Regardless of the type of online personality you’re trying to portray yourself as, as well as whether you’re a brand or an individual, blogging is the ultimate tool of outreach that you should most definitely be using.
With the right strategy, it can be quite versatile and cost-effective, which means that you get to choose the frequency of its use, its objectives and its mission without upsetting the rest of your digital marketing strategy.
To a small business, on the other hand, it brings so much benefit, that it becomes one of the ultimate tools for maximizing the efficiency of your operations.
With that in mind and without further ado, here are several reasons why blogging is so important for small business owners.
Organic traffic and low-hanging fruit
When starting a blog, it’s mandatory that you pick a niche that is most closely tied to your products. First of all, not doing so would be outright strange, while going down this route gives you an instant credibility and reliability boost. Imagine a blog post about lawn maintenance and all the tips you can encounter while reading such content.
Would this information sound more credible coming from a random individual or someone employed at a local landscaping company? Just the fact that the latter belongs to this niche makes a world of difference when it comes to the reliability of the information.
Naturally, this drives your audience towards the posts but the nature of the audience matters almost as much as their numbers. If we continue with the previously used example, it becomes more than clear that people who look for lawn maintenance tips probably already need products, tools and services discussed in the post. These are the services that you, so conveniently, provide. In other words, each of these readers is a potential customer, a low-hanging fruit, who’s currently only contemplating whether they should get these products from you or from someone else.
Linking to your e-store
In the previous section, we discussed the probability of writing about your niche as one of the main objectives of your blogging efforts. What this gives you is the ability to organically create internal links and even link directly to your e-store. This allows you to capitalize on the phenomenon of impulse buying.
Imagine a person reading about a particular DIY project only to find out that one of the crucial items they need is something that you already have in stock.
What are they more likely to do, wrap up the article and then embark on a market survey or follow the link (possibly even in a new tab), see an affordable price, make a purchase and then return to reading? You will agree that the latter is far more likely.
Combining various formats
Regardless of the industry, displaying versatility is one of the main traits of any business. When it comes to your content, this doesn’t just affect styles and topics but also formats that you decide to present. There is, however, a certain problem with this approach to the situation. You see, written content doesn’t require that many technical skills, seeing as how you already have the tools, the means and probably even some experience in writing.
For vlogging, podcasting and infographics, on the other hand, you may need to bring some professional aid. What matters the most is that you shouldn’t look at any expense that this may cause as unnecessary, instead, look at it as an investment. Hiring a professional video editor is, therefore, a goal worth considering start up business loans over.
Building a reputation
The greatest problem with making conversions is that customers have a subconscious unrealistic desire to know first-hand how good your products/services are before actually doing business with you. The closest you can come to this is by persuading them in some other way that you’re more than fully capable of satisfying their needs. Blogging is, therefore, a great way to offer some value and demonstrate to your audience that you indeed know what you’re talking about. The best part is that this can be achieved indirectly, through guest blogging, as well.
Driving traffic
At the end of the day, writing a quality post with a lot of quotable elements such as statements, statistics and actionable tips may generate a huge number of backlinks for your brand in the years to come.
This means that, while your blog post may immediately attract some attention, it has even greater odds to keep doing this in the months and years to come.
In fact, some posts are still as relevant as they were on the day they were posted, which means that they continuously generate backlinks since 2014. Even the effect of going viral can hardly compete with this particular trend.
Conclusion
These five trends alone can do more for the sales, conversions and traffic of your business than most other means of promotion.
When considering the frugality of these methods, it becomes more than clear just how high a priority blogging takes for those who conduct their digital marketing on a budget.
This, on the other hand, doesn’t mean that large companies and even multi-billion dollar conglomerates don’t have a massive ROI from this method, as well.
