Your Business Website Needs A Blog. Here Are 5 Reasons Why.

You need a small business blog.

At least, that’s what everybody tells you. But do you know why?

Well, you’ve probably heard about content marketing. The idea behind content marketing, (and it’s a pretty darn good one,) is to build a marketing strategy based on distributing relevant, useful content to a targeted audience in your field… instead of just bombarding your prospective customers with ads.

So instead of asking for a sale you probably haven’t earned by putting your message in front of someone who hasn’t asked for it, (let’s be honest, that’s primarily what ads are,) you make quality content that provides value to the type of people who are likely customers.

It’s been becoming more and more popular of a strategy… because it’s working. And what’s one of the best ways to deliver this content of value to your prospects?

You guessed it- the ol’ business blog.

Let’s look at 5 reasons why starting a small business blog is a good idea, if you haven’t started already:

Reason To Business Blog #1: Get more leads

Businesses that blog get more leads that businesses that don’t.

Seriously. Research on B2B marketing firms showed that blogging firms got 67% more leads than the ones that didn’t.

It makes sense. If you think about it, leads are prospective customers that have begun to recognize a need for a service like yours who are trying to make an educated buying decision.

What do you do when you try to make a more educated decision? You do your research.

Providing content for people to rely on when doing research puts your name in their brain when they’re recognizing a need for the solutions that your business offers. And if your blogs have a solid call to action, it should be easy for your customers’ educational experience to directly translate to a warm lead for your sales funnel.

 Speaking of which, we offer business blogging packages for our customers… if you’re looking for someone to help out with this sort of thing. Ask us for a free content consultation to learn about developing a solid content strategy for your website. (What? We gotta practice what we preach, right?)

Reason To Business Blog #2: Provide Value for customers

Of course, if customers are going to use you as a resource for their research, you better be putting out content that’s actually useful.

For a while, the blogging trends were pretty simple: make em’ short, sweet, and LOADED with SEO keywords. They weren’t written with any real content marketing strategy in mind.

Are the blogs helpful? (Who cares?)

Are the blogs accurate? (Whatever, it’s all about getting traffic and rankings.)

The problem with that attitude? Websites were loaded with content… but little of it was particularly useful to customers with real needs, real pains, and real buying decisions to make.

(By the way, Google rewards long-form posts with quality, skimmable content over short posts these days.)

People make buying decisions based on perceived value. So if you can provide them with something of real value, like a how-to-guide or a checklist or an infographic, you’re setting the stage for the type of value you deliver when they actually…CLICK TO TWEET

Providing valuable content has another plus, too…

Reason To Business Blog #3: Become a voice of authority

You are an expert in your field. After all, that’s why people pay you for your product or service.

But for those people who haven’t decided to make a buying decision, yet… how do you let them know that?

You can hope that they call you with the right questions.

You can hope that your current clients spread great word of mouth and enhance your reputation to help drive referrals.

For a complete guide on where and how to host your blog, check here.

Or you can just put that expertise out there on your business blog, and open up a whole new channel for referral-based business.

Here’s a good example: I’m trying to finish my basement. Trying is the operative word here, because I’m not particularly handy. And that means I have to do a lot of research about basement waterproofing.

There are about a half a million basement specialists in my area. (Okay, slight exaggeration.) They all claim to be the #1 Basement Experts. But one of them puts out a lot of really helpful information on their blog about the best types of insulation, the benefits and risks involved in vapor barriers, and how to prevent any future mold problems.

I may use this information to finish this project myself over the course of the next 6 months. Or, I may decide that this is a huge pain and I’d be better off hiring a professional to do it in 6 days.

If I do hire an expert, I’m more likely to hire the one that’s actually shown me their expertise via the blog posts I found in my searches.

This isn’t just me, either. Leads procured from organic search content have a close rate of 14.6%, compared to traditional outbound advertising leads with a close rate of 1.7%.

Reason To Business Blog #4: Let customers get to know you

What have we learned so far?

Customers make buying decisions based on perceived value. They want to know you’re an expert in your field and that you can provide them with real information that is valuable to their life.

Another way customers perceive value when it comes to making a buying decision? Well, they want to know how you are to work with.

Your blogs aren’t just an insight into your area of expertise, or helpful tidbits that you provide. Your blogs give your targeted audience a sense of who you are as a company. A sense that they may not be able to get, otherwise.

Your blogs reflect your values and attitudes as much as they reflect your competence and professionalism. Don’t underestimate the value of that to a prospective customer who’s got to make a decision about who to partner with for a big project or go to for a crucial purchase.

In fact, a 2016 study found that 47% of buyers engaged with 3-5 pieces of online content before they bothered to contact a sales rep. Nearly half.

If you don’t have content for those buyers to go through to help get to know your company, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate the full extent of that missed opportunity.

Reason To Business Blog #5: Boost your site’s SEO

Last, but certainly not least: blogging helps you show up higher in search engine rankings.

Earlier in this post, we mentioned some old school SEO tricks that people used to boost their website, even though they had short, mostly useless bits of content. But thankfully, search engines like Google have become smarter over the years, and the algorithms they use to determine rankings are far more intricate than in the days of keyword-stuffing.

There are plenty of SEO factors to consider with your site. Speed is one of them. Click-through rate from a search page, the amount of links that lead back to your site, image tags and metadata… and, of course, well-researched keywords all factor into a site’s SEO strategy.

A quality business blog can enhance almost all of these factors.

Google sends “bots” to crawl around on your site and look for keywords, links, metadata, and information regarding click-through and bounce rates. And here’s the fun part- the more helpful, relevant content that you have on your site, the more stuff that those bots can crawl through and analyze.

Really. Websites with blogs tend to have 434% more content indexed on search engines than websites without a dedicated blog.

So now Google is focusing their algorithms to favor long, informative content over short, vague posts… since people rely on them to provide the most relevant content, they take quality seriously. And that means that the more quality content you are able to post that is actually helpful to your consumers, the better your chances of having low bounce rates, higher amounts of links pointing back to your site, and all-round performing well on Google.

If you are interested in a business blogging strategy that helps your customers and positions your site for better rankings and more leads, consider a business blogging plan from SuperWebPros. We develop a strategy that makes sense for your site and target audience, interview you for your expertise, and communicate that clearly and effectively to drive more traffic to your business.

With a time commitment of 1 hour per month, you could be providing consistent, quality content to your customers. Sign up for a free site review and ask for a content consultation to learn more!