We have talked about the benefits of blogging but never truly covered why you really want to blog. Think of a blog as a short story that covers a core area of expertise you or your business is good at. You want people to learn from you, you want them to learn about what you offer, and you definitely want them to buy from you. If you run a small business you blog (or should) so that people can see you as an effective leader and expert. Sharing content shows you know the power of copy/paste. Writing shows the power of wanting to reach the masses, educate, and influence others. You blog as you want to improve the internet, the lives of your customers, and the lives of those that may one day be a customer (or at least more educated).
Blogging on a frequent basis is easier than you could think. Blogging is easy, short, inexpensive, and can greatly help your inbound marketing efforts. These efforts will drive traffic to your site, attract prospective customers, and help you know your products and services even better. Blogging can help you improve not only yourself but your company as a whole by finding areas for further improvement.
Below are the key items of why you want to blog:
- Search Engine Optimization or SEO – We all know the importance of the search engines to getting found online. Search engines love content (good content). Search engines love frequency where you update your website often. You can build something truly great but if no one knows about it does a truly great product or service matter?
- Keywords – When you want to be found for certain keywords that might not already exist on your site a blog is a great way to add those keywords to your website while providing valuable information to your audience.
- Influencer – The latest push is to be an influencer which is someone that is an expert in their field. To us, more than an influencer is just better known with your audience.
- Leadership – By writing, you are establishing yourself as a true industry leader. You could write a book to show your expertise and leadership but short stories are so much easier, avoid any filler, are quick reads, answer questions, and educate your audience.
- Feedback – You will get immediate feedback on your articles. Our blog articles are read over 100 times per day with many that are years old being read a lot. One would think a company from Valparaiso Indiana wouldn't get a lot of readers but that is far from the case. Most of our readers are from all over the United States. As our articles get to read I often receive emails asking questions, providing comments, or just thanking for the article.
- Connections – It is common that when talking to people in the real-world the conversation always goes to one of our blog articles and questions about it. Blog writing helps you become known, helps with those dead spaces that can occur when having small talk, and helps in creating those touch points to grow the business you might not otherwise have.
- Self-Improvement – The one area that I have found is I have become more self-aware of who I am and more conscious of my daily actions. I am constantly reading more, studying more, and pushing myself to be better. Writing has and continues to make me a better overall person.
- More Clients – Writing for free and sharing your expertise can increase your bottom line. Our best marketing tool for our company beyond word-of-mouth has been our blogs. We get speaking engagements from our blogs. They have pushed our growth more than paid ads or any other marketing.
- Build your network – Part of any growth comes from your internal network. Our network grows from 5 to 20 new people per week with most weeks in the teens. By building our network we reach more people and learn more about what our industry is needing. This allows us to stay knowledgeable in our field.
- Sell – Don’t do it every time but writing also allows you to promote and sell your services which is a great way to increase your overall bottom line.
- Talk to Industry Leaders – Those that inspire love talking with others with the same passion. Yes, you can share an industry leader’s articles which shows them you are following them but leaders tend to hang with leaders. Leaders typically don’t hang with followers. Leaders want to be inspired, they have a desire to learn, they want to grow, and if everyone they were with was a follower they would never grow.
- Personality – One of the areas I personally find the most awesome about blogging is I get to express myself (good or bad). People can learn who I am as a person and what my core beliefs are even before I meet them.
- Educate – When you write you are hopefully writing to create a value for your audience. Educating your audience is a key reason people write. They want people to be more aware of what is available to them.
- Trust – The more you write the more trust you will gain with your audience. As you gain trust your audience will continue to grow, your influence will grow, and ultimately your bottom line will grow.
Even with the above list I know we’ll still get those puzzled looks of why blogging can help you grow your business. Those looks we love as it means there are still questions for us to answer and inform. This information allows us to further educate businesses on how powerful, helpful, and beneficial blogs are to their overall bottom line.