If digital marketing isn’t your strong suit, you may think of cooking, fashion, and lifestyle when you think of blogs. Some of you may even imagine a young teenager furiously typing at a keyboard with cheese dust-covered fingers, but blogging has come a long way since the early 2000s. Lifestyle and fashion blogs are well and truly alive, but business blogging has become a staple component of digital marketing for small businesses. Implementing a blog on your business’ website can drive traffic, turn this traffic into leads, allow your customers to provide feedback, and crease social exposure.
- Drive more traffic to your website
In short, the more blogs you write, the more chance you have of showing up on a search engine. Sounds easy right? That’s because it kind-of is! Every time you upload a blog to your website, that is one more indexed page on your website. A recent study found that if you have more pages indexed by Google, your website will ultimately get more leads. This means your website will become more and more Search Engine Optimised, and hopefully, one day make its way onto the first page of Google (that’s the dream right!). You can learn more about SEO and keywords here.
- Turn that traffic into leads
So your ideal audience has found your page, now what? Now you want to turn that traffic into leads, and you can do this through your blogs. One of the worst things you can do for your business is to allow your traffic to leave your website without turning it into a lead. Once the visitor has found what they are looking for, it’s your blog’s job to make them stay. This can be as easy as adding a ‘call-to-action’ to the bottom of your blog post. This can be an offer to your free e-book, workshops, or resources, or even just a prompt to sign up to your mailing list, and BANG you have a lead! (You will notice call-to-actions on every blog you read now).
- Google loves backlinks
In this blog, we have made sure to include two backlinks already. One of these links to one of our existing blogs. While this establishes authority and credibility, the real reason you often see this done is because Google loves inbound links (hyperlinks that go back to your site). For example, if a business in the future writes about how a blog can change your business’ online presence, they may use this blog to backlink, which in turn will make our blog rank higher on Google.
- Let’s talk two-way communication
Your business cannot exist inside a vacuum. The world – digital and business – is constantly evolving. Your customers are making consumer decisions every single day, and it’s your job to keep up to date with them. Allowing your customers to leave comments on your blog posts opens up communications between you – the business – and your customers. If your customers aren’t happy with the information on your post, they can tell you. If they are, they can tell you. This further opens up a discussion between you and your audience, which allows you to stay on top of your feedback and make changes accordingly.
- Social media, exposure, and content
This one may seem simple, but social media and blogs work hand and hand to enrich your audience’s experience. Once you have published a blog on your website, you have additional content to promote on your social media. Your blog is now on not one, but two platforms. Share it again, and it’s on another platform again. This increases the chances of driving traffic to not just your blog, but also your website.
You may be thinking Okay so I need a blog, where do I start? We recommend starting off simple! Tips and tricks, listicles and how-to blogs always rank well in Google. They are always a good place to start, and as you learn more about SEO, you can start to write specific blogs for your business’ website.
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