5 reasons why every small business should have a blog

Jun 29, 2015

The first thing to remember is that a blog doesn’t have to be a blog! It can be a news section, press area, resource department or maybe even just a blog. A blog is a simple thing, a chronological list of articles and stories that sits slightly apart from your main website even though its a big part of it. If you’re not sure whether to start a blog for your company then read on and hopefully I can persuade you otherwise.

1. Its great for your SEO

UP!The search engines love content and very descriptive text. Your product and services pages are not always the best place to put 1000 words! This is where your blog can come into its own. Use your blog to go in-depth into what you do and how you do it. Feature ‘Case Studies’ and ‘How To’s’ and try and write very descriptively. Answer all the questions that your customers ask you as these questions will also be asked online and with good content you’ll be able to hit some of these search queries.

2. You can say more about your products and services

There’s a lot more to your products than you think and a blog is a great place to talk all about specifications, manufacturing processes and the benefits of what you sell. Set up data tables, have demonstration videos available to watch and link to brochures and downloadable content. Just like point one you can use your blog to say a lot more about what you sell.

3. Develop relationships with your customers

You may want to use your blog to form better relationships with your customers, post your latest news, create a magazine and maybe even go off topic a little. Online retailers can use a blog to post magazine style articles around what they sell and corporates can post their latest news and press releases. This is a great way to form better relationships with your customers and hopefully get them to think of you when they need what you sell. Connect your blog up with your social media accounts so what you post goes out to your customer base on social media as well as the website.

4. Become an industry leader

profleTurn yourself or your company into leaders of your industry by posting your opinions, conducting research and generally saying what you think about your subject matter. Share what you post on social media and you’ll soon be looked upon for quotes and interviews. It can happen quickly. The key is to offer real value, original content and research.

5. It shows that you’re active and still alive!

I sometimes nip over to company blogs and check the date of the latest post just to make sure they are still active. If the last post is from over a year ago then it tends to put me off a little. If you have a blog then you need to keep it updated. If you don’t have the time then remove it.

Conclusion

Hopefully this has persuaded you to set up a blog for your business. It doesn’t need to take a lot of time and you don’t have to post every day or week. Quality and being regular with your posts is more important than quantity. With a great blog you’ll hopefully connect better with your customers, become a leader and get better results in the search engines. Its all win, win!