Does My Small Business Need a Blog?
Short answer: yes.
WordPress – one of the biggest blog hosting services in the world – reports that each month more than 400 million people view blog posts.
Think each of those millions of people might just skim a post or two per month? Think again. Monthly, these readers view more than 20 billion blog posts!
That’s an astronomically huge pie, and a well-maintained blog can serve your small business a nice slice of it. Your dream customers are out there searching for valuable content they care about…why not make sure they find it from you?
As a business owner, there’s a lot competing for your time and attention, and your marketing strategy is one of them. While there’s no shortage of options when it comes to deciding where to focus your marketing efforts, it’s important to know business blogs are a highly valuable and efficient way to grow your small business.
How do blogs help small businesses?
For one thing, they can attract your ideal audience and turn them into loyal customers. They earn your website credibility and authority.
According to Demand Metric, 70% of readers say that after reading a brand’s custom content, they feel more connected to the brand (1). And connected readers are much more likely to become invested in your brand as loyal customers!
A blog is a powerful tool
Unlike a personal blog that acts as a journal, a business blog is a tool that serves as a way to communicate value with your audience. Yes, a business blog can include information on updates and happenings within the company, but not only for the sake of updating current customers.
Its main goal is to help your website become more relevant, draw in new potential customers, and provide high-quality, valuable content in your niche.
How Does It Work?
You create a blog page on your website.
With your ideal client in mind, you develop a strategy that will help them find you organically – what are they searching for? What do they care about? What are their pain points? What are they interested in? What problem do you solve for them?
You update your blog with a new Search Engine Optimized article that fits into that strategy once per week…or more if possible!
You stay consistent, give it some time, keep an eye on your analytics, and do a happy dance as you see your traffic and rankings improve.
Benefits of blogging for small businesses
High-quality blogs that are updated frequently can produce impressive results. When you leverage your website to make search engines happy with excellent content, they make you happy by sending readers your way.
Small businesses that use blogging as an essential part of their marketing strategy:
See 55% more traffic (2). Why have that fantastic website if you aren’t getting eyes on it?
Create 67% more leads than those who don’t (3). Raise your hand if you’d like to increase your leads by 67%!
Are more than 10x more likely to have a positive ROI on their marketing budget (2). Blogging becomes more efficient over time – there’s a snowball effect. The longer your blog is active with frequent updates and high-quality content, the bigger the snowball gets and the faster it rolls. Each blog article becomes more valuable in combination with the others.
Have over 95% more inbound links (2). Inbound links (also called backlinks) are when other sites link to yours. This tells Google you’re reliable and have authority, which improves your rankings.
Pros and Cons of a Business Blog
You aren’t one to make business decisions lightly. Even though the stats above point to blogging as a really solid marketing tool, it’s important to consider whether it’s right for your business.
Pros
Build credibility in your niche. When your ideal customer finds top-notch, easy-to-read, helpful information on your website, you become a valuable resource for them. The content on your blog shows your audience that you know what matters to them. This creates huge potential to convert leads into customers, and one-time buyers into loyal followers.
Establish authority with search engines. Search engines like Google want to direct their users to information that will give the best results to their search. When Google crawls your site, it’s checking to see what your site’s all about, and if you’re an authoritative resource.
In addition to excellent website copy, a blog is the perfect way to satisfy Google’s checklist for:
✔️High-quality content
✔️Frequent updates
✔️Keyword matches
✔️Word count targets per page
Increase organic traffic. You want your website hard at work for you, right? A blog is a round-the-clock marketing expert, drawing in readers who believe what your brand stands for and who share your values.
Increasing your organic traffic means new eyes on your site, more people checking out your products and services, and the potential to build a larger community around your mission.
Leverage an affordable marketing tool. Unless you have a sky’s-the-limit marketing budget and are interested in running paid ad after paid ad, a blog for your small business is a really wise way to use your marketing dollars.
Because of the snowball effect mentioned above, a quality blog that is updated frequently really does have a compounding effect. Unlike a paid ad that runs for a set period of time and then expires, blogs get to live on your website forever and keep working hard for your business.
Cons
Time is limited. Blogging isn’t for the faint of heart. To be done well, it requires a time commitment, week in and week out. For many small business owners, time can feel in short supply and it’s tricky to work in the hours needed each week to dedicate to running a great blog that will get you the results you want.
Done isn’t the same as well-done. If you can find the time to produce a new blog article each week – fantastic! But do you feel confident about how to use Search Engine Optimization to your advantage? You can pour time into a blog, but without an effective strategy it winds up feeling frustrating because it doesn’t help you meet your growth goals. The last thing you want to do is waste time.
Want the results, but don’t have the time?
When you understand the value a blog can add to your business, it’s tough to believe you don’t need one.
Hiring a copywriter can be a fantastic way to reap the benefits of blogging without having to log the hours yourself. Building a strategic partnership with a copywriter who cares deeply about your brand and champions its values is one way to ensure that your blog will get the time, attention, and strategy it needs to boost your rankings and increase traffic.
Interested in help from a professional copywriter? Schedule a free 15-minute discovery call.
Sources:
1. Content Marketing Infographic - Demand Metric
2. 16 Statistics on How Blogging Gives Your Business a Competitive Advantage - BKA Content
3. 11 Business Blogging Statistics Marketers Need to Know - Fundera
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