The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing

With all the different digital marketing tactics out there, from social media marketing to email marketing to PPC advertising, businesses tend to neglect blogging in favor of other marketing strategies, doubting that blogging is worth the time or the effort.

However, this could not be further from the truth. Blogging is a crucial content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that works in tandem with (and enhances) your other marketing tactics.

Blogging is an intuitive and relatively inexpensive way to boost your online presence, domain authority, and status as an industry leader. The following statistics illustrate the importance of blogging.

• 61% of US consumers have purchased an item based on a blog post.
• B2B companies that blog regularly receive 67% more leads than companies that do not blog regularly.
• Websites with blogs receive 97% more inbound links than websites without blogs.

Let’s take a look at some of the significant benefits of blogging.

Blogging Drives Traffic to Your Website

One of the golden rules of blogging is to provide content that offers value to your readers. Remember, you’re writing for people, not robots. While it is important to optimize your content to appease the Google robots, robots are not looking to your content for answers; people are. You want to attract people to your website by delivering high-quality, personable content that addresses people’s pain points.

You can determine these pain points by taking a step back and analyzing your relationships with your customers. Why do they come to you? What are some of the most frequently asked questions you receive? What makes your target audience’s lives more difficult? Address these topics in your blog posts!

Here’s an example…

Let’s say you’re a regional bank that offers lending services to small businesses. Small businesses come to you looking for loans, but you have to turn many of them away because they do not qualify for a small business loan and, therefore, pose too significant a risk.

Wouldn’t it be great if you had an in-depth, 2,000-word article titled “Why Many Small Businesses Don’t Qualify for Loans” that explains why this is the case? Or, better yet, an article titled “How to Qualify for a Small Business Loan” that you can immediately show to businesses that do not qualify? What a great resource!

Not only that, but “how to qualify for a small business loan” sounds like something someone would search for on Google, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be awesome if you had a great resource about qualifying for small business loans sitting on the first page of Google, just waiting to bring those searchers to your website to answer their questions?

Wait a minute… that’s what blogging can do for you? Wow!

According to SEMrush, in July of 2022, the keyword “how to qualify for a small business loan” receives an average of 480 searches per month on Google. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you had an extra 480 small businesses searching for small business lenders visiting your website every month? Gosh, I wonder if there was a relatively inexpensive digital marketing tactic that could help you accomplish that…

This is what blogging does. It increases your website traffic by luring in Google searchers with tasty, delicious answers, high-quality and informative content, and relevant information. And I promise you; it works for more than just regional banks! That was just an example I came up with on the spot. Any business stands to benefit from publishing content that addresses their target audience’s pain points.

Not only does blogging drive traffic to your site…

Blogging Can Also Turn Traffic into Leads!

Now that you have all this traffic coming to your website thanks to your blog posts, how do you convert that traffic into leads? You can do this with a call to action (CTA).

Every blog post should have at least one CTA, and people tend to place their CTAs at the end of their blog posts. Your CTA can be something as simple as “Think your small business has what it takes to qualify for a loan? Take a look at our small business lending services and give us a call at (XXX) XXX-XXXX” (referring to our previous regional bank example, of course).

In this example CTA, you would want to link the term “small business lending services” to your website’s small business lending services page (if you don’t have one, make one!). On this service page, your visitors can dive deeper into small business loans and learn more about your services. When your visitors move from your blog post to your service page, they are moving one step further in the sales cycle and one step closer to becoming a lead.

Make sure your online forms and the phone number and email address you use for sales inquiries are easily accessible to anyone visiting your site. You can also include valuable resources, such as infographics, fact sheets, webinars, or coupons, in your CTAs. You can set it so that people have to give you their email address to receive these resources. Now you can reach out to them or add them to an email list!

Blogging Enhances SEO Efforts

SEO is a crucial marketing strategy in the digital age. You can use SEO to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) by complying with a handful of key criteria. SEO is not something you can ignore, and blogging is a critical part of it.

Informative and well-placed content can result in higher search engine rankings based on the keywords you’ve been targeting. However, having high-quality web copy doesn’t necessarily guarantee you a ranking on the first page.

Google ranks web pages according to their authority, which means you need to establish your website as an authority by having inbound links from relevant pages on other websites. Not only do you need a blog to do this, but your blog must also have enough sway that other bloggers or businesses are happy to link to your content.

SEO is a very densely layered subject. There are lots of companies that use SEO to rank higher by creating content that is very spammy and full of keywords to help them rank. However, Google has become wise to these cheap tactics and penalizes websites for what is known as “Black Hat SEO.”

One of the fundamentals of SEO is high-quality link building. Without a blog, you will struggle to establish yourself as an authority. A blog gives you the ideal platform to create content that is shared organically by others interested in your content and industry.

Blogging Is Very “Malleable”

Blogging is an excellent way to discuss lots of varied topics, but because you have to create regular content, a blog post can be the perfect template for other aspects of your marketing strategy. For example, a great blog can be broken down and repurposed to become newer blog posts, videos, podcasts, or social media posts.

Every time you create a new blog post, you’re creating content that is shareable on social media, which will expose your business to a new audience. For companies that are struggling with creating social media content on a regular basis, a blog post can provide a great “filler” post that allows you to strengthen your reach. It also brings people to your blog via your social media channels and vice versa.

Blogging Provides an Educational Platform

While blogging is a marketing strategy, you should always aim to educate people by solving their problems and addressing their pain points. You don’t want to come across as salesy or in-genuine in your blog posts. Blog posts are an excellent opportunity to build trust and long-term relationships between you and your target audience. They show your audience that you care about them.

You can determine what your audience is looking for based on their search queries. Thorough keyword research is essential because it gives you insight into what your clients want. Once you understand what they are searching for, blogs provide a comprehensive solution that answers their questions while also linking to your services.

Blogging can also be valuable for the customer service aspect of your business because everything can be there on the blog, which will help you to build out Frequently Asked Questions on your website. For every FAQ you have, you can turn it into a detailed article with a wide variety of media, such as infographics, pictures, or videos.

Blogging Helps You Establish a Brand Voice

It is important that you establish a brand voice for your business so that you are tonally consistent across all of your content. Blogging is the perfect way to do this.

Your blogs should be conversational and approachable, but you can use your blog posts to establish a tone. Maybe you’re striving for an easygoing, relatable persona or maybe you prefer an informed, professional approach. Either way, you can accomplish this with blogging.

The conversation is an essential part of what will bring customers to your business. If they recognize they are dealing with people who are human and easy to approach, they are more inclined to spend time with you and buy your products. Blog posts are an excellent way to illustrate your passion for your business and industry.

Blogging Builds a Network within Your Industry

When businesses think about blogging, they predominantly focus on customers (as they should), but blogging can also be an incredible networking opportunity. Part of SEO best practices involves having other websites link to your content, but to truly build a network, you should aim to establish your blog as a trustworthy and leading resource in your industry.

Analyze the content your competitors release. Observing what others blog about will help you to remain competitive, but you can also establish strong connections with others, which can result in invites to industry events or extra linked or shared blogs.

Businesses that keep on top of trends in the industry and provide detailed analyses and perspectives will stand out. Thought leadership is something that is highly regarded in many business circles, and a blog is a perfect way to condense your thoughts about trends and provide valuable industry insights.

Blogging Helps You Build Relationships with Customers

You can use a blog as a way to instigate more conversations with customers and clients. A good blog will always stimulate conversation, and one with the opportunity to comment underneath can keep the conversation flowing.

What’s more, interacting with your customers after posting helps to stimulate a solid relationship, much like using social media is a great way to bring people together and comment. You can do exactly the same with blog posts on your website by interacting with them.

This can be very beneficial for your business because rather than commenting via social media, it’s all under the supportive shelter of your website. People that offer comments are more likely going to be customers who have either bought from you before or will in the future.

Therefore, having a good relationship via the blog will help to bring about more personal relationships. You can use this as an opportunity to provide more targeted offers to customers, such as blogs that run competitions.

Blogging Is a Great Driver of Long-Term Results

Blogs posts are your website’s secret weapon. Why? Blog posts will drive traffic to your website months and even years after you first post them. The trick is to create evergreen content: content that stays relevant all year and long after the initial publish date. Although, there’s nothing wrong with seasonal content either. If done correctly, seasonal content will become relevant over and over again with each passing year.

Many people believe that a blog is only worthwhile for a couple of days, but this is simply not the case (as long as you do it right). Relevant, well-written blog posts from websites with high domain authority will rank highly on SERPs and continue to drive traffic for a long time.

And hey, if one of your well-performing blog posts seems to be losing steam or is becoming irrelevant, don’t hesitate to spruce it up a little bit or rewrite it entirely! You can also update blog posts that never gained any traction in the SERPs. Maybe they weren’t written well enough, or you didn’t target the right keywords. Either way, don’t neglect your old posts, regardless of whether they perform well or not!

Not all of your blog posts are going to strike gold. However, if you continue producing high-quality content and keep at it for a long time, you’ll only increase the chances that your content will rank and Google will recognize your website as an authority.

Blogging Is Essential!

If you want to grow your business in this day and age, you absolutely need to have a blog, and you need to commit to growing your blog.

We get it. It can be tough and time consuming, but the rewards are well worth the effort.

However, if you just don’t have the time or the patience, RSM Marketing has you covered. We’re happy to take the responsibility off your plate so that you can focus on doing what your business does best: making customers happy.

With our outsourced marketing department (OMD) services, you’ll receive a full suite of digital marketing tactics (including SEO and blogging) from a team of experts that is dedicated to growing your brand recognition and online presence.

Fill out our form below to speak with one of our digital marketing professionals!