comes from “web log.” It originally meant an online diary or log where people wrote about their personal stories or daily lives, their interests, thoughts, and hobbies. Over time, the name was shortened to “blog.”
Now blogs are written about anything and everything. They have evolved so that businesses use them to share information about their products and services, connecting with their clients and sharing helpful tips and providing value.
This informal approach to connecting with their audience has enabled businesses to reach more people, showcase their expertise and knowledge and share valuable content.
In this blog I will share more about how business blogging can help you to connect with your audience, build trust and pave the way for bringing new traffic to your website.
11 Benefits of Business Blogging in 2024
Blogging for business should always put your audience at the heart of your content.
Yes, search engines factor into the overall blog strategy, but human written content that answers a question, solves a pain or educates is how you will connect authentically with your ideal client online.
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PRO-TIP: ALWAYS PLACE THE HUMAN AT THE HEART OF YOUR BLOGS
#1 A direct line for audience engagement
A business blog, published on your website is a direct line to your ideal clients. Not only can they access your knowledge but it allows and encourages for direct customer engagement.
Enabling comments on your blog posts and ensuring you respond promptly helps you to connect with your prospects. This builds their trust and loyalty in you.
It also gives you a way to learn more about their preferences, pain points, and interests. This kind of market research is invaluable because you feed this back into your marketing efforts and by answering more of your audience’s questions.
It also allows you to see opportunities for new services or products that would help your audience further.
Blogs are an invaluable way of getting market research; new blogs I create are often based on the questions my prospects need answering.
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#2 A vault of valuable blogs
Building up a vault of valuable blogs not only helps to educate your prospects but also helps to support your clients.
Each time you create a new blog post, you are creating another page on your website which is giving value. It allows you to answer questions, share case studies and introduce new services or products you are planning to launch.
A vault of blogs also empowers your prospects and clients to find answers independently. Not only does this help to streamline your time but it also means your content is quickly accessible. Engage your audience and ask what content they want next.
Additionally, well-documented blog content can serve as a knowledge base that customers can reference at any time, enhancing their overall experience with your company as they see you as the “go-to expert”.
At Engaging Content my team and I find it useful to be able to quickly share blog links with prospects and clients which speeds up communication.
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#3 Encourages your visitors to take an action
I always say that a blog article provides the back door way into your website. This is because a prospect can find you organically by discovering a blog article through keyword search on search engines.
Apart from this being an opportunity to generate an enquiry, it also means they are now aware of your service, and have been introduced to your business.
A blog article is an important part of your sales funnel as it guides your visitors and gently encourages them to take the next step. A conversion should always be the goal such as subscribing to your email list, or booking a discovery call with you.
Crafting content that addresses the needs and interests of your target market, will encourage action taking. Every blog needs a call-to-action (which could vary from post to post).
So, encourage your visitors to take an action through your blog posts so that you can nurture them over time and turn them into a client.
I always say that a blog article is the back door way into your website by a prospect that didn’t know you existed.
CAPTION: Image of a back door to illustrate a subtle way to discover your blog
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#4 Positions you as an authority in your industry
Thought leadership is important online because it helps to break down barriers. By sharing valuable industry information, insights, and successful client case studies, your blog articles help to position you and your business as a credible authority.
This will help to attract potential clients and for your peers and competitors to sit up and take note!
Unlike the printed word, the benefit of blogs are that you can update them at any time, as and when things change in your industry.
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#5 Opens up opportunities to collaborate
Being recognised as a leader can open up opportunities for collaborations in your industry. This could include guest blogging, speaking in other people’s audiences and taking part in industry discussions.
Attracting attention from other leaders will not only help to make your personal profile more prominent but will also help to grow your business.
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#6 Builds awareness of your personal brand
Blog articles are a great way to share the values of your business and how you are unique from your competitors. It’s your opportunity to stand out for the right reasons as you share more about what you do and your approach.
This will help to make your business more visible and will help to build more awareness of your personal brand.
While this process takes time, regular consumers of your content will recognise and trust you as a reliable and authoritative source, which is priceless.
As a personal brand, building awareness of your existence is key and business blogging is a much easier way of doing this compared to social media.
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PRO-TIP: ENSURE YOUR BUSINESS BLOGS ARE OPTIMISED SO THAT SEARCH ENGINES CAN DISCOVER AND INDEX THEM
#7 Boosts visibility on search engines
Remember that each each blog article is a separate page and regularly updating your website with new or refreshed articles keeps your content current.
The job of search engines is to align users queries with the best possible content. As such, search engines love fresh, relevant content and this keeps them coming back to crawl and index your website.
Make your blog articles as effective and visible as possible by selecting the correct, relevant keywords and ensuring your blogs link together with other pages of your website.
Also, good quality backlinks will help to enhance your website’s search engine optimisation (SEO) performance, which makes it easier for potential customers to discover your business.
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#8 Drives quality traffic to your website
Another significant benefit of business blogging is that it can drive consistent, quality traffic to your website.
Blogs are designed to go deep, not wide, on a topic. And this depth of content helps to attract new visitors through search engines, and referrals from other websites.
Promoting your blogs across multiple channels will attract more organic website traffic and result in more visitors landing on your site.
As they discover and come into your world, they can explore other areas of your website, and be on a journey from a prospect to a client.
Write quality website content to get quality website traffic.
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PRO-TIP: CONSISTENT BUSINESS BLOGGING EASES YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS
#9 Supports your social media marketing
Instead of creating new content for each social media post, turn it around the other way. When you spend time creating valuable blog articles, you can repurpose this into smaller bitesized social posts.
This gives you lots of things to share on social media, without having to reinvent the wheel AND it drives traffic back to your website.
Publishing content across social media and your website helps you to stand out and get engagement on social media too.
This also ensures that your brand message remains consistent on all channels which will also go in your favour with potential clients and search engines.
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#10 Eases your overall marketing efforts
Consistent blogging provides a stream of ready to use content. And over time these efforts compound into a vault of valuable content that is always accessible.
Not only does this ease your overall marketing efforts, but it allows you to create marketing campaigns from the foundations of your blog content.
The campaigns you create are your opportunity to test your content in a different way, whilst ensuring your foundational content remains in tact.
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#11 Provides long-term evergreen content
Social media and other tactics only offer short-term results and once content has gone down the scroll, it has served its purpose.
Whereas high quality blog content will continue to attract high quality organic traffic.
This will result in your website generating enquiries long after the original content was published.
Investing time in creating consistent and valuable blog content ensures that your business remains relevant and competitive in the ongoing changes online.
Blogging, as a marketing tactic, provides long-term value.
And Neil Patel recently said:
“…if you must choose a single channel, I’d say go with SEO!”
– June 2024
Conclusion – Business Blogging in 2024
In conclusion, business blogging remains an effective way for small business owners to improve their online visibility, attract new clients, and build a successful blog that drives business growth. Leveraging the benefits of business blogging will improve your visibility, help to establish you as a thought leader and will help to generate website enquiries. Blogging ensures you create authentic connections with your audience. Whether you are just starting your own blog or looking to optimise an existing one, focusing on creating quality content will pave the way for a successful business blog that contributes to your long-term business success.
TL;DR – In summary:
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Business blogging:
- is a great way for a small business to become more visible online,
- allows your ideal audience to connect on a deeper level because you are giving value,
- helps to showcase you as an expert which improves your visibility, and
- eases your marketing efforts because the content you create is evergreen.
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Pro-tips:
- Always place the human at the heart of your blogs. Write for people not algorithms.
- Ensure your blogs are optimised so that search engines can discover and index them
- Consistent business blogging eases your marketing efforts.
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Natalie’s says:
- Blogs are an invaluable way of acquiring market research from your ideal customer.
- We share blog links with prospects and clients to speed up communication.
- A blog is the back door to your website for a prospect who didn’t know you existed.
- Unlike print, you can update blogs at any time as things change in your industry.
- Blogging makes it easier to build awareness of your personal brand.
- By writing quality website content you will get quality website traffic.