Many business owners recognise the importance of having an online presence, but may not necessarily see the value in investing time, money and energy into having their own business blog.
If you’re also not yet sold on the idea, here are five reasons why you should seriously consider blogging for your business:
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Show the personality behind your business
Because your customers buy into the 1% that makes your business different rather than the 99% that makes you the same as every other competitor, a blog can give you the chance to showcase your uniqueness in the way you write and the topics you choose to write about. By writing blog pieces that are related to what your business and employees are most passionate about, you can ‘humanise’ your brand, making it more relatable and ultimately more likeable too.
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Connect with your customers
Your blog can add great value to the lives of your customers, and it can do so by addressing topical issues or sharing solutions to the problems they are faced with. Not only will it give you the opportunity to engage in discussions with your current customers, but it can also serve as a source for reaching and forming new relationships with potential prospects. The transparency and authority you show on certain subjects is synonymous with fostering trust and credibility in the eyes of your customers.
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Boost your search engine optimisation
Uploading blogs on a regular basis will help keep your website evergreen and score some all-important points when it comes to your search engine ranking, as search engines like Google favour websites whose content is fresh and relevant over websites whose content is static and unchanging. You can also fill your blog articles with strategic keywords and phrases which your target market uses when searching online, helping your business to be found by the right people at the right time.
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Enjoy increased exposure
Because each new article equals a new page on your website, blogs can increase your website’s number of indexed pages and chances of showing up in search engine results. Blog articles can also be shared far and wide across the world wide web by way of RSS feeds and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest to name a few. The ease with which a blog article can be shared by others will give you a relatively simple and inexpensive way to expose your business to people who may not know about you yet.
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Support your social media initiatives
If your business is active on social media, blog articles can serve as an important part of your content strategy by giving you more relevant and interesting content to share and talk about with your followers; and they’re also a great way to encourage your followers to visit your website.
With all this being said, as a business owner with many commitments and countless items on your to-do list, you may find yourself being short of the time it takes to set up and maintain a business blog.
This is where digital marketing companies can assist you. Not only do they offer the service of setting up your blog, but they can also provide a well-thought-out content strategy and generate quality blog posts on your behalf.
Danielle Brill is digital marketing manager at Online Innovations, a Port Elizabeth based company that specialises in the design, development, e-business, e-commerce, search engine optimisation (SEO), internet marketing, hosting and social media.
