11 Reasons Your Business Needs a Blog
With social marketing vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube all the rage, blogging has become somewhat of a forgotten stepchild. But this doesn’t make sense.
Blogging can be one of the most effective marketing tools for the small business owner. It’s easy to start, it’s easy to maintain and it’s easy to leverage in enhancing your marketing mix.
To that end, here are 11 reasons why your business needs a blog:
1. Engage Continuously with Prospective Customers
Blogging presents a unique opportunity to engage in dialog with your prospective customers on a continual basis. And anytime a new prospect visits your blog, you immediately leverage the vast arsenal of posts, comments and writings in helping to sell your products or services.
2. Dig Deeper
The pace of business is fast. Blogging is an opportunity to dig into a particular subject a little deeper without slowing down. You can write an extended blog post, or you can break up your thoughts into a dozen posts related to a particular topic. Or you can dissect someone else’s blog post, article or book.
3. Supplement Your Other Marketing
Support your other marketing investments by leveraging your blog for promotion, marketing and feedback.
4. Listen & Learn
Read all the blog comments and email you receive, and read the comments on other blogs about your writings. Learn what the community is thinking.
5. Test Ideas
Innovation is the engine that drives business growth. A blog is an excellent platform to test thoughts and ideas in a relatively risk-free environment.
6. Build Authority
Prove your expertise to new prospective customers with your knowledge and insights.
7. Demonstrate Your Uniqueness
Too often marketing materials such as corporate brochures are dreadfully boring. Blogging empowers you to inject a little personality into your marketing. Let them see the real you, and your uniqueness could be the difference in winning you the business.
8. Become a Better Writer
This is not talked about much, but it is a true benefit of blogging. The more you write, the better you get. Keep writing your blog, and watch your writing skills improve, helping all of your marketing and sales efforts.
9. Gain Traffic
Blogs can rank high in the search engines, helping you to gain more qualified traffic to your website.
10. Get Subscribers
Many readers who like what you write will subscribe to your blog, providing you with a direct, ongoing communications channel with your target audience.
11. Uncover New Opportunities
The more you blog, the more opportunities will present themselves to you. For example, I was contacted by a PR firm earlier this year to create a series of blog posts for the launch of a new website. This was certainly not why I maintained a blog for my business, but it was a nice surprise that added incremental revenue and a new relationship with an additional PR firm.
These are just a few of the reasons you should take the plunge into the world of business blogging to strengthen your online marketing mix. If you need additional help or guidance, let me know below or at www.WebsiteMarketingNOW.com. Thanks!
June 24th, 2009 at 6:18 am
[...] 11 Reasons Your Business Needs a Blog (If your business does not yet have a blog, read this!) [...]
June 24th, 2009 at 8:36 am
11 Reasons Your Business Needs a Blog…
Blogging can be one of the most effective marketing tools for the small business owner. It’s easy to start, it’s easy to maintain and it’s easy to leverage in enhancing your marketing mix. To that end, here are 11 reasons why your business needs …
June 24th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
You are right! I have two blogs for my company - Home Cooking Star - one for the company to keep everyone up to date and I have a contestant’s blog so that people that come to vote or view recipes can interact and share with each other. People LOVE IT! I’ve had over 40,000 pageviews of my blog in 3 weeks since I opened up voting to the contestant’s fans - wow! Lots of stickiness too - viewers stay over 5 minutes each and look at 5-6 pages each! So, I love blogs. My company blog gets 100-200 views a day, every day! Now how many people can say that? So, not only do I believe in them but if you want me to design and launch one for you that will drive that kind of traffic - I will! contact me: alex@homecookingstar.com
June 27th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Good post. Another rarely talked about reason for blogging, which is related to becoming a better writer and testing ideas: it helps to organize and crystallize your own thinking. If you are what you think, being clear in your thinking is a huge benefit. Most of the reasons you hear for blogging (and why you ought to) have to do with the effect it has on “your market,” but the personal effects, and how they benefit your business, is pretty important.
June 30th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Yes i think so,i am a seller too,i have a online store,if you have a blogs will let more people know your business and more people visit your website.
June 30th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Good points..
June 30th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Can check my website?
June 30th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Thoughtful article, Tom, thank you. I like the 3 Ts of blogging myself… Talk, Testing and Traffic. Keep up the great work all.
June 30th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Great ideas! A blog can also enhance the search engine placement of your website if you make it a part of your site. Every time you add a post, you have an opportunity to optimize the post’s content for one of your key search phrases, which will over time boost your site’s search engine performance and bring you more traffic.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Thanks for sharing this information on blogging. I think you share some excellent reasons for creating a blog.
My particular interest is in helping baby boomer entrepreneurs. There are people who have decided to establish retirement businesses for various reasons.
The overwhelming majority of them have worked for someone prior to retirement. In many cases, they have lots of expertise but have been invisible to people who could benefit from what they have to offer. I think we boomers can benefit from every single reason you have sited.
I particularly think that we can benefit from listening and learning, testing out ideas, and establishing authority. Those are on the early end of the market research process for establishing a business.
Everyone knows that the business failure rate is high. Few people realize that 530,000 new businesses are started in the US each and every month. Most fail because the basic business idea is not well formed. Your suggestions can go a long way toward improving the odds of success.
Thanks for another excellent contribution to people who want to start businesses.
Shallie Bey
Smarter Small Business Blog
June 30th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Great advice as we just started a BLOG for our adhesive tape company. There are endless application issues that come up everyday and waiting for salespeople to channel back and forth to a chemist or R&D guy cant create timing and accuracy issues. Why not speak directly with the chemist on the BLOG and let the mases who are encountering the same issue realize that YOU are the only solution in town!
Matt
July 1st, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Nice post. I definitely think creating authority and becoming a resource are two of the most important aspects of creating a blog, but I think overall people want to connect with interesting people. Readers will find an article, skim a blog, and decide whether or not to come back to it ever again in just a few seconds.
Creating unique, helpful content is king when hoping to attract loyal readers.
For more on starting a blog, check out the ABCs of Starting a Blog for Your Business: http://bit.ly/YJuxZ
July 1st, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Thank you for your article. As always, I learn something new from the StartupNation community.
To Your Success!
Stacie Walker
July 1st, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Thanks for the encouragement. Blogging can seem so time consuming, but the more you do it, the easier it is to do quickly! And, it’s a great way to direct people to your website from Twitter and Facebook.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:22 am
[...] needs a blog or if it is just a waste of their time. Below are some reasons stated recently on Startup Nation that pinpoint why you should have a blog for your business [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Great post Tom! Thanks for sharing!!
To add another good reason to have a blog…You can use it as a hub for your social networking so you can drive more qualified traffic back to your Website and grow your list.
In other words, you can put a post on your blog, then Tweet about it on Twitter along with a link back. Ditto for your Facebook page or anything else on the Web.
So it gives you something interesting to say and somewhere interesting to send people. Even better if you have a juicy free offer on your blog and/or Website to capture people’s emails and add them to your list so you can keep sending them helpful and interesting content.
Best,
Stacy
Stacy Karacostas
Practical Marketing Expert
July 7th, 2009 at 3:36 am
Thanks everyone for your feedback and additional thoughts on business blogging. Great stuff!
Shallie - I completely agree with you. I believe a blog can be a useful resource for testing out new business ideas. It’s a low-cost, low-risk way to test various entrepreneurial options prior to investing more heavily in a venture.
Stacy - I completely agree with you as well. Marketing initiatives should not stand in silos. Rather, the more we integrate our efforts across marketing vehicles (blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, forums, our own website, etc.), the greater the impact.
April 27th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Every business needs a blog, a website, facebook account, and a twitter. And they need to keep them updated.
June 24th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Love the content of this blog and well written, but I’m still having questions how to attract traffic to the blog. People tell me that they read the blog, but I’d love suggestions how to get people to leave comments.