Do you have a tough time understanding why blogging matters?
One thing we hear often from prospective clients or even family and friends who may not understand blogging, is that they simply don’t get it. They can’t understand why blogging matters, how blogging could ever result in a sale, and they want to know why we think it will benefit their business.
The bottom line is that businesses with blogs can outperform competitors without blogs. We’re the secret sauce for the clients we work with, which is why we also don’t work with competitors. Customers, or even prospective clients, feel more of a connection with businesses who share personal stories, pictures, videos, and testimonials online than they feel for a company they find in the Yellow Pages.
Long gone are the days of one pharmacy, one bank, and one insurance company in each town. Competition is fierce. Companies must take positive steps to ensure they stand out from the crowd.
“If you build it, they will come.” – Field of Dreams
Imagine this – you own the best dog-treat bakery in the entire world. You just upgraded from your personal kitchen to a professional workspace with a storefront. Dogs love your treats so much that you may one day even sell out orders before you can even cook them.
But, if no one knows about you, how will your customers find you? If you aren’t actively marketing your business, how will you gain new clientele? (Dogs don’t tend to tell their human parents where to purchase their treats.) If you don’t have a company blog, it’s likely that you’re only achieving local orders.
By creating a blog, you’re expanding your outreach. If you’re publishing quality, SEO’d posts, someone you would have never associated with can find your business and become a new customer. The same goes for any type of business. By regularly scheduling content on your blog, you’ll be able to gain more customers and increase your revenue.
“Good writing is like a windowpane.” – George Orwell
Business blogs can open up customers’ eyes to much more than they’d expect.
There are so many different stories and perspectives that can be shared on a company blog. Tell the story about how and why your company was founded. Highlight each employee that works for you. Show behind-the-scenes pictures from your workspace and discuss how you designed your space to work for you.
Your company has a unique perspective; one that many of your readers may only gain a glimpse of through your blog. Invite them in. Bring your company’s individual perspective into the light and let it thrive.
“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.” – Ursula K. Le Guin
We often get asked when people should expect to start seeing results from their blog posts. This may actually be the trickiest question for us to answer. The truth? Possibly right away – or possibly it may take some time.
We plan our editorial calendars so that our customers will gain the most traction from their SEO’d content, and because of that we’re fortunate to see a lot of results right away from our efforts. Some posts, however, take longer to blossom. We love hearing from our customers that a post – which was originally slow to grow – suddenly blooms and hits big numbers.
The post may even become the lead traffic to their website. This is why we chose to write evergreen content; it will always keep living. Once the right readers locate your posts, your blog will grow immensely.
“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” – Barbara Kingsolver
The beauty of Google and all other search engines is that information is never deleted. What is shared on the Internet is always alive.
Sometimes companies tell us that they’re afraid to blog or uninterested in blogging because they don’t think anyone will care what they have to say. We’ve heard time and time again, particularly from our more niche clients, that they don’t think anyone will care to learn about or discuss their type of businesses, but we know that is far from the truth. In fact, we can prove it!
One of the best things about our BuzzAudits is that we are able to provide you with a very long list of niche keywords that your future readers are actively searching for every month. And guess what? Many of them don’t have any competition on the web.
Wondering why blogging matters? Your content is always awake and always working for you, today, tomorrow, or even 10 years from now. Be the company who blogs.
“To blog, or not to blog, that is the question.” – William Shakespeare
All right, you caught me. Shakespeare didn’t say that. The real quotation, of course, is from a scene in Hamlet that begins with, “To be, or not to be …,” but if Shakespeare were alive in 2016, I’ll bet he’d choose to blog. Why?
Well, Shakespeare understood the importance of storytelling. He knew what to say and do to move a crowd, and he put in this effort because this was how he earned his income. The same can be said for your company.
Do you want to increase your revenue? Do you want to gain a more loyal customer base? Any business would benefit from regular blogging. If you’ve been holding back, don’t wait any longer. Today is your day to become the next Shakespeare.
Do you understand why blogging matters? What means the most to your company blog? Let us know in the comments section below!
This post was originally published in 2015 and has been updated.
