Whether it’s investing in a training course with a hefty price tag, folding napkins into swans for every table in your restaurant, or staying up until 3 a.m. creating a website from scratch, as a business owner, you do everything you can to help your business succeed. But while you’re busily wearing every hat under the sun, there’s something that often gets placed on the digital back-burner: creating a blog for your business.
If you’ve ever wondered if a business blog is for you, the answer is yes. And with the right blog content, this seemingly small thing could result in big growth.
What is the difference between a blog and a company website?
First things first: What is the difference between a blog and a company website?
A website holds all of your company’s core content. A website contains landing pages filled with various information relating to the company. Basic landing pages for a business website include everything from the:
- Home page: gives the customer an overview and overall feel for your business and what it offers
- About page: highlights the mission, core values, and founding story of your company
- Products or Services pages: uses top-notch product descriptions, these pages expand on the products or services you offer
- Contact page: tells people how to get a hold of you through phone, physical address, email, and social media links
Blogs can be a website of their own or can be housed on a website. Instead of website pages, blogs use blog posts. A blog allows you to provide longer forms of content to educate, entertain, update, and connect with your consumers. While not having a blog on your website won’t doom your business, websites that do have blogs produce an average of 67% more leads per month. And in the business world, more leads equal more potential sales.
Benefits of adding a blog to your business website
Other than increasing the amount of leads per month, adding a blog to your business website has many other benefits.
Boosts SEO
71% of bloggers say that SEO is the most important source of their traffic. SEO, an abbreviation for search engine optimization, essentially helps a website or blog (or any piece of digital content) to gain more visibility in a search engine’s results. When a user searches for a phrase online, search engine “spiders” use specific tools to crawl through millions of digital contents and help them find the best results to give back to the searcher.
Although we might not have the technological super-computer brain of a search engine spider, there are simple, but highly beneficial ways to boost your company’s SEO and online presence.
To elevate your SEO through your blog:
- Add keywords to your blog posts
- Strategically create purposeful filenames and alt tags for your blog images
- Compose blog posts with a higher word count (the ideal blog post content length to boost your chances of social media shares is around 1,500 to 2,000 words)
- Incorporate internal links (links to your own content) and external links (links to other people’s content)
Increases sales and other income
Having a blog on your business website may generate more leads, which sets your business up for more potential sales. With the right blog content, you can help consumers make a decision and persuade them to buy a product they were on the fence about.
For example, if you own a skincare line and a user is debating buying the product, use a blog post to educate them enough to inspire a purchase. Create a blog post that goes into depth about the ingredients, how these ingredients transform the skin, and how this product successfully improved Suzie’s skin and gave her the confidence to step in front of the camera as a television food host.
Another way to improve sales and side income is by incorporating affiliate links throughout your blog posts. When readers click on an affiliate link, it will lead them to a product on an affiliate partner’s platform. If the user purchases the product after clicking on your affiliate link, you will receive a portion of the proceeds. With enough affiliate links, you have the potential to gain side income. Bloggers who earn between $7,500 to $25,000 monthly receive 42.2% of their revenue through affiliate links.
Establishes you as an industry expert
By adding a blog to your business website, you can establish yourself as an industry expert. Use your blog to educate your audience about topics that relate to your business. The more helpful content you post, the more your audience will recognize your business blog as a goldmine of information. In doing so, they’ll use it as a resource they continually come back to and may share your content with friends, family, and colleagues.
Blog content ideas for businesses
Starting a blog starts with a few good pieces of content. To help build a solid foundation for your business blog, here are a few stellar blog content ideas to add to your editorial strategy.
Customer success stories
Sometimes, the most helpful and persuasive tactics to convince an individual to buy a product is to let others convince them for you. Gather customer success stories and create blog posts that expand on how your product or service helped turn this customer’s life around. By hearing how impactful something is from multiple mouths, a potential consumer will be more inclined to believe the value of the product or service.
‘Get to know us’ pieces
Consumers like to know there’s some humanity behind an organization. Use your blog to display Get To Know Us pieces. Feature fun Q&As about your staff, talk about the grueling process behind creating your new storefront, add fun recaps of your company events, and other fun, lifestyle pieces for your audience to get to know the people behind the brand.
Frequently asked questions
Whether on social media, email, or somewhere in between, businesses encounter a hurricane of questions from their audience. One way to establish yourself as an industry expert is to use those frequently asked questions to create blog posts. If you notice that users tend to consistently ask particular questions, write a blog post for each top reoccurring question and offer education, advice, or a product that will help make the audience’s life a little easier.
Guest posts
Want a fresh new perspective for your blog? Collaborate with another industry expert, influencer, or community leader and have them write guest posts for your blog. Highlighting guest writers opens you up to a new audience. To gain the most amount of traffic, agree to promote the blog on both parties’ social media platforms.
Keywords
Another blog content idea is to create articles based on keywords related to your business. Using a keyword search tool, write down popular search terms and use those terms as a starting list for potential blog topics. Not only will you create relevant content for your consumers, inserting in-demand keywords throughout your blog post will increase your SEO.
Get started
Having a blog on your website can only benefit your business. Blogs will level up your SEO game, create more leads, increase sales, and establish your blog as a hub of relevant information. If you’re looking for new blog content ideas, try featuring customer success stories, addressing your consumer’s frequently asked questions, or giving users a sneak peek at what’s behind the curtain.
Maintaining a blog and adding consistent content can be time-consuming. If you find yourself needing a fairy blog godmother, opt for some help! By hiring freelance writers or a content creation agency like ClearVoice, you can find talented writers to create consistent, impactful content and improve your business blog strategy.
