Gain Customers by Starting a Business Blog

You have a website or an online store, but no blog associated with it? If having an online presence and visibility is important for your business, then you should be starting a business blog right now. It's incredibly easy to add a blog page to your site when using a website builder since there is no need to code from scratch. Wix and GoDaddy, for example, both offer attractive blogging options so you can achieve a design and format both you and your readers will love.

9 Benefits of Blogging for Business

1. Organic Traffic

Starting a business blog is the perfect SEO strategy to boost your organic traffic, especially if you don’t frequently update your website’s pages or publish new ones. Search engines don’t like static content. Their algorithms tend to rank those websites with fresh content higher and push down the ones with stale content, not to mention that writing about current events might give you a place in Google News. The higher the organic traffic your pages attract, the more opportunities you get to convert visitors into customers.

2. Flexibility

Starting a business blog gives you the most flexibility regarding the topics to write about. While your posts will still have to be related to your website’s niche, you can always expand your horizons. For instance, if you run an online clothing store, you can publish blog posts about current trends, fashion events, but also about celebrities and their outfits.

3. User Engagement

This flexibility gives you the opportunity to write about trending topics or controversial ones. These are the kind of things people like reading about. This is also the type of content readers tend to share via social media or comment upon. An active blog has all the potential to become the home of a thriving community, bringing together like-minded people.

4. Feedback

The comments you get on your blog or across various social media channels are not only precious pieces of user-generated content that search engines love. They offer great feedback regarding your website, your products and services, and your marketing strategy. This is a very efficient way of measuring your success, and of knowing whether you are on the right track or not.

5. Brand Image

When you publish industry news, case studies and research results, you become a respected authority in your field. This is the best way to boost your brand’s image, to establish your name as an industry leader and reliable expert on the subject matter. The more people trust your brand, the more likely they are to buy your products, use your services and recommend them to others.

6. Content Marketing

One of the sure benefits of blogging for business is content marketing. Words are powerful marketing weapons that can turn an occasional visitor into a fan, a fan into a first-time customer, then into a returning customer and eventually, into a brand ambassador. Promoting your content via different marketing and social media channels is a great way to boost exposure and increase your customer database.

7. Cost-effectiveness

When considering all the different marketing avenues you can pursue, blogging is very low cost as well as effective. It’s easy to add a blog page to your website if you use a website builder like Wix and others, and it typically doesn’t cost anything extra. If you write about topics that people are interested in and searching for, plus if you use the right SEO strategy, you’ll drive traffic to your site which in turn will build your brand awareness and sales.  Furthermore, your blog posts can result in more inbound links from other websites and blogs, further increasing your marketing range and sending more leads your way.

8. Share expertise

A business blog lends to showing off your expertise. While your website likely lists the services and products that you offer, they often are limited to short descriptions. In your blog, on the other hand, you can truly get in-depth in demonstrating your skills and mastery. Take the time to delve into the answers to common questions your clients may have. Maybe you’re an interior designer or a photographer. On your blog, you can describe different projects you’ve done, your approach and process, and the results. If you are a landscaper, you can share your knowledge of plants on your blog. A real estate agent can write about the selling points of different neighborhoods, the process of closing on a house, and stories of happy families settling into their new homes. Give your readers a behind-the-scenes look at your business so they know how much is involved in what you do and prove your worth in the process.

In a nutshell, blogs are no longer a website’s fancy accessory. Having a blog is not a luxury, but a pure necessity. From driving traffic to building brand awareness and from a marketing and SEO strategy to a way of getting feedback from your customers, blogs are important tools you can use to boost your online visibility.

Ready to create your business blog? Great! Here are some tips to get you started!

1. Set a blogging schedule for yourself so that your site regularly has new and updated content.
2. Include attractive images in your blog posts.
3. Do keyword research to discover popular phrases to include in your blog.
4. Utilize internal links where you insert links into your blog post that lead to other pages on your website.
5. Always check your blog posts for spelling and grammar before publishing.
6. Add social media share buttons on your blog so that your readers can easily share your posts.
7. Don’t forget to link to your blog and recent posts on your business’s social media channels.
8. Include a call to action in your blog posts. These can include sharing on social media, commenting, and subscribing to your website.

Most leading website builders offer simple, flexible blogging tools as standard. Find out which one is right for you by browsing our Top 5 Blog Builders ranking.

This article was originally published on December 1, 2015. Its content has since been updated.