5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Blog
Blogging:
it’s essentially a content marketer’s bread and butter. It’s invaluable to the modern day marketing strategy, which is why it’s so common these days to see a blog on a business’s website.
We love a blog here at ITK, and you should too. In fact, if you’re a small business, publishing a regular blog could do wonders for you.
And in this blog, we’re going to tell you precisely why that is.
1. Blogging boosts SEO
Like everything else in the world, marketing has gone digital. And in this new digital marketing landscape, all roads back to SEO.
SEO – search engine optimisation – is the process of improving your website for visibility in search. It’s designed to improve your site’s rankings, helping your website to appear for more search terms, and in higher positions on search engine results pages (also known as SERPs).
Search engines work by crawling and indexing your search pages. Sites are not reviewed by people, but by robots, so Google can only tell what your site is about by scanning the content on each page, and assessing how it all fits together through internal linking.
When you blog more around specific subjects that are related to the core services you sell, Google develops a better understanding of what you do and what your site is about. This can go a long way to improving your site’s rankings.
2. Blogging lands more high-intent users on your website
Blogging is also fantastic for SEO because it’s a way of targeting more search terms, specifically through what we call keywords. These are search terms that users, like your potential customers, type into Google, usually in order to buy a product or to find the answer to a question.
By blogging, you can target what we call ‘long-tail keywords’; these are specific search terms that aren’t used that often, but when they are, tend to be from users with high intent. That means they’re looking for an answer, or for a provider.
For instance, if your business was a used car dealership, you could create blogs around used cars vs new cars, things to avoid when searching for a used car, or tips on what to look for when buying a used car.
You land more users on your website by enticing them with more specific, tailor-made content. Because you’ve targeted them when they’re already interested in the topic (your services), they are more likely to convert and become a customer.
Shorter keywords, like ‘used car dealership’ will be incredibly difficult to rank for because they are non-specific, thousands of people search for them each month, and there’s much more competition. But when you build a library of content around your services, you have a better chance at ranking for short-tail, competitive keywords, as your site gains credibility with Google over time.
3. Blogging provides more value to your customers
We’ve talked before about how content marketing is essentially relationship building. It’s about providing free value with no expectations, in order to build a rapport.
It’s about building trust. If your customer has regularly consumed your content in exchange for entertainment or education, they’re more likely to think positively about your brand. Later down the line, that might be what convinces them to become a customer.
Alternatively, if they’re already a customer, this is a simple way to encourage loyalty. It’s about giving something extra for free, and improving their perception of you.
Blogging is an excellent way to do this. For one thing, blogs are longer, which means you have much more room to provide value, particularly if you’re trying to share insights or asking questions. That’s why how-to, explainer, FAQ and guide blogs are so useful.
4. Blogs are brilliant for sharing on social
Marketers these days know allll about the struggle of creating enough content for all of your various channels. Unfortunately, it’s really not that easy. Especially when it comes to social media.
Blogging is great because it basically gives you ready-made content to share on your socials. You can share the posts as a means of distribution (which is a quick and simple way to generate more traffic), or you can repurpose your blogs into bitesize social posts: infographics, Instagram carousels, Twitter threads, the world’s your oyster. You could even use the same idea for a series of TikToks.
5. Blogs are a goldmine waiting to be repurposed
Speaking of repurposing, blogs aren’t just limited to social media. There are tons and tons of ways that you can repurpose a blog; after all, if you’re going to all of the trouble of researching, writing, editing and sharing a blog, you might as well make the most of it.
You could take the theme of your blog, expand your research, and go a bit further by creating an ebook. You could use the video as a script for some long-form video content (a super popular form of content these days!), a podcast, or as the basis for live content like a webinar or Instagram live session. Alternatively, break the blog up into bite size pieces, and use it to write a series of emails for an email marketing strategy.
See? Sorted. The opportunities are literally endless.
Writing a blog has tons of benefits, and it’s 100% something you should consider to get your own business out there. However, they’re pretty hard work.
A good blog requires proper planning, lots of research, and that’s before you even need to enlist the skills of a wordsmith and a sharp-eyed editor. Then, you need the help of an SEO expert to optimise the blog, before you even get to uploading the thing to your site.
You get the picture, it’s a lot. Luckily, we’re here to take the work off your hands – get in touch with ITK for help with all the nuts and bolts of blogging. We’ve got you covered with our content writing services.