It’s pretty common knowledge at this point that if you have a business, you should have a blog. It helps you connect to your ideal customer and serve as a resource for people in the market for your product or service. But here are seven reasons that you might not have heard before as to why you should get to work on one today.
Without a blog, most of our business web pages remain fairly static. Sure you might think to update promos and what not, but a lot of us simply forget to feed the Google content machine. A blog, and consistently posting to one, means your site is updated regularly and there’s fresh content for visitors to view all the time. If you don’t have a blog, how often will you think to update your website content?
It Feeds Your Social Media Channels
Of course, you don’t want to be a big bore on social media and only post your own content but without a blog, finding your own content becomes increasingly more difficult. Blogs are a source of content that can be broken up many ways. Blog posts can be shared on their own. They can become tweetable pieces. Quotes from your post can become image quotes with a little work. And they can become conversation starters if you write about a good discussion topic.
You Own It
As I write this Twitter is down for the second time today in the DNS debacle that paralyzed multiple well-known businesses including NetFlix, PayPal, and Freshbooks. Tomorrow, Pinterest could decide it wants to become a membership community for designers. Facebook could begin charging everyone to post. Okay, these last two things probably won’t happen, but they could.
Here’s something that could very easily happen – tomorrow your ideal customer is no longer on your social media platform of choice. Think about that one. You’ve invested a huge amount of time building an audience and then the people you’re most trying to reach are no longer there. All that time wasted.
This idea was one I was thinking about after several articles were published in regards to Twitter losing its audience (before the DNS thing). I’ve spent several years working on building an audience on Twitter. I’m finally getting to the point where I’m getting some traction and my branding is taking off and then this article.
Writers and social media gurus are always predicting the downfall of some social network and for good reason. It paralyzes most of us who use it for business with fear. Bottom line, you don’t own these channels like you own your blog content.
The Stats Are With You
According to a report from HubSpot, 60% of businesses that blog consistently saw an increase in customers once they started blogging.
Its Makes You a Source for Free PR
Journalists and bloggers can find articles you’ve written and quote you without you spending the time of having to arrange an interview. You can get your name out there without any additional work on your part.
Blogging Makes You Think About Your Business in a Different Way
Since you want to write about things that concern your ideal customer, blogging forces you to see things from your customers’ perspectives. It also makes you think about issues facing your industry. It gives you a much larger perspective on your own business and that’s a great thing.
A Blog Forces You to Cultivate a Tone and a Personality
It’s very easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day of running your business without much thought to how you sound to customers. That may be fine for the customers coming into your brick and mortar business but what about online customers or people who are considering doing business with you? When you share of yourself and your personality and tone on your blog, people who have never met you will feel like they know you and that will help convince them to buy.
A Final Word about Blogging
As a small business owner, you’re pulled in a million directions and blogging may seem very unimportant to you. But if you got just one extra customer a year from it, would it be worth it? What’s the lifetime value of a customer versus the investment in thirty minutes a week? Remember, you needn’t post every day. Once a week, consistently, can still give you the benefits above.
Christina R. Green teaches small businesses, chambers, and associations how to connect through content. Her articles have appeared in the Associations North (formerly Midwest Society of Association Executives’) Magazine, NTEN.org, AssociationTech, and Socialfish. She is a regular blogger at Frankjkenny.com and the Event Manager Blog.
She’s a bookish writer on a quest to bring great storytelling to organizations everywhere.