Attention, business owners: The secret to tripling your website traffic, skyrocketing your social media mentions and multiplying your business’ revenue by limitless bounds is in this blog. You can turn your small business into the next Ring Doorbell or My Pillow simply by (drum roll, please) …
OK, our lawyers are telling us we can’t back that up. But our ridiculous lead paragraph claim aside, the art of any website content is to get people reading, get people learning about your products, services and mission, and get people connected to who you are and what you do.
For no matter how good your business is, it won’t matter if people don’t know who you are and what you. Great marketing introduces people to you, your mission and, most importantly, what you can do for them. It’s also a lot more attention-getting than a plain store sign and drab website that includes nothing but a vague home page listing your name, address and phone number.
Ladies and gentlemen, behold the power of consistent website blogging. First off, for anyone super old school, what is business blogging?
“A business blog is a marketing channel (just like social media, direct mail, email marketing, etc) that supports business growth,” Hubspot’s Corey Wainwright writes.
As anyone trying to keep up in a competitive market place and industry will tell you, yesterday’s marketing and advertising methods won’t keep the doors open today. The world’s gone digital, and folks not keeping up have gone out of business.
“Businesses operate in an ever changing landscape of technology and consumer demands,” writes Shane McGeorge, Chief Executive Officer of Complete Business Online. “It is becoming increasingly important for small businesses to develop a strong web presence to engage and communicate with their customers.”
Few digital marketing methods increase your name and brand presence as effectively as website blogging. Blogging is a tool of discovery that builds brand awareness, while providing relevant and useful content to your target audience. Plus, blogging is cheaper than any ad you’ll place in the local paper (sorry, newspaper friends) and, as McGeorge notes, “is an inexpensive way for small businesses to drive traffic to their site, enhance inbound marketing efforts and attract more perspective customers.”
In laymen’s terms, effective blogging equals cha-ching, cha-ching. An inbound marketing report by Aracent shows 80 percent of companies that use blogging as part of their marketing strategy reported acquiring customers through their blogging efforts, 82 percent report that blogging is critical to their business.
See, we weren’t blatantly lying in our lead paragraph after all!
Here’s what we call the Blog Avalanche of Great Business. Consistent blog posts constantly provide Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines with fresh content of yours to index. Plus, blogs generate those magic relevant keywords consumers use to search for the types of services and businesses you offer.
Soon, old and new customers become familiar with what you do, you establish your presence in the industry, you connect new people to your brand, and people begin sharing the information and services you provide. Before you know it, you just may become a household name in your community, marketplace and industry.
Here is McGeorge’s Top 5 Small Business Benefits of Blogging:
- Exceptional Boost To Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Develops And Strengthens Relationships With Existing And New Customers
- Establish Your Business As An Industry Leader
- Connect People To Your Brand
- Create Opportunities for Sharing
So as James Earl Jones might say in “Field of Dreams” (if the movie was about building your small business rather than following the mysterious voice of your father to build a baseball field in your cornfield), “if you blog, they will come.”
And when it comes to connecting people to your business or organization, you’ve come to the right place! Contact CG Web Strategy to learn how we can craft unique, relevant and engaging content for your blog site.
So, if increased online exposure, gaining a reputation as an expert in your field and greatly increasing your profit margin sound good, blogging is for you. As McGeorge stresses, “when it comes to small businesses, blogging is virtually a must.”
