There are a variety of reasons for a company to have a blog, ranging from the simple to the technical. The bottom line is that if you don’t have one, you’re definitely behind the times.
Perhaps you feel like a blog wouldn’t work for your business, or you have concerns about how you’d create the content. Well, all you need to do is Google your industry and we’re confident that you’ll find a blog about it. And while content creation for a blog takes a strategic approach, there’s no reason to feel like it’s an impossible task. Really, you can blog about anything.
Today having a blog isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. Here are a 6 compelling reasons why your company needs a blog if you don’t have one already.
While we wouldn’t advise you to jump off a bridge if your competitors did, this is one occasion where mimicry will serve you well. But this isn’t imitation simply for the sake of the sincerest form of flattery. This is imitation because your potential and existing customers will expect you to have a blog.
For many companies, their blog becomes a valuable resource for their customers, a place where questions, news, and innovations can be discussed. Think of it like an active forum, one where you’re supplying the content and controlling the conversation. While your website content remains mostly static, your blog will be dynamic, and allow you to stay in front of your customers with timely content relevant to your industry.
Customers love transparency. In general, they hate marketing. While your blog technically serves as one of your inbound marketing channels, it doesn’t have the marketing sheen that other channels have. A blog is the place to discuss ideas and foster conversation. For many businesses, this is the place where they show the most personality.
Another advantage to your blog content is that it can be repurposed to work in different places, and in different ways. For example, a blog can bolster your social media efforts. If you’re creating value for your customers, this is information that can be shared across all of your social media channels. In fact, if that’s not a key piece of your social media content puzzle, it could be a signal that the content you’re currently sharing might be off the mark.
Can a blog become a referral source? Absolutely. Depending on your business, it could start a reader down a path that turns them into a lead. Like we always say, customers are looking for solutions. Ideally, your blog will discuss some of these solutions, ones that are unique to your industry. By creating valuable content—and monitoring the comments section—a lead might get the nudge it needs to become a sales-qualified lead.
This is one of the more technical reasons, but the more you blog, the more credible you become to Google. This is important for customers who may not know who you are, but are looking for the services or products you provide. Even with the changes brought about by the new hummingbird algorithm, this isn’t an appeal for quantity over quality. Though a future without keyword data is on the horizon, consistently blogging will endear you to Google, and ultimately means it will help your website show up in more organic online searches.
As you can see, there are a variety of ways that a blog can be beneficial for your business. We’d tell you to join the blog bandwagon, but really, today it’s more like a locomotive. A bandwagon insinuates a fad, a trend, or a flash in the pan. Blogs? They’re here to stay. And the longer you’re without one, the more your customers will wonder why.
What are your reasons for not starting a blog? Do you just not know where to start?