Here on our blog, we talk regularly about the benefits of blogging. We explain that by blogging, organisations are able to benefit tremendously in various respects.
One of the most frequent questions we still receive, however, is along the lines of “Is blogging right for my business?”.
Whilst we can talk for hours on blogging and how it really can be the turning point in your business’s development and success, if you’re still sat on the fence as to whether you should invest in blogging or not, ask yourself these five questions.
1. Do you want to communicate with your customers?
Whilst a blog can be used for a multitude of reasons, it’s first and foremost a communication resource. It’s a platform upon which you can speak to your target audience on a regular basis, providing them with updates on every part of your business, from your personal experiences through to new product lines you’re about to launch.
And in a world where, as consumers, we want more interaction from organisations, a fully operational business blog is the perfect way to do just that.
2. Do you want to drive traffic to your website?
No matter how you decide to utilise a blog, unless you make it private, you will see an increase in traffic. Slowly at first, but as you maintain the blog, this level of traffic will grow considerably.
Although an increased level of traffic alone is a positive by-product of blogging, the fact it’s highly targeted, therefore potentially increasing your sales figures, is often seen as the cherry on the top of the cake.
3. Do you want to increase your ranking in the search engines?
Blogging is great at impacting on various strategies, as because it’s so versatile, it can essentially be developed to work however you need it to and one of the most common uses is for search engine optimisation (SEO).
Two of the key components to SEO are the regular publishing of high quality content and link building, something that blogging can help with perfectly – so much so that some of our clients use blogging as their primary SEO techniques.
And our clients see some great successes, too, with one of our most recent clients ranking on the first page for six of their most competitive keywords within 8 weeks of blogging after not ranking in the top 20 before they began their strategy.
4. Do you want to have a better social presence?
Many organisations want to have a great social presence, as it’s becoming more of a necessity asked for by their customers. However, with so many different options available, it’s difficult to know where to begin.
A blog can act as the foundations upon which your entire social media strategy can be based. It can be the main building from where your activity on Facebook and Twitter, for example, all come from and all link to.
Remember, to use websites such as Facebook and Twitter effectively, you need to not simply talk about your products or services, instead talking frequently about what your audience is interested in – and with a blog, that means you can first and foremost produce content that’s appealing to your audience and then utilise social media to publicise it, driving traffic to your blog whilst at the same time showing you have an active presence on various social networks.
5. Do you want to develop a resource where the benefits will be long-lasting?
If you put an advert in a magazine, you’ll see some great traffic, but it will stop once the next issue comes out.
If you use PPC, you’ll again see some great traffic that this time is highly targeted, but it will stop once you end your investment.
If you properly utilise blogging, you’ll see some great traffic that grows over time and the benefits of which will be prominent – potentially indefinitely.
Blogging is a resource that should be used naturally and this means that in terms of its benefits, whilst they may not be instantly apparent in abundance when compared to PPC, for example, they will be there considerably longer than any from PPC, magazine advertising or any other channel whereby you can receive instant, direct traffic.
We strongly believe blogging can positively change the way your business develops and succeeds and by providing honest answers to these five questions, we think you’ll soon believe the same, too.
