Yes, just about every business and entrepreneur knows they need to have a presence on various social media platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. However, everyone realizes just how important it is to do more. You need more than just a social media presence to boost your presence online and have consumers find your site. What your business may desperately need is a blog. Being a business owner/entrepreneur, this might be one of the last things you want to put time and effort into. Nevertheless, there are several reasons why you need one.

Increase Traffic

A blog can help you take your SEO, or search engine optimization, strategy to the next level. How? By providing your website with an SEO boost. Search engine optimization is the process of affecting the visibility of your website in search engine results. Many business websites contain static content, meaning the information doesn’t change.

A regularly updated blog improves your search engine rankings by providing search engine crawlers with new content to index. Each post to your blog is another web page indexed by search engines. Moreover, it is another opportunity for your site to be found by internet users. Are you already answering your target audience’s queries and meeting their needs with your blog? Great! Then with some good SEO and a bit of hard work, your blog posts will appear in their search engine results. In turn, this will bring more traffic to your site and increase your brand awareness and authority online.

In addition to your new content being indexed by search engines, having a blog provides a handful of other SEO benefits. The more often you publish new content to your website, the more search engine crawlers will visit and index your site. New content will also be indexed faster the more often you publish recent blog posts. Search engines don’t want to send users to abandoned websites or out-of-date content. By regularly updating your business blog, you’re signaling to Google and other search engines that your website is active and up-to-date, full of useful/relevant information.

Acquiring backlinks or links on other websites that send users to your site is the most effective means of improving your search engine rankings. Each blog post you publish is another page of content that other websites might link to. If your website is all sales pages, it’ll be challenging to gain backlinks. If your business has a blog that provides valuable content, acquiring these links can be far easier. Your blog won’t get your website on the first page of Google results overnight, but it will significantly boost your rankings over time.

Build a Relationship with Customers

A blog provides you with a chance to build a relationship with your customers. Blog commenting offers customers an opportunity to interact more with you and with your brand, increasing confidence in your business and creating a positive overall image. Responding quickly to comments forms a more personable relationship between you and potential customers, making your business seem more human. Appearing more human makes your business seem more trustworthy. Enabling reply notifications so visitors will see when you’ve replied to their comments will provide another way to bring visitors back to your site. Responding to comments delivers extra value to those who visit your site.

Also, sometimes potential customers want a bit more information before they’re sold on your business. They might want to make sure you know your stuff, make sure you’re still in business or want an answer to a question. The comment section of your blog is another way for these visitors to your website to contact you. A blog offers a more creative outlet to express your brand and yourself and focus on the things that unite you and your customers.

Boost Your Social Media Efforts

You probably already know you need to be on social media. However, you may not be sure exactly how to do so. A regularly updated blog can provide your business with a treasure trove of content shared across social media platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Your target audience is most likely already on social media throughout the day. Therefore, you need to be on social media too.

Yes, it’s good to share content on social media that your target audience will find helpful. Nevertheless, it’s essential to share your own content to drive users to your site. If your website only consists of a few pages, most of which are focused on sales, then your content will get old very quickly, possibly losing your followers. Each Facebook post or tweet about one of your blog posts is another chance for you to increase the number of leads coming to your website. Your blog posts provide you with new content to share on your own social media pages. Not only that, but visitors will also have something to share with their own accounts. 

Strengthen Your Own Expertise

Ideally, your business blog will turn into a go-to website for purchasing a specific product or researching your particular service or industry. Your blog can help you become a respected authority in your industry, helping to gain your target audience’s trust. Trust turns potential customers into actual customers and possibly into loyal ones. For entrepreneurs just starting their business, gaining customers’ trust is especially important. Writing about your industry or service will also help keep your business on its toes. It requires you to stay on top of changes in your industry and dig into and prove your knowledge.

Grow Your Email List 

Sure, email marketing can be an excellent strategy to stay in customers’ minds. However, getting your audience to sign up for your emails can often be tricky. This is where your blog can help you. Most people aren’t subscribing to emails for a website that’s pretty much all sales oriented. If people who come across your website find your blog informative and interesting, they will be far more likely to sign up for your weekly newsletters and engage with your website’s content.

Email marketing is a quick and simple way to remind people to come back to your website, or at the very least, keep your business in their memory. It also typically shows higher conversion rates than social media. With your email list, you can share your new content, promotions, or any other information about your business to a list of potential or current customers in a more direct way. You can also use your email list to see what works with your customers. How? Through the various tracking and reporting features available with most email marketing tools. 

As a business owner, especially an entrepreneur, you need a blog. A blog can significantly impact your search engine rankings. It can also provide countless content for your social media efforts. Furthermore, a blog offers you a chance to build an email list. All of this helps increase traffic to your website. The more information you post to your blog, the more you’ll appear as an authority on your product or industry. This leads to potential customers gaining more trust in your business and eventually transforming them from visitors to customers. 

Share your favorite blogs in the comments below. We’d also love to hear some of your suggestions on your favorite blog topics! 

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