Should My Small Business Have a Blog?

Many small business owners believe that writing a blog post is a waste of time in the early days of starting a website. They’re busy, and most of them don’t think writing a couple of hundred words about their services or industry insights would help them grow their business. They are, to put it bluntly, wrong.

Here are a few of the positive ways something as simple as a blog can have on your business.

Branding, Reputation & Getting Yourself Known

Blogs are a perfect way to build your business’s brand identity. Do you want to be known as just some other gardening service among the dozens on the internet? Or do you want to be remembered as that down-to-earth gardener? That gardener that has helpful tips for keeping the rest of your yard in perfect condition.

When you start blogging and presenting your blogs on your site, people begin to find out more about you. While About Us pages and sections are great, giving your visitors more and more to read helps them develop a connection with you and your business. You know that you’re friendly and fun, but without a blog, do your readers know?

Better yet, if you’re producing content that people are commenting on and sharing, your readers will start to feel like they’re part of a small community and they’ll turn to you for more information and insights. Position yourself as an industry expert. You don’t just offer your products or services but you also offer your expertise. Blogs should provide valuable and high-quality insights and knowledge.

Blog readers who trust your advice will trust you when you give your product or service recommendations. And when you give them quality hints and tricks, you’ll stay top of mind when they are, for example, needing a gardener who they know is going to give them a quality service. Because they already trust and know you.

Our Advice:

Blogs with tips and tricks, the latest news or trends, or just your own on-the-job experiences and stories, all help to build that reputation and relationship. So think of providing content that is helpful, informative, and may even encourage further discussion. Make sure not to make your blog posts too promotional or people won’t want to read them.

Search Engine Optimization

Now, who would I be if I didn’t mention the big SEO? This is a website article after all. Anything we do to our website impacts SEO but luckily for you blogs only help improve your ranking.

As mentioned above, the goal of the blog isn’t just to spit out some words and call it a day. It’s to create something that people will want to come back and read. And each time they come back for more informative content, your SEO improves. 

Each time you write a new blog post, that’s another page that will trigger crawling by search engines. Think of search engines crawlers like a customer at a farmers market. All they want is something they can bite into. And they love anything that’s fresh.

So if they come up to your stall and you don’t have much fruit, and the last piece of fruit you have is starting to look a bit old, when someone asks them, “Hey where should I go to get some produce?” they aren’t going to put your stall on the top of that list. But if you’re posting blogs each month or each week and putting them on display, you can bet that search engine is going to notice. And your ranking will start to increase.

The SEO benefits of starting a blog alone make it worth the time. Blogs give you access to more content pages to increase your site’s overall SEO.

For example, dropping in some keywords that relate to your business into your blog can boost your SEO score.

So can adding some internal links. So when you’re talking about the “Top 10 Must Haves in Your Camping Emergency Kit”, you can suggest one of your products and link them straight to the product page.

There are many more ways that blogging can improve your SEO but we’ll go more in-depth into those another time and give you the best methods for getting that done.

Generating Leads

Once you start blogging, you may find that new visitors are drawn to your site just to read your blog post and then from there they find out about your business. The more blog posts you create, the higher the chance of visitors to your site converting into new customers.

Blogs are also a great way to encourage people to join your mailing list. At the end of some of your blog posts, you might encourage people to subscribe to your monthly newsletter. Your newsletter can be a way for people who enjoy your blog to enjoy more from you. And from there you can provide them updates on new products or services, promotions and/or discounts. Building your customer database through blog content demonstrates that you as a business focus on value. It shows that you’re not just trying to sell them something but that you want to share with them your professional wisdom and help them solve their problems and achieve their goals.

Start That Blog!

While there’s no denying that a blog requires time and effort, creating a blog helps you have a better online business presence. Blogging helps you build your business as a brand, build your SEO and even lets you get to share a bit of what you love to do. In the coming weeks, we’ll share some tips on what makes a good SEO friendly blog and what you can do to get started.