Blogs can take time and money,
but the effort may be worth the increase in leads and customer engagement.
As
a busy small-business owner, you may wonder if it's worth the time and
effort to maintain a blog on your website.
If
you want to increase the visibility and credibility of your company to
consumers, you might consider regularly posting quality content on
your website that will be interesting and useful to them. A blog is where this
content may be housed, whether or not you call this section of your website a
blog. On many sites, the “blog” has a different label, such as News, Press or
Articles.
Here
are six reasons why your small business website should consider a blog.
1. Drive traffic to your website.
In
addition to the ROI a website with a blog may generate, websites with
blogs may be able to get more traffic than websites without blogs. How do
blogs drive all this additional traffic?
Good
SEO results are largely driven by new content and relevant keywords, which
means fresh content and a place to house it. Blogs provide you with the
platform to do just that. Adding fresh content to your website may help it
place higher in search engine results than other websites, which could make it
more likely to get clicked.
„Adding
a blog to your small-business website may just make sense. With minimal expense
and effort, you can boost search engine rankings, build credibility, increase
website traffic and foster relationships with customers.”
2. Convert traffic into leads.
Now
that your website is getting more traffic, you have the opportunity to convert
that traffic into leads. Each new piece of content may give you the opportunity
to generate leads, and the way to do that may be by adding a call-to-action to
each blog post. Try offering something that consumers will give up their
contact information for, such as a free e-book, free webinar, free consultation
or quote. Once you have their contact information, your sales team can follow
up with those leads.
3. Become an authority.
The
best small-business blogs can answer potential customers' common questions and
discuss industry trends. If potential customers view your blog as one that can
provide helpful information about relevant topics, they may be more likely to
do business with you than with your competitors. Interesting and unique content
can also give you the opportunity to drive traffic to your website through
inbound links.
4. Build relationships with potential customers.
The
comments section on your blog may be a place on your website where you can have
a two-way discussion with consumers. Encouraging engagement on your blog might
be as simple as asking questions at the end of a post to get the conversation
going, waiting for readers to leave comments and then interacting with those
readers. By responding to your readers’ comments, you have the opportunity to
build trust and gain insight into what your customers are looking for.
5. Boost your social media efforts.
Blog
content can be perfect for sharing on social media. When you create original
content that's valuable, interesting and entertaining to your target
demographic, you may be more likely to get social shares. An added benefit: Unlike
posting curated content on your social channels, content that's shared from
your blog will point directly back to your website.
You
can also add social sharing buttons to your blog so visitors can easily
share your content—potentially turning your readers into your own grassroots
marketing team.
6. Drive long-term results.
So
you write a post on your blog, promote it on your social channels and hopefully
get some shares. After that initial flurry of activity, the traffic driven by
that post will slow to a trickle. And that’s the end of that, right?
Not
by a long shot. That page is now ranked in search engines. Just like the
rest of the static pages on your website, this blog may continue to be visited
as long as it's on the web. In fact, a website with a substantial amount
of blog content can continue to boost total traffic from old blog posts,
providing the potential of a pretty substantial return on the few hours
you invested in writing a post
From
a practical standpoint, adding a blog to your small-business website may just
make sense. With minimal expense and effort, you can help to boost search
engine rankings, build credibility, increase website traffic and foster
relationships with customers. This, in turn, may make your readers more likely
to hire you or purchase products from your company, in addition to recommending
your business to others.
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