7 Reasons Why a Business Blog is Valuable
I am a huge fan of blogging (obviously so, seeing as how I have been writing for this one for the last four years) for numerous reasons. Content marketing is one of the most critical components of any web marketing campaign because it can be leveraged across all mediums. A blog post isn’t limited to existing solely on that blog. It can be shared on social networking sites, submitted to social bookmarking sites, used to develop your company newsletter and more.
Still not convinced? Here are 7 reasons a company blog can be valuable:
1. Establish yourself as an industry authority
Customers want to purchase from/work with the best in the business. Routinely updating a company blog can help you build brand’s reputation as an industry expert and valuable resource.
2. Help educate your consumers
Having an educated target audience can make it much easier for you to promote your products/services. If potential customers have a firm understanding of your industry, it is easier to position your brand as the solution to their problem. You don’t have to explain as much general information in your messaging and can focus on more important topics.
3. Build your online brand presence
Individual blog posts can rank in the search engines like any page on your website. When optimized to include the most appropriate keywords, your blog can help your increase your brand presence in the SERP for the related long-tail keywords searches.
4. Humanize your brand
People like to do business with other people, not faceless corporations. When you attach an actual name to your blog (whether it be your CEO, VP of Marketing, etc), you are giving your company an actual persona. Having content written by a person and not “Company Name” means you can afford to throw a little style and personality into your posts.
5. Promote your products/services
A business blog should mainly be used to inform and educate, but a little self-promoting post every now and again is perfectly acceptable. Your business blog is the perfect place to announce new product launches or let your readers know about an upcoming tradeshow or conference you’ll be appearing at. Someone who reads your blog has already self-identified themselves as your target audience.
6. Respond to a crisis
When bad news breaks, companies don’t have the luxury of hiding out until it blows over or holding a press conference next week. The public expects a response and they expect it now. Silence is almost never the best option. A company blog is a good place to issue public statements and updates as a situation develops. You want to keep the lines of communication open and transparent.
7. Build links
A company blog can become part of your internal linking structure. Not only should you link relevant posts to each other, but you can also link different blog posts to pages of your website and vice-versa. This kind of horizontal linking can help spread link juice and increase the trust factor of some of your internal pages.
15 Responses to “7 Reasons Why a Business Blog is Valuable”
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I agree with the seven arguments. On the other hand the costst of a blog are very underestimated. When you want to build a good blog you also have to get involved in other blogs and socialize with them. You have to make artikels. Reactions have to be reviewed. Spammers have to be blocked. For the marketing of the blog you have to be active on Twitter.
If you want to create a valuable blog the time to spend will be 10 – 15 hours a week. When less time is spended the blog probably will not be succesfull and the efforts will have no result.
Thanks Jan for reading and you comment!
Take Care,
Nick
Nick,
Jan makes a good point. It may be a good blog post to list the time value of a blog post, and how much materiel a beginning blogger will need.
Nick, Thanks for sharing 7 reasons why a business blog is valuable. Obviously, it is important to build your online brand presence, but I think the real key here is humanizing your brand. I agree that It is so important to put a face to the name of your company! Great post.
Those are pretty good reason to establish a blog. Time allocation, topic and targeted visitors comes to my mind whenever i write for my blog. Expressing your thoughts to words is vital sometimes.
Nick – Excellent post. We all need to be reminded why blogging is valuable, and we need to be encouraged to stick to it. There are so many great content development opportunities these days, but blogging remains one of the best and most productive. Thank you.
Jan’s time figures only work if your blog is a standalone – which it should never be.
A blog is an elevator pitch on a particular aspect of your business. It requires in-depth thought on that part of your operations. That thought should inform everything you do in this area – it can lead to a new way of working, a variation in the product offering or an appeal to a new market.
Putting a day a week into your blog can be the best time you ever spend – as you really articulate what makes you special.
Great article Nick, thanks for sharing! All very excellent points and a great reminder of what we should be using our blogs for!
Hi Nick – love this blog! Great and simple ways to explain the importance to small business owners who might not ‘get’ why it’s important to blog. Do you mind if I repost this on my blog this week? Obviously I’ll link back to you.
My sales perked up on the last few weeks from people outside Virginia who are e-mailing and have done about $2,000 on two sales. My web site stays static becasue of industry limitations so I think it is updating my two blogs that has gotten me noticed by Google. When I put in what they tell me they asked for, I don’t see myself but it is working, they do. I am thankful for Google and credit cards.
I love blogs because they represent everything great about the internet – for example, the free tips I get from this one! Blogs represent sharing our gifts, a great way to help many people and build business with a few.
We have to be careful not to train our readers to avoid our posts because they are “just” ads.
These are great points Nick, but the time committment is just onerous. I have been trying to add tax and estate articles to my website to offer more to clients and this is a full time job, not to mention practicing law. I have really neglected my blog. Would it be better to combine my blog into my website to economize on time?
I agree with this: “The public expects a response and they expect it now. Silence is almost never the best option.” I have my personal experience about it. When I do search on Google about stuff, most of the time I look at the date when it was updated and I go for the latest. Why would you spend reading out-of-date information if there’s an updated one?
Hi Nick,
if only I had knowledge & time…
Thanks for your points.
I am currently reconsidering the interest of a blog in the website I developed with friends and to be honest, I’m not sure yet that it would help. My main concern is to keep a good level of quality as we tried to have in our pages and I feel that a blog would be a kind of “small talk”, not really helping readers?
I have heard about “email marketing” which would be to collect email addresses of interested readers only and to write a newsletter “for them only”.
Or maybe both
Cheers,
Mike
Blogs are great in they give you a chance to express yourself and teach others. There are costs, but most of them are obtainable.
I suspect a heavily trafficked blog has a lot of value and seeing the growth in visitors month after month is exciting and fun!
Keep blogging!
Kevin (Mister SelfHelp)