10 Compelling Reasons to Start Blogging
A small business blog has proven to be an incredibly effective way to market your local business, get recognized as an authority and expert in your industry, and share your unique perspective. While blogging is not a silver bullet that will instantly bring your business success, the reasons to start blogging will help hone yourself as a marketer and business owner.
Here are 10 reasons to start blogging on your small business website.
Anyone Can Blog
For better or worse, anyone can write a blog post about anything they want. Everyone has a voice and blogging helps your voice be heard, or in this case read.
Like anything, creating content for a small business blog is a matter of effort and, like any skill, your writing will improve the more you engage in the activity. And as a business owner, as your writing improves, it will get noticed in every word you write, from catalogs to menus to even your emails.
Showcase Your Personality
Within a small business blog post, you have more leeway to add in your unique voice and personality than most other types of writing.
Why?
Because you can change focus from post to post, or even cover a myriad of topics within a single post.
Is this a best practice? Who cares!
You have the freedom to experiment. And, you can go back and edit any blog post you want.
An Account Is Not Required
Have you found an article that you wanted to read but couldn’t because it required a paid subscription? Well, with your blog, you can keep it 100% free for your audience. There are exceptions of course, like the platform Medium. However, you can use your blog to help local visitors learn new things, read about local news or upcoming events.
The possibilities are endless and amazing. Blogging opens up all of these options to a very wide audience. Even more than social media since they require membership to their platform. Remember, you can make your blog free and open to the public and not require membership to read or engage.
Blogging Can Make Money
As your blog begins to rank for more search terms and generate more organic web traffic, a percentage of those visitors will purchase your product or service.
Additionally, as you grow your audience, you will have the opportunity to monetize your blog with ads, affiliate links, and sponsored posts.
Monetizing your blog will take time, however, it’s one of the most important benefits. Creating unique offers to subscribers also allows you to market to them through email marketing.
For advertising, here are several ad platforms to monetize your content.
Blogging Helps You Craft Better Thoughts
Instead of reading haphazard Facebook status updates, it’s much better to see people’s thought process in a well-written blog post.
Plus you’re not bound to character limits. In fact, a study by SerpIQ found a correlation between longer content and higher rankings. Please understand, correlation does not equal, imply or prove causation.
The point is, writing helps you frame your thoughts to better serve your audience. And this can result in more searchers finding your content and keep them coming back for more.
Blogs Create Community
Blogging allows you to connect with other individuals and organizations who might share the same interests or are intrigued by what you write. Sharing ideas and opinions within your online community helps establish yourself as a thought leader and expert in your field.
Blog posts can be shared within an online forum first to build interest. These forums can be external to your website like Quora, or Reddit. Or you can build your own forum and share your posts with members first.
Here are 3 hosted forum platforms you can integrate into your existing website.
Blogs are Great for SEO
Keeping your content fresh, relevant and frequent, allows your blog to be found for more search terms in search engines. This can result in more visitors to your business website and potentially more customers.
By answering questions and becoming an authority on a particular subject, your posts will get shared on social media, and be cited by others with through links. Not to mention if you choose to be a guest on someone else’s blog. All of this can help when it comes to SEO.
Create True Fanatics
When your blog is filled with great content, that provides value, and is updated regularly, your true fans will keep come back looking for more answers and more to read.
They’ll also become customers who refer you, share your content, and cheer you on. Many bloggers add new opportunities for their followers to support them by creating exclusive content for members or subscribers, or using platforms like Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee to grow their audience.
Blogging Is Inexpensive
To write a blog post yourself is a marketing channel that costs nothing. Yes, there is time and effort involved, but as I mentioned earlier, over time, you’ll only get better at it.
There is a cost to hosting a blog which is generally tied directly to hosting a website. If you already have a website, a blog is probably already included and you’re just not using the resource.
If you are looking to get setup with a free blog website you can check out Tumblr, GitHub Pages, or WordPress.com (not to be confused with WordPress.org) who all provide free blogging platforms.
Establish Yourself As An Expert
A blog is a great place for you to showcase your expertise, your passion and past projects. And when you love what you’re writing about, that will come through in every word.
This will result in you being recognized an expert in the subject matter, and leader in your industry. Not only that, you will become better at communicating your passion.
10 Reasons to Start Blogging
Blogging can seem overwhelming, especially when you compare yourself to other established and successful bloggers out there. Please don’t let that intimidate you. Start a blog on your website today and as you practice writing, you will continue to improve.
