I totally get it. You already have enough on your plate with running your business and all the daily ins and outs. Now you have someone telling you that you have somehow got to fit blogging into your relentless schedule? Can’t you just post on Instagram?
Frequent blogging should be added to your marketing strategy to work alongside things like posting on Instagram, Instagram stories, showing up on Facebook, email marketing etc. Plus you can use social media to promote your blog post. This is about using different marketing channels that work together where you show up regularly and your marketing strategy becomes a well oiled machine.
Below are some big reasons why you should be blogging as part of your marketing tactics for your business:
It helps drive traffic to your website.
Want more website visitors? Think about the ways people find your website:
They might type your business name into Google? But that’s only going to be people who already know your business exists and that doesn’t help you to get more traffic.
You could pay for traffic by placing a ton of paid ads on Google or Facebook for example. But this can end up costing you a ton of money.
So how can you drive traffic to your website? Well blogging helps with that and here’s how:
Think about how many pages you have on your website and then think about how often you update those pages. Probably not that often, right?
Blogging actually helps to solve both the above issues: not getting any traffic and not regularly making updates to your website…
Partly, being found on Google depends on how much newly updated content you have on your website. Yep. Google loves fresh content. If you set a website up and then leave it for the weeds to come up and cobwebs to take over, it will get lost in amongst all the other regular content online leaving your website far behind. If you’re adding fresh content to your website on the regular, Google will start to like your site and trust that you’re a genuine company. When people search for what you do or the keywords you use in your blog posts on Google, you’ll start to show up and in turn, get more website visitors and ultimately more customers!
It helps with social content ideas
It’s time to post on Instagram and you haven’t the faintest idea what to post about or what to say in your caption, so you decide not to bother…
Instagram has changed so much from the beginning when it was all about just posting images and hoping for the best. Captions on Instagram are now just as important as the image you are using. So where can you get that content from?
To have a strong marketing thing going in your business, you really need to set aside time for creating content. This should be content that gives value to your audience and a great way to do that is by starting with blogging…
Creating frequent blog posts then gives you a ton of content you can then repurpose for use across your social media platforms. Captions can come in the form of snippets from your blog posts. Working with your blog post as your core content will give you ideas for what to talk about in your Instagram stories videos and then there is no risk of running out of ideas!
It helps with long term results
Once you’ve sorted that Instagram post you put it out there and hope for the best. You get a load of likes and comments and that’s all great, but then the world moves on, no one sees your post anymore and, well, it’s pretty much over.
Blogging doesn’t work like that. You create a blog post today and post it, promote it and it’s out there. You might think that no one has read it and no one cares because you don’t get the instant gratification like you do with attention seeking Instagram. But, that blog post you put out there is now ranking in search engines. That means for days, weeks, months, and years to come, you can continue to get traffic and leads from that blog post. So while it may feel like there are no fanfares when you first post to your blog, the effort you put into blogging yesterday can help bring you traffic long into the future.
It helps you grow an audience and establish authority
The best business blogs answer questions that their consumers would have. If you’re consistently creating content that is helpful to your potential buyers then it will help establish you as an authority in their eyes. They’ll learn to know, like and trust you and once they do, that means they’ll buy from you. What’s more, if you frequently bring out a blog post you’ll be able to convert your Instagram or Facebook followers into blog readers by cross promoting your blog growing your number of regular readers more and more.
It’ll help you grow your email list
Have you heard marketing pros talking about why you should have an email list? Putting it bluntly, if you are focussing all your energy on social media marketing alone and you’re not attempting to build up an email list. Then I’m afraid you’re putting too many eggs in one basket. Let;’s not forget that your social media accounts aren’t owned by you. The rug could be pulled from under your feet at any time and with algorithms and rules and trends constantly changing, it can be hard to keep up with the best ways to market your business on social media.
That’s why, while I am absolutely not saying you should abandon marketing on social media altogether, far from it, using social media as justa part of your business marketing is the best approach. Having an email list of engaged, more devoted followers and your biggest fans is an important way of helping your business grow over time too. And, what’s more, this list is yours and yours only giving you much more power.
Creating a blog for your business will enable you to drive traffic to your website where you can then get visitors to sign up to your email list in exchange for a resource that’s of value to them. From there. You’ll be able to send them frequent updates, offer and valuable content that will help further solve their problems further establishing yourself as a voice of authority in your niche.
Having a blog not only helps drive visitors to your site to get them to sign up to your list, but the content you create in your blog posts can also be the subject of the emails you send out with a direct link to your blog posts driving more traffic to your site. Win, win!
So, you might have worked with a web designer or web developer before who has told you how important blogging is in helping your website get found by your ideal clients. And they’re not wrong. A professional is there not only to help build your website but also to help it work to its full potential. There isn’t much point in having an amazing website if your ideal clients can’t find it, right? So, it’s really important to make blogging a part of your content planning and make it as high a priority as showing up on your social media.
It’s so common that I see business owners starting a blog with good intentions and then not keeping up with frequent posts. And don’t think that you have to create a blog post every week. However frequent blogging works for you even if that’s once a month is going to be so beneficial to your business in the long run.
You can get a whole load of ideas in the bag for your blog by reading this blog post I created here too.
And you can find out more about why you should be blogging to get your website found in this post by the Yeost here.
And if you have questions about blogging for your business, get in touch and ask away. I’m here to guide you on getting your website and business found online.
