Published on September 26th, 2017 | by Guest

10 Reasons why every Business Needs a Blog Today

WordPress is not just a blogging platform – over the years, it has evolved into a content management system (CMS). Although most people only use it to create simple blogs, you can use it to create fully functional websites as well as mobile applications.

Creating a WordPress blog has never been this easy and this is the reason why 22.5% of all sites on the internet (including LinkedIn, Sony, Time Magazine, CNN, and eBay) are powered by WP. Other than the great features, other benefits of WP are:

It is open-source, meaning it is free to download, install, use, and modify (you will only incur web hosting costs)
Being open-source means there is a big community, meaning you will always get patches, plugins, updated documentation, and interesting themes.
WP is easy to use and manage and there are many resources available should you require guidance
It can handle any media file (it has built-in support for audio, images, documents and video content)
WP is quite safe and secure

Most businesses today have blogs. There are over 150 million blogs today. There are several reasons why every business needs a blog today.

1. Generating Traffic

Blogging helps bring people to your site. A blog will be one more indexed webpage on your site, meaning one more opportunity for your content to show up in SERPs. If you have great content, people will visit your blog and you can include a link to your site. Blogging is a natural and cheap way of bringing traffic to your site through referrals and sharing of your content on visitors’ social media profiles (through social badges). Alternatives such as paid ads and email lists are quite expensive.

2. Conversion of Traffic into Leads

Once you get traffic from a blog, you can convert this traffic into leads by adding a lead-generating CTA (call-to-action) on every blog post. Take advantage of content assets such as free eBooks, free fact sheets, free whitepapers, free trials, and free webinars to exchange info with your visitors. You can also use your blog to promote your products, increasing the chances of converting blog visits to hits. You should, however, not be too directly promotional as this could push visitors away. If you are new to website promotion, this is how traffic-to-lead conversions works:

A visitor visits your blog
He sees a CTA for a free offer
He clicks on the CTA and gets to a landing page, which contains a form that they fill with their email address and other information
Visitor submits the information and gets the free offer

3. Brings you out as an Authority

A good blog will bring you out as an authority in your niche. Create content that solves your target customers’ problems and they will always come to your blog whenever they need certain information. Although “establishment as an authority” is a fluffy metric,it certainly works and people who see you as an authority are more likely to buy whatever you are selling and to recommend your blog and products/services on social media or through word of mouth.

4. Targeted Traffic

A good blog will bring you targeted traffic because people who come to your site or your business premises will know exactly what you have to offer. Your blog posts will have answered common questions that prospects would ideally ask, meaning less engagement during conversion.

5. Long-term Results

Research shows that up to 70% of trafficto blogs in a given month come from posts that were not published in that month. A blog, therefore, brings you traffic even when you are not generating content. Although not every blog post will fit into what has come to be known as ‘compounding’ posts, the more the blogs you write, the higher the chance of getting such posts.

6. Humanizing your Brand

Even the most carefully crafted website (a homepage or an about us page) cannot compete with a blog when it comes to showing the personal side of your site. With a blog, you have the opportunity to share what your team is passionate about and to touch on issues that are of concern to your prospects. You will be writing a blog in your own voice and personality, which helps build trust and increases the likeability quotient of the brand.

7. Supporting your Social Media Initiatives

It is very difficult to maintain a social media presence without high-quality, unique content. It is not enough to share other people’s content. A blog solves this problem, allowing you to take advantage of social media marketing. A blog also provides content for email newsletters.

8. Search Engine Optimization

With a blog, you can include inbound links to your website. Other than helping bring referral traffic, inbound link building also remains one of the most effective search engine optimization (SEO) tactics. Blogging also helps your SEO efforts in that it gives you long-tail search queries – something that is very difficult to do with a website because the queries will not be natural. Keyword optimization is an important factor in SEO.

9. Leveling the Playing Field

Your bigger competitors might have a flashier website that will wow everybody who visits, but you can compete with them on your blog because this will greatly depend on your creativity. Outdo your competition by producing quality, informative blogs.

10. Customer Engagement

A blog allows you to engage with your customers through the comments section. This is important because you will get valuable feedback that will help you in product development. It is a great outlet for customers who have an issue with you – you can avoid having your brand’s image tarnished on social media. Do not delete negative comments – embrace them as they humanize your brand.

Google loves fresh content and you will therefore increase your chances of ranking high in SERPs if you run a blog. Blogging also brings you out as an authority in your industry, helps build trust, allows you to leverage on SMM, and increases conversion rates among other benefits. Write blogs regularly and consider inviting guest bloggers to get maximum benefits from your blog.

Tags: blog, business, marketing, reasons, today