The Benefits of Business Blogging
What purpose do business blogging really serve? A sentiment felt by many. Blogs have been sprouting up all over the internet in various forms since the late 90โs. Amateurs initially used blogs as springboards for expression. Now the benefits of blogging and well-crafted blog articles have become a vital part of content marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes.
I hope we can all agree more traffic to your website is a good thing, right? So the million-dollar question is, how do you increase traffic to your site. Therein lies the marketing value and benefits of business blogging on your website!
Curating blog content that strikes a chord with your audienceโs interests and needs can transform your brand into a source of information for a whole community of potential customers. Writing original SEO optimized content should be a part of every business’s marketing plan. It’s not difficult and there are no cons to writing content. It’s like valentimes day it’s not hard to pick up a little something to show appreciation for your significant other but a huge mistake if you don’t.
Table of Contents
What is Business Blogging?
Business blogging is a strategic form of content marketing where companies create and publish articles on their website to attract and engage their target audience. Unlike personal blogs, which may cover a wide range of topics, business blogs are focused on supporting specific business goals such as increasing website traffic, generating leads, and driving sales.
The primary aim of business blogging is to provide high-quality, relevant, and valuable content that resonates with the target audience. This involves understanding the needs, interests, and pain points of potential customers and addressing them through well-crafted blog posts and supporting media. By doing so, businesses can establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry, build brand trust, and improve their visibility on search engines.
- Higher Lead Growth: Small businesses that blog experience 126% more lead growth than those that don’t.
- Enhanced Website Traffic: Blogging can boost a business’s web traffic by 55%.
- Enhanced Return on Investment (ROI): Businesses prioritizing blogging are 13 times more likely to achieve a positive ROI.
Business blogs are optimized for search engines to reach a wider audience. This optimization includes the use of targeted keywords, meta tags, and other SEO techniques to ensure the content ranks well on search engine results pages. Ultimately, business blogging is a powerful tool that helps companies connect with audiences that might have been invisible to them. Another major benefit is that it can boost your SEO if done correctly.
Planting Seeds: Organic SEO
Like anything worth doing, the benefits of blogging only become apparent through time and effort invested. Just like planting a garden, building a blog into a flourishing hub for commerce and resources doesnโt happen at the drop of a hat. Yet, with a little water and the right soil, your garden will slowly start to grow. Farmers use fertilizer to increase a cropโs yield. Well, the โfertilizerโ in this analogy is SEO!
What exactly is SEO, you ask? Well, for starters โ itโs one of the biggest benefits of blogging. Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is a method and practice used to increase the number of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement on search engine results pages, or SERP for short. When we say search engine, think Google, Bing, Yahoo, and so on. Repurpose blog content into various formats to enhance visibility and engagement. You can get a lot of mileage from a blog post by using parts of the content for social media posts and other uses.
There are 47 billion web pages indexed on Google creating a bit of a challenge to stand out in a crowd, but not impossible. Keyword targeting is the practice of focusing precisely on producing content containing a vocabulary your target audience is most likely to use when searching online for a service or good your company may offer.
Here is a helpful and brief SEO checklist to walk through before publishing a single blog post.
SEO Checklist for Business Blogging:
It’s also helpful to know the difference between long-tail and short-tail keywords.
Short-tail keywords can be described as broad keywords. Generally used to reach large groups of people, these keywords are often saturated with content and harder to rank for quickly.
Example: โgreen applesโ
It is much easier to rank for long-tail keywords. Although these keywords are used less in search engines, the visitors that find your website through long-tail keywords are more likely to buy your service or product.
The longer and more specific the search terms are, the higher the chances of conversion are.
Example: โGranny Smith’s famous green applesโ
The first step is to identify the keywords you want to rank for, similar to laying the foundation for a house. Here’s an infographic that everyone should follow when writing content once they have the foundation in place.
Think Long Term: Build Brand Trust & Show Authenticity
Become a thought leader in your industry and provide blog readers with useful information. Creating content your audience values is the best thing you can do to build trust! Visitors who value your content will reference and share your content. This creates backlinks, which helps SEO tremendously.
A backlink is a reference comparable to a citation. The quantity and sources of backlinks for a web page are among the many important factors that Googleโs PageRank algorithm evaluates in order to estimate the page worth.
PSA: Blackhat SEO methods like purchasing backlinks and spamming forums/groups are a big no-no; it really hurt websites. Google adjusted its algorithms to detect these types of SEO hacks and you will get sent to the dark corners of the internet.
Backlinks are still incredibly valuable. Google sees backlinks as a testament to the authority of a given website, or in other words, it shows if a website is a trusted source in their field. Search engines want to see backlinks that are relevant and useful.
Websites with active blogs have 434% more indexed pages and 97% more inbound links, boosting their authority and search rankings. More pages mean more chances to rank.(BKA Content)
Business Blogs are usually answering a question that people are actively searching answers for so it’s a great vehicle to educate them on what you do. Showing authenticity will establish a companyโs authority within an industry and fortify brand trust. This is all about establishing yourself as a thought leader.
Quality Over Quantity: Engaging Blog Content Concepts
When people visit your blog make it worth their while! While there are many benefits of business blogging โ itโs important for your blog to also actually benefit your visitors. Here’s a huge tip, write content for humans and not robots. Writing thin content for search results will likely get flagged, and it will be a huge waste of time.
Your goal should be to produce engaging content that keeps your audience coming back for more. It is important to diversify the style of content youโre producing. Keep your blog fresh! Repurposing your blog content into social media posts can save time and enhance audience engagement by driving traffic back to your blog. We use snippets from blogs frequently for blog posts.
Example of Post Styles:
- Publish long list posts to get more backlinks
- Create how toโs / DIY: educate & empower audience
- Develop a recurring series that an audience can latch onto
- Design eye-catching and informative infographics (use downloadable PDF to capture emails)
- Video Posts – most paid video platforms like Wistia and Vimeo allows you to add call-to-actions to videos.
Video content is gold!
Companies operating in industries where few brands utilize video or motion graphics to market to customers have an enormous and unique opportunity to separate themselves from competitors that are slow to adapt. The benefits of online video are becoming more and more apparent.
- Visitors stay on websites that use video 78% longer than websites that had no video.
- 82.6% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company whose site had web video.
- 73.4% of consumers said that seeing video on a companyโs website increased their comfort level
Qualifying: Convert Website Traffic Into Leads
So what should happen once visitors get to your blog?
You should have a clear path intended for your visitors to follow with actionable steps along the way. The benefits of blogging will only become apparent if you have a clear plan.
Business blogging increase the number of pages on your website. A larger site means more opportunities for engagement and conversion. Creating unique content is the perfect way for visitors to subscribe to your blog, download your newest e-book, schedule a demo, etc.
Optimizing your blog as a method for lead generation is essential to any inbound marketing strategy. Utilizing social media channels to promote your blog content can drive traffic back to your site, leveraging established audiences for better engagement. B2B marketers that use blogs receive 67% more leads than those that do not.
Using call-to-actions and opt-in forms is a great way to convert blog traffic into qualified leads. A blog can take strangerโs to your brand and turn them into visitors, qualify them as leads, and ideally, close a deal. Blogs are becoming a bigger and bigger part of customer retention.
Getting Started with Business Blogging
Embarking on a business blogging journey requires a strategic approach to ensure success. Here are some essential steps to help you get started:
- Define Your Target Audience: Begin by identifying your ideal customer. Create detailed buyer personas that outline their demographics, interests, and pain points. This will guide your content creation and ensure it resonates with your audience.
- Determine Your Blogging Goals: Establish clear objectives for your business blog. Whether itโs increasing website traffic, generating leads, or driving sales, having defined goals will help you measure success and stay focused.
- Choose a Blogging Platform: Select a user-friendly platform that integrates seamlessly with your existing website and marketing tools. Popular options include WordPress, HubSpot, and Squarespace.
- Develop a Content Strategy: Plan your content in advance. Decide on the topics, formats, and frequency of publication. A well-thought-out content calendar will keep your blog organized and consistent.
- Create High-Quality Content: Focus on producing engaging, informative, and optimized content. Ensure your blog posts address the needs and interests of your target audience while incorporating relevant keywords for SEO.
- Optimize for Search Engines: Use SEO techniques such as keyword optimization, meta tags, and internal linking to improve your blogโs visibility on search engine results pages. This will help attract more organic traffic to your site.
- Promote Your Blog: Share your blog content across various channels, including social media, email newsletters, and other marketing platforms. This will help you reach a wider audience and drive more traffic to your website.
- Measure and Analyze Performance: Use analytics tools to track your blogโs performance. Monitor key metrics such as page views, bounce rate, and conversion rates. Use this data to refine your strategy and improve your blogโs effectiveness.
By following these steps, you can establish a successful business blog that attracts and engages your target audience, drives website traffic and sales, and supports your overall business goals.
Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
The benefits of blogging for your business are important, but first determine who will create the content and develop a content calendar, especially when balancing it with social media marketing efforts. If the blog exceeds the capacity of your in-house marketing department, it is best to seek outside creative agencies to aid with content creation and management. One of our brand storytellers would love the opportunity to help you design a blog strategy and produce engaging multimedia content.
Feel free to contact us to set up a free consultation with Mighty FineCo.
