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Why Blogging Is Crucial for Your Business: 7 Reasons You Should Be Blogging Right Now

By David Jenkins, Digital Marketing Coordinator at Alpha Dog Advertising

When it comes to raising awareness of your business and increasing traffic on your website, blogging is one of the most effective tools you can use. A successful blog can be a key acquisition channel to attract new customers, as well as a platform to engage with existing ones — regardless of your industry. Whether you’re answering a frequently asked question or addressing the latest industry news, blogging is something you just can’t ignore.

Here are seven reasons you should be blogging.

  1. 1. Educate Potential Customers

    When it comes to searching for products and services, potential buyers will go about finding what they want via two means of inquiry: transaction-oriented searches and informative-oriented searches.

    A transaction-oriented search is one that represents clear buyer intent, something like “accounting firms near me.”

    An informative-oriented search is one that indicates a desire to learn, something like “what to look for in an accounting firm.”

    Both come from people looking for the same thing (eventually), but the two differ in their immediate intent.

    It’s important to understand that this example goes far beyond accounting firms. No matter what business you’re in, a significant portion of your target audience is looking to do research before they buy, and they’re using the internet to do so. But what information will they read, and who is providing it?

    This is where blogging comes in. As a business owner, you can tap into your customer’s desire to learn by writing blogs (or hiring someone to do so) that address their key concerns and questions. The person doing an informative-oriented search still wants to buy; they just want to learn first. Why not bridge the gap and provide them with the information they’re looking for yourself? When they’re ready to buy, they’re likely to trust the business that gave them the answers they were looking for.

  1. 2. Soft Sell Your Products & Services

    People don’t like to be sold to. They want to browse, do research, and come to their own conclusions. With that being the case, business owners are wise to selectively promote their products while addressing key customer questions. Blogging provides the perfect opportunity to humbly showcase your products and services without directly selling them.

    For example, if a law firm writes a blog about how to avoid copyright infringement, they may provide a handful of insights on the matter, but they may also state something like “While there are things you can do, in many cases it’s wise to speak to an experienced attorney like the ones found at [insert law firm name], because copyright law is very complex.” With the potential lead already on their site, the odds are good that they’ll engage with the business.

  1. 3. Get Social Exposure

    By publishing quality content that provides considerable value, you increase the chances of it being shared. Whether your shared content is in email, on social media, or even featured on someone else’s site, the traffic that stems from it can prove to be some of the most valuable. The average person will naturally attach more value to something their friend or co-worker shared, because it came from someone they know and trust.

    In addition, when your company shares your post on a platform like LinkedIn, it will get even more exposure from both your followers and those connected to your employees when they interact with it.

  1. 4. Address News & Current Events

    Blogging allows you to directly address current events that pertain to your industry. In effect, blog posts are your company’s voice, and whenever something happens that could be of concern or interest to your target market, your blog is the ideal place to address it.

    Say a raw material vital to your business skyrockets in price. This could cause serious concern among your customer base. However, that price increase may not be as detrimental as it appears, so a blog post clarifying the situation could prove to be very valuable.

    Or, imagine a law pertaining to your industry is passed. This may change things a lot, or it may change things a little. Regardless, people want the details, especially from a credible source. Writing a blog post that addresses the situation positions your company as a thought leader in your industry.

  1. 5. Gain Backlinks

    Not quite as obvious to those unfamiliar with SEO, but still very important, blogging is a great way for your business to expand its backlink profile. A backlink is simply a link to your website on someone else’s website. An example would be if the New York Times writes a story about a new construction project in Lower Manhattan and mentions the builder by name in the article. If the mention of the builder’s name is clickable and links back to their site, that counts as a backlink.

    This is important because Google heavily weighs backlinks in their search algorithm — meaning, when they decide who to rank where for various searches, the number of backlinks each site has is taken into serious consideration. The logic is that backlinks serve as votes of confidence, and if a site has a multitude of others linking back to it, then there must be a reason for that.

    And while this has become less the case over the years as Google’s algorithm has changed, backlinks still stand out as a significant piece of SEO currency and are certainly worth pursuing. As you publish blogs of considerable value, the odds of other people linking to them increase significantly.

  1. 6. Give Your Company a Voice

    While this has been implied already, it’s worth calling out on its own. Why? Blogging provides a space to set you apart from the crowd.

    The content on most business websites deals only with the most pertinent matters: products, services, and contact info. While that isn’t a problem, it doesn’t leave space to promote or discuss timely happenings and other such matters.

    A blog post, however, lets you share a side of your company that people would have never known otherwise. Is there a cause you support? Big company news? Blogging is an ideal tool to step outside the box of existing content on your site.

  1. 7. Obtain Invaluable Data

    A blog can provide data of immense value. With a tool like Google Analytics installed on your site, you can view a wide array of performance metrics that tell you a lot — not just about the blog, but about your target market and their interests. You can see not only which blogs get the most views, but how long people spend reading them, how many people found your site strictly via the blog post, and how many people leave your site after reading the blog versus continue to another page.

    You can also install a heatmap on your site. This tells you exactly where people spend the most time and where they’re clicking — helping you learn more about your target audience and what they value.

In Conclusion

Blogging is a tool that business owners can’t afford to neglect. With people turning to the internet for information, and countless other companies already using blog posts to drive traffic to their sites, it’s essential that you don’t overlook this vital tactic. The information monopoly once enjoyed by many professionals is slowly fading away. People can and will continue to get answers to their questions without engaging salespeople directly — which begs the question, when they go to look for them, will they get answers from you or your competitors?