During the last decade, blogging has become more than just keeping an online journal for friends and family to enjoy. Now, all reputable brands run blogs to reach strategic business goals. You may wonder what the benefits of blogging are in a world full of written content. After all, designing and maintaining a blog section on a business website is time-consuming. You need to have plenty of blog post ideas, content writing skills, an eye for visuals, basic SEO knowledge, a schedule, and so on. If running a blog as a new business seems daunting, we are here to tell you why blogging is essential and why the benefits surpass the disadvantages and annoyances.
Why Blogging Is Important for Small Businesses
If you wonder what blogging is and why you stumble upon so many business blogs when navigating the Internet, the answer is simple. Blogging is one of the most powerful content marketing strategies used by small and large organizations alike. It increases brand awareness and exposure, attracts new site visitors, encourages brand loyalty, and so on.
Regardless of the industry you are in, creating a blog is crucial for your business. According to recent statistics, 90% of organizations use content (blogging) in their marketing strategies since 68% of people read about brands that interest them, and 80% of people love to learn more about a business through customized content.
As you can see, you can harness the power of blogging to stay ahead of the competition, promote products, and build customer retention and loyalty. So let’s dive deeper into the topic and analyze the top 5 benefits of blogging together!
Top 5 Advantages of Blogging for Businesses
Any discussion regarding blogging benefits always starts with building an online presence and nurturing a trustworthy relationship. But it goes beyond this, and we’re here to reveal everything you need to know about business blogging benefits!
1. Blogging Educates and Empowers Your Audience
The Ucraft blog offers entrepreneurs and companies actionable content to help them build professional business websites and learn about a wide variety of topics (from marketing tips to web design). We offer all our readers the tools they need to become competitive in their industries.
Another example of the educational power of business blogging comes from one of our clients – Plume Illustrations. Marine Feuilleaubois offers art courses and blogs about painting techniques, best drawing materials, and so on. The website also hosts a boutique where art lovers and fans can purchase illustrations, posters, and paintings.
In short, when you are blogging for business, you are creating content that teaches your readers something new. However, you will also learn plenty of things during your research on the topic. This way, in time, you will become an authority in your field. Teaching and learning through blogging naturally leads to conversions.
2. Blogging Increases Visibility in Search Engines
We will not offer you a crash course in SEO right now, but we will say this: search engines love well-optimized, new, and quality content.
Creating regular blog posts for your business website offers search engines more pages to index, thus increasing your website’s visibility in search results. Posting relevant, actionable, and trustworthy content on your blog increases organic traffic and boosts sales. It is challenging to master the art of content writing and SEO overnight, but you can do it if you dedicate enough time to learning and research.
Remember to tailor all your blog posts so your users find them relevant and engaging, and be mindful about using well-researched keywords to drive traffic to your website.
Speaking of SEO, keep in mind that companies who run quality blogs get over 90% more backlinks than companies that don’t blog.
3. Blogging Converts Traffic into Leads
Any blog post you write is a new indexed page. If you did your SEO and marketing homework right, your blog will probably be getting lots of traffic. One of the significant benefits of blogging is that you can convert the people who are curious about your business into leads. Of course, not all your website visitors will turn into loyal customers, and that is OK. It is hard to come by 100% conversion rates in any industry.
You can boost your lead generation efforts to create and customize lead-generating calls to action for every blog post you publish. If things are a bit unclear to you at this point, this is how the traffic-to-leads process unfolds:
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Visitors come to your blog to read your fresh content;
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They see the call to action – usually, the CTA prompts them to engage with your products, services, or brand even more. You can encourage them to buy a product, subscribe to your newsletter, try the demo version of a product/service, download an eBook for free, etc.
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Visitors who click on your CTA button arrive at a landing page you built for a specific purpose. The landing page can be a product to add to a shopping cart, a form to fill, a file to download, etc.
If you convince people to engage with what you have to offer, they will take action and thus convert into leads.
Your job then is to convert leads into customers, loyal followers, and genuinely enthusiastic brand ambassadors.
4. Blogging Establishes Your Brand as an Industry Leader
As we mentioned above, the more research you conduct to write in-depth, high-quality articles, the more you learn about your niche and connected areas. Consequently, the more content you offer on specific topics, the better you can establish yourself as an industry leader.
Authority and trust are your key goals, whether you run an online store selling office products, a plumbing service, or anything in between. As long as you provide expert information construed as valuable by your audiences, you will always stay ahead of your competition.
5. Blogging Creates an Active Community
We have mentioned brand awareness and brand loyalty throughout this article, but now it is time to get into some specifics.
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Your blog posts do not “live” in a void. You create them with the intent to inform and engage your audience and turn them into leads, customers, and brand loyalists.
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One of the biggest benefits of blogging is that it represents one of the easiest and most affordable means of keeping people close.
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By blogging about important things for your audience, you can attract even more people to build a community. Moreover, by running user-generated content marketing campaigns, you will have a community to back you up. They will also engage in selling your products/services without burning holes in your marketing budget.
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Blogging goes hand in hand with social media. The more engaging content pieces you create, the bigger their chances of becoming viral on social media. Of course, not everything has social media viral potential, but you should keep it in mind whenever you create articles for your blog. Viral traffic correlates with exponential market growth.
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Your blog content reveals plenty about your business: values, mission, goals, story, etc. If you want to engage in successful business storytelling, your blog is your ultimate tool to achieve this purpose.
Remember that brand engagement via blogging is just one of the many digital marketing strategies you have at hand to promote your brand and turn fans into brand emissaries. Always pick the right topics for your next content piece.
Benefits of Blogging: FAQs and Some More Tips
Before we leave you to create your next awesome and shareable blog post, let’s summarize what we learned today by answering some of the most frequently asked questions regarding the advantages of blogging for small businesses.
1. What are the advantages of blogging for entrepreneurs?
If you just built a website (e.g., to sell products or services), creating a business blog helps you personally:
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You establish yourself as an expert in a particular field since you will be gaining more knowledge during the research process;
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Entrepreneurs who write blog posts themselves improve their writing skills and become proficient in SEO-friendly content writing;
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Business blogs receive immediate feedback. You will know how good a writer and business owner you are by the reactions and comments you get on your blog posts.
These are just a few benefits of blogging you will enjoy on a personal level. Let’s return to the advantages of blogging for your business!
2. Why is a blog important for any business, no matter the industry/niche?
As we said above, the benefits of blogging for business include web exposure, market growth, alignment to the latest marketing trends, better traffic, engagement, and sales. But let’s explore other advantages that are less straightforward.
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You engage in natural, worthy networking. Your blog posts attract more than backlinks. Other experts in your industry might want to interview you, share your articles, invite you to their podcasts, encourage a business collaboration, and more.
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Your blog is the best way to understand your audience and tailor content so you can expand your reach. A quick look into your website analytics shows you who your readers are, where they are from, and how you can offer them what they need.
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Blogging is the first step to creating a solid brand personality. If you have a team of content creators, feature them with their author bios and pictures. Try to establish a specific “tone of voice” for your posts, inject genuine emotion into your content, and use striking visuals to promote your brand.
3. How often should you blog for your business?
The more content you publish on your blog, the more indexing and traffic you will receive. But is there a magic number when it comes to the posting frequency? It seems so! According to recent reports, you should publish 11+ blog posts a month, with an average frequency of 2-4 new articles per week.
However, before you start actively writing, make sure that your blog post frequency aligns with your content marketing goals. Instead of writing dozens of superficial, short, and poor quality articles a month, you should write a lengthy, well-researched, relevant article once a week. Users and search engines will appreciate you more for this.
4. How long should your blog posts be?
To answer this question, we will offer you a direct quote from a 2021 report on blogging for business:
Google, for instance, has a way of rewarding lengthy blogs with more views. The average length of a blog post that ranks well on Google contains over 1,000 words and creates far more leads than blogs with less content.
Specialists agree that the most successful blog articles have around 1,500-1,600 words. They usually take about 7-8 minutes to read. Reaching a specific word count, however, is insufficient to ensure traffic, shares, and engagement. The same report shows that using images in your blog posts gets you over 90% more views. The design of a blog post is just as important as its content.
5. How do you build a blog for your business?
From a technical point of view, you can choose to add a blog section from the website builder you use to build and maintain your website. With Ucraft, you can either select a website template already featuring a blog section or upgrade your existing website to feature this section.
As far as content goes, focus on the following key points:
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Know your audience and create blog posts that match your users’ intents;
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Write valuable, actionable, engaging, and share-worthy articles;
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Don’t forget about CTAs;
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Always keep SEO in mind and tailor your titles, meta descriptions, images, links, etc.;
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Draft an editorial plan and stick to it.
Final Thoughts
We hope you found this article as educational, useful, and actionable as we intended it to be. When it comes to the benefits of blogging, we would appreciate your input as well! Do you run a blog for your business? How does it help you with traffic, conversions, or sales? What other blogging benefits did you reap for your brand? What business blogs do you follow, and what did you learn from how other companies approach blogging? Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts on our social media!
Don’t have a blog for your business yet? Get started now!