Recently I was presented with a question: why should a small business have a blog?
I started running down the place a blog holds in a small business’ marketing strategy.
- Blogs create foundational content for your marketing strategy.
- They educate your audience.
- Content builds trust and familiarity.
- Blog articles provide an opportunity to convert leads.
They’re all the things I’m used to telling people.
However, it occurred to me that they don’t really let anyone know why they should blog.
Not in a tangible, measurable way.
My next step was to check my blog articles to see if I had ever explained it there.
Nope. Didn’t explain it there, either.
Guess what that means.
Today, I’ve got the most powerful reasons your small business should have a blog.
Contents
Starting A Blog For Your Small Business Won’t Deliver Instant Results
If you haven’t started your small business’ blog, you likely don’t have traffic.
Unfortunately, that means big results won’t be instant.
It’s one of those “slow build” kind of things, even when you promote it the right way.
It takes time to get results worth getting. Click To TweetThat doesn’t mean you won’t get results quickly.
They just won’t be huge.
However, as you’ll see, that won’t last too long.
Eventually, the traffic will improve, the results will grow, and you’ll truly understand the powerful reasons you should start your small business’ blog.
Like anything else, the results will speak for themselves.
Small Business Blogs Create Powerful Results
If you’re normal, you still probably think of a blog as an online diary of sorts.
I hear that a lot.
However, blogs have become the print media of modern marketing.
Consider all the sites you probably visit every day that are blogs.
- News Websites
- Review Articles
- Industry Publications
These are successful ways to monetize blogs that people don’t even see as a blog.
You don’t think of the New York Times website as a blog, but it is.
Their articles are simply focused on the news of the day.
And it brings them a good chunk of advertisement revenue. It probably earns subscriptions, too.
Instead of general news, your blog should focus on your industry.
That’s the best way you’re going to get the results that blogging brings.
Those results make up the powerful reasons you need to start your small business’ blog asap.
Blogs Bring Traffic To Your Small Business’ Website
You didn’t build your website for fun, did you?
Neither did I.
Like me, you built your website to bring you business from the internet.
But it needs traffic to do that.
Most of the people who’ve never heard of you before aren’t likely to type your website address into their browser.
Typically, only people who already follow your company do that.
That means you have to draw them in somehow.
Purchasing an email list is both expensive and illegal.
Paid ads are more expensive, but also legal.
For a small business, that cost is usually prohibitive.
So, what are your real options for earning traffic?
Blogs Build Your Small Business’ Search Traffic
Search engines are your most viable options.
But they have requirements.
When someone Google’s something from your industry, Google wants to know that your content is relevant.
Your website will be checked to see how much information is there, how fresh it is, and whether the keywords match, among other things.
Chances are, if you’re not blogging, you’re not getting scored very well in quantity, your freshness is probably a little stale, and the keywords you might rank for are probably high competition and only loosely connected to the query.
Together these problems suggest you won’t be found in search.
If search is going to work, you need pages for search engines to index.
Every new blog post is another page to index and another chance to rank.
That builds your page quantity.
It’s newly published, which means it’s fresh.
And each one is a chance to rank for some specific search queries, improving your odds of showing.
By including regular, new content on your website via a blog, you show the search engines that your site is alive.
You let them know they need to check in regularly for new content.
Blogs Improve Your Small Business’ Social Media Traffic
Social media is the second reasonable option your small business has for more traffic.
It’s free and gets your content in front of a plentiful audience.
Blog articles provide a great opportunity for people to share your content via social media, especially Twitter, where people are far more likely to interact with your blog.
Those shares put your business in front of a new audience you may not have had access to.
Also, if you get great at making micro content, your blog will build your social content for you.
That brings more attention to your social channels, which brings more attention to your blog in turn.
The two work together like peanut butter and jelly.
That tasty combination is going to start driving traffic to your site.
Which leads to more leads.
Blogs Establish Your Small Business As An Authority
Can you imagine being the company your audience thinks of when they think of your industry?
When you answer your audience’s biggest questions constantly, that’s what begins to happen.
Blogging allows you to regularly create content that’s helpful for your leads and customers.
Think about it. You send out an email with a blog post that’s got the right information for a confused customer.
It answers their questions, putting them closer to a sale, and answers the questions future leads have.
What if you were known as the industry leader? Click To TweetWhat about the way a blog written by your client’s salesperson proves she knows what she’s talking about?
That’s going to improve your salesperson’s odds of closing the sale.
Here’s the deal: content builds your reputation as an authority in your industry.
While it’s not as easily measurable as site traffic, leads, and closes, it’s a powerful way to build your sales team’s ability.
Pre-established trust makes your sales team more capable.
In a way, it’s a form of sales enablement, which you should already be aware of.
Blogs help your sales team the same way sales material does, so measure their influence the same way.
When people become leads through a blog article, they did it because they trusted what was said.
Trust makes the sales process easier.
Blog articles educate your audience as well.
That means you can skip through that phase of the sales process and close sales faster.
And that archive of in-depth blog posts can inform your salesperson’s answer for those unique questions rather than creating a new brochure or whitepaper from scratch.
This speed of service and evidence of knowledge give your small business a positive reputation before the customer ever works with you.
Blogs Help Convert Your Small Business’ Website Traffic Into Leads
I’m pretty sure I’ve been explaining this the whole time, but now it’s time to explain how.
Because every blog article is a new chance to gain a lead.
All it takes is a great call-to-action on the post that drives your visitor to the next step in your lead funnel.
You are familiar with lead funnels, right?
When a visitor comes to your site, they’re presented with a call-to-action that offers them something for free in exchange for their contact information.
That adds them to your lead list, where they’re nurtured from lead to customer.
Simple, right?
Calls-to-action need to be on every blog article. Click To TweetI have calls-to-action in every blog article I post.
They’re the way visitors become leads.
But not every visitor.
Nobody’s conversion rate is 100%.
And that’s OK.
You’re not looking for every lead.
You’re looking for the right ones.
Blogs Build Long-Term Results For Your Small Business
Getting work done when you’re not actually working is awesome.
Unfortunately, that’s not something everyone gets to do.
Or is it?
Blogs have that exact effect.
It may not feel like it at first but let me explain how.
The average blog post takes 2-3 hours to write.
You finish it, post it, and wait.
Within the first 24 hours, it gets several visits and leads.
48 hours later, that traffic has tapered quite a bit since the bulk of your subscribers have already seen it.
By the end of the week, it’s not really seeing any new traffic.
That’s all normal, and probably what you’ve noticed if you have ever blogged before.
But that’s not the end.
Great Blog Articles Work In Your Sleep
Around the same time the initial traffic starts to die down, the search engines should have indexed it.
Unless you delete it, they’ll start presenting it in relevant searches.
Your article is going to keep bringing in traffic for years because people will search for that topic in the future.
You’ll start to see leads coming in during your off-hours.
Over the course of years, the number could be in the hundred-thousands.
You get numbers that high because blog articles have a compounding effect.
The fact that blog article results compound makes them extra powerful. Click To Tweet10% of your blog articles will likely compound and provide an average of 38% of your site traffic.
I get about 80% of my site traffic from older posts, some of which are over 5 years old.
Almost all my leads come through those older posts, averaging only about 2% from this month’s posts.
The biggest reason that works for me is that I don’t write “trending” posts.
I try not to create articles that have information that changes quickly.
Instead, I focus on “evergreen” content.
That’s the kind of information that changes very slowly and not often.
When something does change, I edit my old content.
That helps it stay fresh, too.
Blogging Has Powerful Effects On Your Small Business’ Marketing
Now you understand why blogs have a place in your small business’ marketing strategy.
They create powerful results for your company.
Those results make the time spent worth it.
They also assure that your company grows and thrives into the future.
It’s time to get moving, though, and avoid wasting any more time.
Figure out the content your audience wants.
Develop a strategy to produce blog content consistently.
Produce high-quality content regularly.
Start to see the growth that a great blog can bring you.
