So, you’ve jumped that virtual hurdle of creating your own website. Is that the end of it?
The short answer is no.
Part of owning a quality website as a business owner is continued maintenance. Regularly updating your website is a sign to people that your business is still current, relevant, and open for customers. Websites that are built and then abandoned give the same idea to the consumer that walks by a brick-and-mortar store and sees that the lights are out and the door is locked. It makes them think you’re not around.
Maintenance is the best way to make sure that the investment you’ve made in building your website returns results and sales. In fact, websites that are consistently updating their content see even better results, including up to 55% more visitors and 67% more leads through their webpage.
This begs the question: What should a business owner do to show their business is breathing, thriving, and ready for clients? Does that mean we need to overhaul the site on a regular basis?
For many small businesses, the best way to show the world that your company is here, open, and live is to implement a blog. Beyond the common reasons of why you should start a blog on your business site– establishing yourself as an expert in your field, garnering trust with your clients, and increasing SEO click traffic– a blog may be advantageous to your business in unexpected ways.
1. A Blog Shows Signs of Life (and Humanity!)
As AI technology becomes more widely used and accepted, the average consumer has become more skeptical of the authenticity of websites, services, and businesses. If something seems off, it scares potential clients away. The best way around this is to let your personality and humanity shine through. This partially goes into furthering the voice of your brand, but it goes a long way in helping a client feel secure in giving you their business, thus landing you more jobs and sales.
Especially for a small business, it’s important to get your personality out there. What sets you apart from all the other businesses in your niche? What sets you apart from your larger, corporate competitors? At the end of the day, building rapport with the client is vital to sales on the small business level. If a consumer can feel that personal connection to you through conversations, transactions, and your online voice, the odds increase that they will come to you for your product or service. A blog gives you the ability to build that rapport on a much broader scale.
Marybeth Rajotte-Schreck, a wedding photographer located on Long Island, says:
“Blogging is an essential part of my marketing strategy… People definitely connect with you better and are more likely to want to reach out to a photographer who they feel would be a good fit for their personality.”
Not only that, but an ongoing blog shows that your business is moving and shaking! It shows that you know what you’re talking about, you’re a source that can be trusted, and you’re active in your industry.
2. A Blog Opens the Door for Partnerships and Collaborations
One of the best ways to widen your audience is to leverage a relationship with another business in a complimentary industry and get in front of their clientele. In the real world, these partnerships might look like a local winery getting their wines in front of more people by partnering with a mom-and-pop restaurant in town with food and wine pairings. A community artist might be able to sell their work in a café or a neighborhood market.
This sort of collaboration is not exclusive to in-person business dealings. If anything, it’s even more prevalent in the online space because the potential to reach more people is more far-reaching. A business running a blog has a better platform and more opportunity to work with influencers, brands, and freelancers to cross-sell and promote.
You can run contests or giveaways with a fellow small business owner, promoting each other on each other’s platforms. You can collaborate with an influencer to get your product out to more people. You can cross-promote by co-hosting webinars, creating joint content, or running cross-promotional campaigns. Allow a relevant partnership to guest post on your blog to boost SEO.
A blog will let other businesses that want to work with you know that you’re present, tech-savvy, and open to innovation. A successful blog is a valuable platform and the bigger it is, the more people and businesses will notice and want to work together.
3. A Blog Allows You to Address FAQs and Go Into Greater Detail on Common Customer Concerns
Chances are, you run into common questions with clients looking into your business. Every business owner does, especially if your business is in an industry that comes with a wealth of information that the common person wouldn’t really have. A blog is a great way to take one of those frequently asked questions and fully flesh out the answer with all the thought-processes behind why that is.
This works for businesses where the average clientele needs an advisor to navigate the service, like insurance or real estate; but it also lends itself just as well to creative products where the client doesn’t consider all the details that go into production, like in catering or graphic design.
Ultimately, a blog will not only prove to clients just how knowledgeable you are in your field, but it will also show your willingness to take time and explain things to people who want to know more. Plus, you can show a lot of the behind-the-scenes processes that go into pricing and quality of your service, allowing the client to see the amount of work and thought that goes into what you do.
Most business owners that are iffy about starting a blog on their site have the same concerns: How will I come up with what to write about?
Reddit user FutureCopywriting adds some good points in why a blog is useful in establishing a business and driving sales:
“For small businesses, blogs are good to create a paper trail of content with high-impact value that solves the reader’s problem. I would also put a soft offer in every blog if you want to increase cash flow.”
The best place to pull your topics from are your most common questions from clients and go from there. Use your blog to persuade your potential clients as to why you are the best provider to work with. Share your knowledge and educate. Guide them towards the right product or service and possibly include a call to action at the end of the post that drives readers towards booking an appointment, contacting a representative, or submitting info for a quote.
A blog doesn’t have to be long text posts just to fill space and increase SEO. It can also be an opportunity to feed clients back into the business and persuade casual shoppers and researchers to get into your sales pipeline.
4. A Blog Allows You More Ownership Over Your Content
What about social media? Isn’t a blog a more complicated version of a Facebook post or a TikTok video?
The answer is: it depends.
The caveat to social media is that things easily get lost. It’s not simple to revisit or link back to a post you made three years ago on Facebook. And most people aren’t going to scroll back that far on your Instagram page for content they don’t even know is there.
But with a blog, there is an easily searchable archive that backlogs all your previous posts, so your content has greater longevity, especially if you utilize good keywords and maximize the SEO on each post so that each individual post can lead web users back to your site.
Celia Werner, the owner of a small business in content creation, social media strategies, and video producing, sheds light on why you can’t depend solely on social media as an effective strategy:
“Blogs create an experience where the reader has a curated set of material to read or watch. This creates a predictable place that the reader knows they can return to over and over again, while also bringing traffic to the small business’ website. When people create social media posts the way that algorithms disperse content doesn’t always make it so that the piece of content reaches the intended audience. It is also more saturated so the demand for new material to keep at the top of the feed is more competitive.”
Social media posts are good for updating current clients, making announcements, or driving relevant promotions, but once that content is pushed down your feed, it loses its value to you. A blog post’s usefulness doesn’t wear off so quickly.
5. A Blog Increases Your Business’ Reach Beyond Your Current Clientele
In the same vein, social media accounts do more for people that already follow you rather than potential clients that are looking for what you offer.
Reddit user elvinmendoza says:
“Having a personal website has also helped me improve my online reputation and visibility since I have a common name. It makes it easier for people to find me on search engines and social media.”
Remember, the reason you created your business website in the first place was so that more people would find you and choose you to meet their needs. A blog simply amplifies your ability to do that.
Because blog posts can be optimized for SEO, they are a better tool in driving more visibility to your website and therefore, your business. Social media can’t compete in the same way. Sure, there are hashtags that you can add to your post, but those hashtags only provide hits from people searching on that specific platform. Since blog posts are posted on a website and aren’t exclusive to any specific platform, they are searchable across the whole internet, giving you a wider range to reach potential clients.
6. A Blog Can Be a Stress Relief for Small Business Owners
Being a business owner is stressful. With all the things you have to worry about from start to finish, maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t want to have to add ANOTHER thing to my to-do list.”
But a business blog might be a great outlet where the business owner can express their thoughts, share experiences, and connect with others.
“My blog is mostly cathartic for me,” says Reddit user pjflanagan, “I don’t think it has helped me gain employment opportunities. To me it’s nice to talk about projects I’ve worked on as a hobby, and kinda give them a final resting place.”
Along with being able to share your invaluable knowledge and experience, a blog would be a great way to share personal stories of challenges faced by the company, interesting customer interactions, and anecdotes that can both be therapeutic to the business owner and resonate with potential clients.
Don’t look at a blog as yet another thing you have to juggle as a small business owner, but rather an avenue in which you can reconnect with your reasons why you do what you do and help invest in yourself as the owner.
When is a Blog NOT Appropriate for Your Business?
Of course, there is always the exception to the rule. Sometimes, by nature of the business, it doesn’t really make sense to have a blog on your website. If any of the below applies to your company, then you may find that the benefits do not outweigh the added effort.
1. You Really Do Have No Time and a Blog Would Have No Business Potential
If you, as the business owner, do not have time to maintain a blog or create the posts, and you have no one on your staff that is able to effectively do it for you, then now may not be the time you want to invest in launching a blog. Good and effective things take time, so if you’re already at capacity it may be better to pass on blogging.
In the same vein, if a blog would add no value to your business or would do nothing in order to drive potential clients into paying customers, then it may just be a practice that doesn’t apply to you.
A blog takes time and a clear, concise angle. Without those, your blog will appear flippant, unfocused, and scattered. You will need definitive goals and topics to elaborate on, otherwise the blog could have an undesired impact.
2. Your Audience is Hyper-Local and Limited
To leverage a blog into sales, your business has to be applicable and accessible to anyone that comes across it. If you live in New York, and a client wants your product or service in Seattle, then you’re going to have to be able to ship your product or deliver your service via the internet– otherwise it’s a lost sale.
A neighborhood dry cleaner would have no use for a blog because he is serving people in his immediate community. There is not a lot of education needed for a client to choose him as their dry cleaner beyond an internet search to see where they are located and some reviews from prior clients.
The main point is to know your audience and their demographics. If your target customers don’t typically use the internet or read blogs, then this tactic is probably not for you.
3. You’ve Cornered Your Market
If you’re operating in a low-competition, niche industry where your ideal client only has a very finite amount of companies to choose from, then online visibility isn’t that important. Odds are, your potential customers have either already found you or know how to get in contact already. This works for manufacturers and producers of niche products where the buyers come from a small pool of people. It wouldn’t make sense to invest the time and effort into creating content in this way.
4. You’re Only in Business Seasonally
Say you’re a small waterpark on the boardwalk of a summer beach town or a pop-up Halloween costume store. You wouldn’t need to get online in a major way. Those types of businesses are open a few months out of the year and then either close until the next season or move out at the end of their lease.
In these types of situations, the general public don’t need convincing or to do research to come and shop or spend time. The nature of seasonal services is to maximize your time in the season you’re open and then quickly close up shop until next time, and chances are, a blog wouldn’t be a great method of pushing people back into your business.
In order for a blog to be a successful business tool, it has to be focused and consistent. Once you’ve found your reason and made your plan for operating a blog on your business site, you have to be habitual and consistent with posting content on it. Blogs are built over time with frequency. The odds are that you won’t see immediate changes overnight, and the impact in your sales metrics may take time.
Most blogs and web builders will allow you to measure clicks, traffic, and conversions, so as long as you are committed to upkeeping it and creating quality content for your web visitors, a blog would be an invaluable tool to add to your website and drive sales back into your small business.
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