Your website is about more than displaying your products. Adding an active blog establishes your efforts of engaging customers in deeper dialogues.
If you are currently developing a new website for your boating business or are thinking about updating your existing site, then you should include building a blog into your marketing plan. It is a very powerful way to help visitors to discover your areas of expertise and it’s great at helping to build trust.
If you already have a blog embedded into your website, but it is not active, you should start investing time in creating new content. Are you still hesitating? Next, we will discuss 23 reasons why you need a company blog.
1. A Blog Helps Your Site to Be Found in Google
Getting found in Google is a top priority for all online businesses. Having an active, relevant blog can provide a powerful impact on your search engine ranking. New blog posts being placed on your website make Google happy in its quest to find fresh content. The blog tends to stick to a central theme, which means there is going to be a topical keyword density and relevance. The more blog posts you write, the more pages you create for Google to index. These things combine to improve your natural search engine rankings.
2. Create Networking Opportunities
Blog connections can lead to finding interns, suppliers, and partners. You can create networking opportunities you never knew existed. It is not just clients and customers who will find you via your blog but also potential business partners. And if you successfully position yourself as an expert, you may even find that speaking, consulting and writing opportunities come your way too.
3. Drive Traffic to Your Site with a Blog
The search engine friendliness of your blog, plus your promotion of it via social networks, will keep the traffic coming. Ideally, your blog will be on the same domain as your business website and integrated with it.
4. Stand Out From the Crowd
If your competitors don’t blog, this is an opportunity to stand out in your niche. Your business will have a distinct advantage and set you apart from other competitors in your field.
5. Know Your Business and Industry Inside Out
The act of blogging forces you to be clear on your company’s position on certain issues in your industry. Doing research, fact-checking, writing, and re-writing helps you to understand a subject more fully.
6. Reward Employees – Let them Shine.
Shine a spotlight on brilliant employees by featuring their ideas and accomplishments on your blog.
7. Marketing Integration
Turn content from your blog into useful sales and marketing materials. Printed material can be expensive and is often a dead end, but through a blog post, customers can continue investigating and learning. It will always be up to date.
8. Create a Database of Answers on Your
Do you have the same questions asked about your product or service? Blog about frequently asked customer questions. Use links to those posts to save time when answering future questions. It will create a very useful database of answers that will be referred to often.
9. Lots of Opportunities to Recycle Content
This is one of the beauties of having a blog. Your blog content can be cost-effectively repurposed for newsletters, reports, whitepapers, and other publications.
10. Humanize Your Brand
There is probably no more powerful and cost-effective way to show the ‘softer’ human side of your business than storytelling through a blog. It engages the readers and shows them that there are real people behind the professional image of your brand.
11. Sign of Activity
A current blog confirms to visitors and potential clients that your website is updated and relevant. It gives them the confidence that you are spending time learning about the trends in your industry and sharing the information with them.
12. Build Trust
A blog helps you to build trust with your potential customers and clients. Things have changed. Today people trust businesses that they can relate to rather than large faceless organizations. We tend to choose to do business with people we know, like and trust. Your blog is an important way for them to get to know you and your company.
13. Customer Engagement
Creating a dialogue and engaging with your customers can lead to powerful business benefits. Why not have customers contribute to posts? It will help you learn what they are interested in.
14. PR
Tweets and Facebook status updates probably aren’t going to attract the attention of reporters. However, publishing helpful blog posts will. They will be able to see that you have authority in your niche market.
15. Solve Problems
Some companies are using their blogs to crowd-source technical problem-solving. It will become the ‘go-to’ site in the industry and build a huge amount of credibility and trust.
16. New Product Development Ideas
You can test ideas with the blogging community first and use their feedback to help you create the perfect product or service that they want. It is a great research tool and helps you stay closer to what your target audience. This way you would have more probabilities of creating a successful product or service.
17. Market Segmentation
Many companies, especially in high tech, have multiple blogs to reach customers by different interests, demographics and geography.
18. Identify Your Brands Raving Fans
Blog readers may be among your brand’s most powerful fans. These are your best customers and advocates and you need to treat them well. You might even use this as an opportunity to single out fans that could represent your brand online.
19. Blogs Allow for Constant Customer Connection
Calling on customers is expensive. But a blog post can be a little ‘sales call’ every week. It keeps you in touch with them and reminds them why they are using your product or service and that you still care. It is a terrific after-sales strategy.
20. Position Yourself As an Expert in Your Field
Is your company the industry leader? Demonstrate your voice of leadership on your blog. By writing insightful, quality posts, and providing useful information for your community, you can be seen as an expert in your niche.
21. Use Blog Posts to Compile Episodes for a Podcast
Podcasts are becoming more popular as people prefer to listen about topics they are interested in. Many companies are cleverly piecing together blog posts to create several episodes of podcast content. This helps your business show its personality through the recording staff and just be more personable overall.
22. Crisis Management
If you have a blog, you don’t have to rely on the press to get a story straight. Your blog can put the facts out there to defend your brand.
23. Build a Community
A blog is a great starting point for building your online community. Every online business needs a community in order to thrive. It helps build customer relationships and a loyal following for your brand. Once you have a niche community following, you will be able to find a way to monetize them later by selling them products and services that fit with their interests.
Start blogging today…
As you can see, despite being the oldest of the social media platforms, blogging still has so many advantages and has lots to offer.
Think of your company blog as central to the social media content that you share elsewhere, and you will reap the benefits.
A company blog really is a fantastic way to promote your business and engage with your customers and will help you reach a massive audience.
If you would like assistance on creating a new blog or polishing your existing one, our team can help you. We have lots of experience, fantastic ideas and strategies that we can share with you. Give us a call today at 888-928-4587 or fill out a contact form.
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