The benefits of business blogging are vast and varied and as it is such a versatile resource, it can be used by organisations for almost any purpose.
Although this is the case, many organisations still use blogging solely for its SEO and immediate lead generation benefits – regular, high quality content will see you praised by the search engines and a blog could – although it’s not advisable – be filled with sales-type copy that drives visitors to your product or service pages.
But the truth is there are numerous other benefits that all businesses can see through effective business blogging, many of which organisations simply aren’t aware of and these five are just a sample of the things you may not know business blogging could impact on.
1. Customer loyalty
When you talk to your customers, you develop a relationship with them. It isn’t necessarily an in-depth relationship, but it’s one that makes them happier – and happier customers are loyal customers who return time and time again and who essentially act as ambassadors for your company, telling their friends, family and colleagues just how great your organisation is.
Through blogging, you can develop relationships with each and every one of your blog’s readers. You can talk to them about your products and services or about topical industry news in general. You can reach out to all of your readers – with many very likely to be past, present or potential customers – in one go, but at the same time create individual relationships with them all, something that’s extremely difficult to do with any other method of communication.
2. Social presence
Most organisations today need some form of social presence and more and more are realising this, setting up company Twitter and Facebook accounts, for example.
The problem that is so often seen here, however, is that numerous organisations believe creating and branding their account is sufficient. The truth is a branded Twitter account that lay redundant with no updates on it is just as useful as not having a Twitter account at all – and it could in fact be more harmful.
Through the integration of social media with your business blog, you ensure that any blog posts made are instantly published to all of your social media platforms and therefore whilst your blog posts shouldn’t be the only form of updates you make on social networks, they can help tremendously with ensuring your accounts don’t appear to be inactive.
3. Industry position
Your blog is updated frequently with information about your products and your services and you talk regularly about industry news, topics and general discussion points that your audience are interested in. Over time, you come to have your own view on various subjects and like many bloggers and writers in general, some readers will agree with you and others won’t.
But if the content delivered is done so regularly enough and is of a consistently high quality, your blog will eventually be recognised for its views on the industry (whether the whole or a certain aspect of it), resulting in you potentially becoming a thought-leader – or at the very least respected for your views, which can easily result in substantially increased traffic.
4. Customer experience
No matter what type of organisation you are or which industry you operate in, the customer experience should be of the utmost importance to you, as the better the experience, the happier the customer – and as mentioned above, happy customers are those who return time and time again.
With a blog, you can provide more in-depth information on your products or services than you’ve ever been able to on a static website. You can talk about them in a way you’ve never done before – such as much more socially or in a conversational way – and you can explain to your readers about the product in full or about the entire service process, something that would otherwise rely on a phone call, e-mail or face-to-face meeting to do.
And by providing this level of information, you can improve the customer experience – the customers know substantially more about your products or services and as a result of this, they can make a more informed choice as to which to purchase, making them instantly a happier customer.
5. Employee relations
Although your customers are the ones who ensure your bank balance remains healthy, your staff are the ones who help to keep your business running by delivering the service needed and in many instances, they often want to be involved in the success of the company outside of their immediate roles.
With blogging, employees all across the organisation can be involved. For example, they could pitch ideas for blog post content, potentially seeing their ideas come to fruition. It might seem like a small point, but it’s often surprising how this involvement can make employees feel valued – they’ve made a contribution that could be read by thousands of people and this alone is enough to boost the confidence and happiness levels of any employee.
A business blog is a fantastic resource that can be utilised in a variety of ways – but they are so often developed and maintained in such a style that their focus is on only one or two different benefits. As with all resources, you need to be confident that you know just how beneficial a business blog can actually be, as without this understanding, you could be sitting on a business-changing resource without doing anything to unlock its potential.
