Is blogging dead?

The answer is a big No! Blogging isn’t dead, it’s alive and kicking.

Does your organization want to start a blog, but you’re still searching for the best reasons?

Have you ever thought of the value a blog can bring to your business?

I understand that most of you find blogging to be challenging as it involves time-consuming tasks like content planning and content creation. Over the years, I’ve been continuously suggesting small and medium businesses start a blog. Almost 90% of the business owners I’ve met said: “No” and the 10% that said “Yes” fail to continuously publish articles to their blog.

Here are the top reasons why businesses do not start a blog and publish content regularly:

1. Don’t have a content marketing plan
2. Don’t have enough resources to work on content
3. Don’t know what to publish
4. Not willing to allocate time
5. Don’t know whether it will bring us a good return

Struggle no more. You’re about to find out some of the best reasons to let go of all your excuses and start a blog right away.

13 Reasons to Start a Blog For Your Business Today

In this blog post, you will discover the 13 crucial reasons why you should start a blog for your business. I hope that after digesting these top reasons, you’ll make the right move in starting a blog.

Before moving on to the reason, let’s check out some of the fantastic stats on blogging:

• Businesses that blog experience twice as much email traffic as businesses that don’t
• 72% of online marketers describe that content creation is their most effective SEO strategy
• Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to have a positive ROI on their efforts.
• 57% of marketers say they’ve gained customers specifically through blogging
• 60% of B2B marketers struggle with creating engaging content.
• 87% of buyers give more credence to content that’s shared by an industry leader

Source: Ultimate List of Blogging Statistics and Facts – Optinmonster

Blogging increases traffic to your website

Publishing quality content on your blog helps your site to attract traffic from various digital marketing channels. You will gain new visitors because of the content you’ve published. 90% of your visitors are not searching for your brand or company name. They’re searching for information that can solve their problems. If you have the information that they are looking for, you’re expanding your reach to a bigger target audience.

But, you need to remember that increasing traffic to your site takes time and an effective content marketing plan. It’s more like an investment. You can’t expect a return on your investment in a few months. The same goes for blogging. You need at least 6 months of consistent blogging schedule to expect the best results.

If you’re looking for the best resources to learn how to increase your blog traffic, check out the following links:

• 13 Proven Tactics to Increase Your Blog Traffic
• How to Increase Your Blog Traffic -The Easy Way (27 Proven Tips)

Blogging positions your business as an authority in the industry

Do you know the one thing that well-known business blogs have in common?

The blog audience trusts the companies because they are consistent in publishing valuable content about their industry. Potential customers are always in search of credible and experienced companies to purchase their products or hire them for a particular service.

But you need to make sure that the blog topics are relevant to your industry. Don’t provide too many personal details which detract from a professional business blog.

Blogging attracts potential customers to your sales funnel

When your potential customers visit your website, they are not going to purchase your products right away. The path to purchase is no longer linear with the rapid growth of technology.

Consumers are making extensive research before purchasing any product. Information regarding the product of their choice is online today and the best part they are even able to compare them with the alternatives.

When you start publishing quality blog posts, you’re attracting your potential customers to your sales funnel. It’s a passive method to provide valuable information regarding your product and services without being sales-oriented.

Whether you’re targeting businesses or consumers, blog posts have the ability to develop among your target audience, ultimately pull them into the sales funnel.

Blogging helps to rank higher on search engines

Search engines love evergreen content.

Blogging helps boost your site’s ranking on search engines like Google. This is because when you start publishing quality blog posts, your website starts ranking for multiple keywords.

If your business is about organic cosmetic products, you can start adding blog posts incorporating the keyword. You can also include key phrases related to your primary keyword (e.g. organic skincare products), which can help you grow your target audience.

Many studies show that it’s about the quality of blog posts published that matters and not the number of blog posts.

If you ask me, why don’t you do both?

Focus on both quality and quantity as it will have a great influence on search engine rankings.

Blogging educates your potential customers

A blog is a knowledge base of your business. It allows you to communicate to your potential customers and continuously educate them about your products and services. And the best part is that your prospects have can read them anytime they want.

Educating is the most powerful tool to develop trust rather than going out fully on selling your products and services. According to Hubspot, companies that have a blog as part of their content marketing mix get 67% more leads than those that don’t.

When you choose to educate your prospects, you already know your customer’s situation and provide accurate answers to their questions. It also shows that you know who they are and you care about them.

Blogging improves your social visibility

Social sharing is critical for content promotion. Although you’ll be getting visibility on search engines, you don’t want to miss out on other digital marketing channels for sure. Maximizing your blogging efforts will bring you great results for years to come.

Your target audience might spend more time on social media channels compared to search engines. When you have blog posts worth sharing on social media networks, it will be an added advantage for your business. Rather than sharing short messages on social media networks, you can share your blog post and attract your audience.

Social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are some of the best places to share your content and improve your company’s social visibility.

Blogging increases your brand awareness

Once you’ve positioned your company as an authority or expert in your industry, your prospects will start developing trust with your brand. Once your brand is visible on search engines and social media channels, people will start to recognize your brand.

Blogging has always been the best way to increase your brand awareness. As mentioned earlier in other reasons, improving your site’s visibility on multiple channels depends on the content you publish on your business blog. If you don’t have any information to offer your audience, they will get turned off and your business will not get the attention it needs.

Blogging helps to develop a community around your business

You can promote your business with various paid advertising tools. But, people are looking to have a deep connection with the brands they associate with. Consumers today are more excited about the experience they will have compared to the actual products and services.

Developing a community around your business and associating them in your blog posts will help your organization to develop an unbreakable bond. You need to understand that nowadays people are keen to know the experience they will get using your products and services rather than looking at the benefits alone.

Blogging increases inbound links

Your blogging efforts can help your website increase the opportunity to earn inbound links from other websites, which offers a positive impact on your SEO efforts.

Having highly informative blog posts on your site increases search visibility and makes it easier to be found on search engines. Other brands will link to your content if they find it helpful. In some scenarios, they will even regard your post as one of the top resources available on the internet for a particular topic.

As long your blog posts are offering great value for the readers, more and more sites would want to link to you.

Blogging helps to understand your customers better

Having a blog can help you identify additional insights about your audience. Thus, you will gain a deeper understanding of what actually your potential customers are looking for.

If you haven’t integrated any web analytics, do it now. You can get started for free with Google Analytics. Google Analytics will help you find out the most popular blogs posts.

For example, I have a few blog posts that my audience enjoy and you can check them out on the screenshot below:

Having a deeper understanding of your prospects will help you craft better blog posts and make adjustments to your products and services to suit their needs.

Blogging helps to gain a competitive advantage in your industry

Most companies ignore having a blog for their business.

Do you want to be one of those companies completely ignoring blogging initiatives?

If you want to gain a competitive advantage in your industry, you got to show your expertise and credibility by publishing valuable content on your business blog.  Having a blog will certainly help you differentiate your company from your competitors.

Blogging reduces your marketing cost

As a whole, inbound marketing is cheaper compared to traditional outbound marketing. Blogging is one of the most cost-effective inbound marketing strategies.  According to Hubspot, 82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI from their inbound marketing efforts. Another study shows that inbound leads cost 61% less on average compared to outbound leads.

Having a blogging strategy in place will help your organization to reduce their marketing cost on outbound marketing. Investing a significant amount of time and resources in blogging will produce a positive return.

Blogging is one of the best content marketing technique

Blogging remains one of the best content marketing strategy that over the decade. When it comes down to providing valuable insights for your audience, nothing is better than long-form content (2,000 words or more).

Although there are other contents like videos and infographics preferred by marketers today, still it depends.

A study conducted by Databox shows that 74% of respondents said that videos are more effective than blog posts for generating leads.

In reality, videos may be better in generating leads in certain scenarios. But there are situations where blog posts perform better than videos in generating leads.

If you have enough resources, you can take advantage of both content formats. Most successful companies are using a combination of both. But, if you’re just starting, blogging should be your ideal choice.

A business blog represents your company. It helps your customers to learn more about your products and services before purchasing them.

If you choose the maximize your blogging efforts, stay assured that it can act as a catalyst for converting your visitors to paying customers.

So what you’re waiting for?

Start your business blog today or start publishing valuable blog posts to your existing blog if you’ve abandoned it for too long.