Embrace Your Inner Blogger

Countless times in a day people will tell me they are terrible writers or they don’t know how to write. Some even describe it as a painful experience. While I can’t relate to the angst that a writing assignment or task may bring people, I can relate to having to do things you don’t want to do for the good of the cause…which in the case of this particular column, is your business. I don’t want to bring up what you might deem a bad word but I’m going to talk to you today about blogging. Or should I say Blogging! It’s all in the attitude, right?

Research has shown that there are several benefits to adding a blog to your business website. Blogs allow for more reader engagement because they are updated regularly, they are a great search engine optimization (SEO) tool, they allow you to keep your customers and prospects up to date on your business or industry and that in turn allows you to build trust and rapport with those visiting your site. Basically speaking, having a blog for your business can be a great marketing tactic that will get your business more visibility online…where let’s face it, a lot of people aka your prospects, spend a lot of their time. Here’s a short list of why, perhaps, you should start a business blog.

1) It helps drive traffic to your website.

How, you ask? You probably don’t have a lot of pages on your website, especially ones that need updating. (I mean really, how often can you really update your About Us page?) Writing a weekly or even monthly blog will give folks a reason to regularly visit your website. Every time you write a blog post, it’s one more indexed page on your site, which is one more opportunity for you to show up in search engines.

2) Blogging can also help you give your social media presence a boost.

Every time you write a blog post, you’re creating content that people can share on social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest – which may help you reach a new audience that may not know you yet. By having blog content to share regularly on social media sites, the reach possibilities are vast.

So, the first benefits of blogging? It helps drive new traffic to your website and works closely with search engines and social media.

3) If done correctly, it may help turn that web site and social media traffic into leads.

Now that you have traffic coming to your website through your blog, you have an opportunity to convert that traffic into leads. To do this, you need a call to action in every blog post. These calls-to-action can be “click here for a giveaway” of some sort. As a trade off for the giveaway, they would provide some basic contact info.

4) And last, but certainly not least, regularly blogging helps you establish authority.

The best business blogs I have found and then actually read, answer common questions prospects or current customers may have. If you’re consistently creating content that’s helpful for your target customer, it’ll help establish you as an authority in their eyes. It can be quite impactful to write an educational blog post that clears things up for a confused client. Prospects that read your blog posts will typically find themselves being more educated on your place in the market, your industry, and what you have to offer. It empowers them and they will give you the credit!

So start with a topic that interests you in your industry that is also one you think others may be wondering about. Research it and just let the words spill out as if you were having a conversation with a potential client.

Blogging! Go have fun with it.