In today’s digital age, getting your business to stand out among a seemingly never-ending pool of competitors is not an easy task. After all, those competitors are doing all that is within their power to ensure that their businesses have a more prominent digital profile than yours. With this in
mind, trying to position your company in such a way as to drive more traffic to your website — and maybe even diverting it away from your competitors’ sites — is a continual process.
Luckily for business owners seeking to fortify their online presence, there are a few easy tricks that can be leveraged to accomplish that goal in earnest. One such trick is establishing and maintaining a regularly updated blog.
Why Your Business Needs to Blog
For those decision makers who are intent on increasing sales, gaining more exposure and boosting brand awareness, blogging is important for your business website, whether you sell Etsy graphics or s-type load cells. No matter what your business’s specialty is, it’s virtually guaranteed that there will be companies doing almost exactly the same thing you are doing. And, financially speaking, those competitors are trying to get as big of a slice as possible from the same pie you’re trying to eat.
With that in mind, you’ve got to do all that is within your power to differentiate yourself from your competitors. That’s where blogging comes into play. By launching and maintaining a blog, your company will benefit from:
Increased traffic: Blogging organically increases your company’s placement in search engine results, which are determined by complex algorithms. Generally speaking, search engine spiders like content that is relevant, has the name of the author attached to it and is current. The more often you blog, the more often your company’s blog will turn up in search results. And the numbers support that claim, with businesses maintaining blogs saying that they’ve seen their web traffic increase 55 percent thanks to that particular platform.
New customers: With increased traffic comes new eyeballs to the content you’ve created and the products you’re selling. With that in mind, it’s very likely that some of those new visitors will be converted into customers at some point down the line. And research supports that claim, with 57 percent of businesses indicating that they’ve grown their customer base thanks to their blog.
Thought leadership: If you’re in the market for buying a car, for example, it’s likely that you’d rather buy it from someone who is knowledgeable than someone who knows nothing about automobiles. That concept can be applied over a variety of products and industries. Blogging about industry-specific news, developments and ideas proves to your customers that you have your fingers on the pulse of what’s happening. In turn, this helps you become a thought leader in your respective space.
A fortified business: When you hear the word “blog,” you might not think much of it. But the fact of the matter is that in actuality, well-crafted and pertinent blog posts become assets
to your company. With those assets simply living on your website, traffic will be directed in that direction continually over the years. Put another way, spending 20 minutes today crafting a clever and informative blog post could pay dividends for quite some time. In addition to landing a new customer tomorrow, you could also land a new customer four years from now through the same post. What’s more, according to HubSpot, 70 percent of the traffic that that company receives on a monthly basis is due to posts that were published in previous months.
Starting Your Blog
Are you ready to start writing? It’s important to remember that while starting your own blog is great, you’ve got to maintain it as well. If you’ve crafted the perfect blog post and subsequently welcome a host of new visitors to your website, it’s almost guaranteed that some of those visitors will be curious to read additional content that they
expect you to produce. In other words, once you’ve attracted them to your website, it’s important that you give them a reason to keep coming back.
Many businesses that launch blogs don’t spend the time necessary to maintain them and likely lose customers along the way because of it. Have you ever visited a company’s website and clicked on its blog only to find out that it hasn’t been updated in a few years? What does that make you think about that particular company?
In order to differentiate yourself from your competitors — something which is essential for businesses wishing to navigate today’s difficult economic climate — you’ve got to provide something that other businesses simply do not. By creating and dispersing informative, entertaining and unique blog posts on your website, you’re able to attract the attention of potential new customers while proving to your existing customers that they’re making the right decision to support your business.
So what are you waiting for? Better get blogging!
Need help setting it up, shoot us an email! We can surely help!