Many small business owners have a marketing department of one: you.
For small businesses with one-person marketing departments, a business blog can be your new best friend. Why? A blog on your website regular and ongoing attention to the products or services you offer, which is critical to helping prospects and customers find you on the web.
When done right, blogging – a.k.a. “content marketing” – will grow your business in ways you could never have imagined, increasing leads, search visibility and sales.
Here are the 6 great reasons to start your small business blog:
1. Boost Traffic to Your Website
Every business needs new customers to fuel growth and profitability. And getting them to find you on the web is usually an expensive proposition. You may have even tried your hand at Google, Bing, Facebook or Yelp Ads only to discover that the learning curve isn’t cheap.
Small businesses have small budgets and for them to thrive, they have to come up with creative ways of attracting traffic. That’s where your small business blog comes in.
Think of every new blog article – or “post” – as a new page out there on the web just waiting to be discovered by prospects. The more blog posts you generate, then greater the chances your website will rise to the top of Google’s search results pages.
2. Convert Traffic into Leads
Every effective blog has an underlying strategy. Typically it’s to convert a site visitor – or lead – into a new customer. This is called “lead conversion”. Since every blog post becomes a new page on the world wide web, web surfers who visit your blog have the potential to be your new customers. That’s why every blog page should have a form – or “call-to-action” – off to the side or at the bottom asking for the blog visitor’s email address. This becomes a valuable list of leads for you to nurture through email marketing.
3. Build Authority
A really good small business blog does more than dish out helpful information to customers and prospects – it positions you as an industry leader.
Blog posts that are relevant and informative to your target customers also establish you as a reputable authority in your industry. It’s a funny thing, but lots of the time small business owners devalue their industry knowledge. Don’t be fooled into thinking that simply because it’s second nature for you doesn’t mean it’s not important – it’s precisely this type of knowledge that makes customers perceive you as a “subject matter expert.”
4. Boost Customer Engagement
By it’s very nature, a blog is a great way to strengthen your relationship with your new and existing customers. It facilitates engagement by sharing relevant information and thereby building trust and confidence in your products or services. Blogs make it easy to start a two-way conversation via the comments section at the bottom of each post.
5. Increase Your Audience
Content sharing is one of the top reasons to start a small business blog. When one of your customers shares a post, it boost your company’s reputation and your website’s authority in the eyes of Google. Over time, blog shares build social trust and expand your audience in an authentic way, much like word of mouth.
6. Drive Long-Term Results
The long-range value of your small business blog is that over time, the larger your “digital footprint” becomes. This means the more posts you have, the more links and shares your site will have. This means that your website – and small business – becomes more visible to Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter and the like. For months and even years to come, the effort you put into your blog will continue to generate traffic and new leads.
So, in case you haven’t tried it yet for your small business, start a blog. It’s a sure-fire way to build traffic for your website, boost engagement with your customers and generate new leads for your small business.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robbie Moore is the founder of Rushminute, a digital marketing agency in Lincoln, Nebraska. With 20+ years of experience in digital marketing, Robbie has worked with dozens of companies and organizations, large and small, around the globe. He also writes extensively about design, development, and business in general.
