It can be easy to assume that the concept of running and updating a blog on any variety of topics might be archaic in this day and age. After all, social media has such a dominant presence in any and everyone’s lives regardless of reason. Most businesses would assume that they should put their budget, focus and time into creating a steady flow of content through their platform(s) of choice. While this isn’t a mistake, per se, you would be sorely missing out on a cost-effective, easy-to-manage form of service that gives you plenty of bang for your buck. Blogging is more than typing up “how to’s” or giving advice on a niche subject that you might feel you’re talented at. It’s a way to drive traffic to your website. It helps you build upon and optimize your SEO. It can create leads that turn into future business with potential long-term customers.
The short and sweet of it? Don’t skip out on blogging. It’s one of the things I like to remind and emphasize upon my own clients the most. Let me go into a bit more detail as to why you should have been generating posts on your website this whole time.
multi-purpose your blogging to fit your business needs
A single hour typing out a blog post to put on your website can produce benefits and results for your business for the weeks, months and years to follow. How? Beyond the obvious part of creating content that is true to your brand, it builds upon so many things on the backend. Your website on its own, no matter how simple (maybe you have a one-page website!) or complex it is, exists to answer questions and to provide ways for both new and current clients to keep connected. Even businesses that have 15+ pages of information to sift through will find themselves in a position where their site won’t need many updates or changes. Few or no updates means nothing to use on social media to generate additional traffic, and sooner or later, a fresh new rebranding or big change from a few months ago will fizzle out.
You don’t want to waste that, right? Of course not! Blogging is an easy way to continuously generate new content on your website. Not a single thing has to change about the services you offer, the location of your business or any new additions to the team. You can blog about anything — within reason and with consideration to your business image, of course — and you’ll reap multiple rewards from doing so. The most important thing to realize is that every blog post you publish is an additional page on your website that will be indexed for search engines to find. Every new indexed page is a possible search result coming up for a curious potential customer that falls onto your blog.
Secondly, you can consider a two-birds-with-one-stone situation. I mentioned social media earlier and its equal importance. How about combining the two? Whether your company has dipped its toes into the blogging world in the past or starting fresh out the gate, any generated content can be used on your various platforms. Proper hashtags relevant to the subject of the blog means optimized searching through social media as well! Seeing a trend here? Exactly.
Creating more search results and making your blog presence known to your existing and ever-expanding social media audience means one thing: potential business. Blogs are easily mistaken as opinion pieces that are there for the writer to get their feelings on a particular topic documented thoroughly. However, those with the know-how are aware they mainly serve as lead-ins to a call-to-action that circles everything back to your business and how you can help with the subject at hand. These calls are the kicker, so to speak. It can be as simple as recommending the viewer to contact you for more precise advice, quotes etc. You’d be surprised how many visitors become customers after they read a few blog posts to get a better impression of your business. They get curious enough to provide you their email and contact information, and just like that, they have become a lead.
consider the long-term benefits as well
You want to see your hard work bear fruit as soon as possible, if not immediately. I get that 100%. There’s nothing better than pressing enter, seeing your creation get sent out into the world, and taking note of engagement and activity immediately. Reality doesn’t always let us have our cake and eat it too, though. Whether you’re a growing company or you have a prominent presence, blog posts just aren’t “clickbait” worthy the same way some tabloids or news sources tend to be. Not every click and full read will generate business for you that day or even that week. High traffic in the beginning for that particular blog post will quickly slow to a crawl before you even get to scheduling your next post.
But don’t fret! It isn’t the end of the world. This is actually a good thing, if you believe it. Like I mentioned earlier, there is more going on in the backend when it comes to blogging than you may think. Instantaneous traffic from a pre-existing audience is great, but what you’re really striving for is as many new pairs of eyes as possible. What’s best about this is that it happens anytime, anywhere. You can be asleep, eating dinner, on vacation — all the while, views are trickling in at a consistent, albeit potentially slow rate. The reason for this is because your blog posts are now being “ranked” on relevant search engines (but namely Google). While your new blog post is unlikely to appear as the first result on the material being looked up in the beginning, time will become your best friend.
It is easy to research and confirm for yourself how much attention is earned from customers who stumble upon your business from a blog post months or even years after you first posted it. Whether you are still steadily creating content for your website’s blog or your content is archived (yet most importantly still accessible), it is the type of digital product that will yield results for you non-stop. Imagine that hour of work still creating leads, traffic, future customers and income a year or even two years later. Blogging is a fruit well worth your time in planting the seeds and letting it work its magic, I promise.
… and this is my shameless plug and call-to-action!
I wouldn’t be doing my job right if my own blog post didn’t follow the rules I just laid out before you. If you read through all of this, that means you are at least curious enough about blogging to see if it’s worth your time. My recommendation is that, above all else, you at least give it a try yourself. If it’s a subject you’re passionate about, you’ll find that delicious burst of serotonin waiting for you at the end of a well-thought out post. Come up with some subjects you want to touch on over a period of time, and write out weekly entries to maintain consistency. It’s possible you’ll turn into an industry leader where those in your field come to you for advice on top of the normal curious folk just stopping by. That has its own benefits far beyond what I mentioned.
But maybe you don’t have the time or tools to generate blog posts on a weekly basis. Perhaps writing isn’t your forte; that’s perfectly fine. As you might have expected by now, generating content for blogs is kind of my thing! I don’t mean just for my own website, either. It is one of many services myself and my team are eager to talk to you about if you yourself are curious about hiring someone to maintain that portion of your website for you.
We offer multi-post packages starting at $400, so if you want to chat about that and/or more of what we are able to provide to your business, please know you can reach out to me here to schedule an appointment for a consultation. I look forward to writing some blog posts for you in the future!
