7 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Blog

A blog for business may seem like another thing to spend time and resources on. But the purpose of a blog for business is to get more sales. Do you not want more sales??

What is a Business Blog?

A business blog can be a blog on your business website or a separate site. A blog on your business website is better to keep people on your site. But you can use sites like Medium too.

If you’re a small business, a blog can be a great way to rank higher in search engines to compete with bigger companies.

Your business blog can talk about anything you want. It is best to make a list of topics you want to be known for and focus on these.

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How to Start a Business Blog

A blog is easy to set up and even if you don’t know a lot about website design or marketing, it shouldn’t be difficult.

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Tips for Starting a Business Blog

??Write consistently. This is vital to helping you rank higher in search engines. You need to make a commitment to producing a blog on a regular basis. Once a week would be good or if that’s too much, even once a month. But be consistent.

??Write with keywords. You should have a list of keywords that you need to rank for. If not use keyword research tools like SEMrush and AnswerThePublic and include these naturally in your website and on your blog. Focus on one topic per blog otherwise, you could have lots of blogs on, for example, chocolate, and it will be harder for search engines to rank these. Instead have one blog focus on milk chocolate and everything about it, one on white chocolate, one on cocoa beans, and so on.

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? Write quality content. Longer form blogs usually do better because they tend to have all the information on one topic. If you check Google and other keyword tools, you will see what people are searching for. Answer all of these questions in your one blog post.

? Use it as content for social media. You can repurpose your blog posts as lots of different content, so the time and effort you spend on a blog can cover all your other marketing channels too. Make a post for your Facebook and a slightly different one for other social media channels. Make a video about it for YouTube. This way your one blog creates content for lots of different channels and makes it likely more people will see it and engage with you.

? Guest blogging. You can write for other authoritative sites to attract attention to your own site. When other sites have links to your sites, it helps you become more authoritative and rank higher on search engines. It is another way to attract more traffic to your site and get noticed. You can’t simply copy and paste your own blog, however. You need to create a new blog, but you can use material from a blog you’ve already done.

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What are the Benefits of Blogging?

1.????To get more sales

Blogging will attract more traffic to your site which should lead to higher sales and more profit. The Huffington Post blog earned $14 million monthly revenue in 2018. That’s a lot of money you are missing out on.

2.????To get more traffic to your website

Again, more traffic to your site means increased brand awareness and more sales. Companies that blog have an average 67% more monthly leads.

3.????For SEO

Providing consistent new material on your website means Google should rank you higher in the search engines. A huge 72% of marketers described content creation as their most effective SEO tactic.

4.????To show you are an authority in your industry.

Producing quality content means people will start to regard you as an expert in your industry and be more likely to think of you when they want to purchase.

5.????For trust and credibility

If you are providing something for your potential customers for nothing, then they will think your company is helpful and cares about their customers. It will show you are a trustworthy and credible company. This also ties in with the psychological trigger called reciprocity. This means if you give people something then they feel obliged to give back. In business, if you are being helpful, people are more likely to support you when you ask them for something or make a purchase because you’ve given them something first.

For example, I subscribe to Kate Toon’s emails (an awesome copywriter), and I listen to her podcasts and download her guides. So, when she sent an email asking to vote for her for the B&T Women in Media Awards People’s Choice, I had no problem voting for her to help her in return.

6.????Helps with link building.

A link-building strategy is still important. If authoritative websites are linking to your sites and vice versa it shows your site is trustworthy to both people and to Google which will improve your domain authority. Companies who blog get 97% more links to their sites. You can check your domain authority at Ahrefs.

7.????To have a competitive advantage. Half of the Fortune 500 companies have a blog. If successful companies are doing it, then you should be too. If you don’t have a blog, you are giving your competitor the opportunity to take your sales.

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Are There Disadvantages of Blogging for your Business?

? It takes time and effort. The average blog post takes 3.5 hours to write. This is a lot of time out of your day to create content on a regular basis.

? You need to be consistent. If you are starting a blog, you need to commit to creating content regularly. If you start and stop it can do more harm than good. Old content can look unprofessional and won’t help with SEO.

?Blogging can be a really great way to increase your sales without paying for costly advertising. You must be prepared to put in the time and effort, but the rewards should be worth it.

For blogging templates, check out Hubspot’s selection.