Thinking of starting a blog? Considering adding a blog to boost your website content? Have you been told to start a blog to increase your organic search traffic?
Blogging is such a valuable tool to many businesses both online and offline and could help you boost your online traffic.
Writing a blog allows your website or your online presence to publish thoughts, stories, articles, insights and guides on your website about the topic of your choosing.
When done right, blogging can boost your brand awareness, conversations, online traffic, credibility and eventually revenue.
If you are interested in blogging you may be asking is blogging right for you or your business? Here are some points that you should consider when deciding whether to start a blog
Do you have the time available to blog?
Some small businesses or start ups may be concerned that because of the multitude of marketing tasks that blogging may take up a lot of time, writing, editing and publishing blogs.
Blogging doesn't have to be too time consuming. Blogs can be directly linked to your business or your industry so can be written without much research. Alternatively, there are so many resources out there with blog templates, examples and tips on efficiently writing blogs that can help.
Whilst, employing a full time blog or content writer may be too expensive for some, there are online services where you can outsource your blog writing for a relatively low cost.
In addition to this, there may be someone in your business currently that has experience writing or is an expert in your industry. Whether they dictate 10-15 minutes with a how-to guide or specific industry advice, or have a go at writing a short blog, their knowledge is indispensable in your business.
Blogs do not have to be long either. the average blog sits at around 1,000-2,000 words but depending on your experience level you can do shorter or longer blogs, lists, or image heavy blogs where there is a lot less wording. This is a great way to produce regular content without having to spend too much time writing your blogs.
What topics will be relevant for me?
Some B2C businesses will be reluctant to blog because they think their customer base don't read blogs about their specific industry or market.
Blogging has far more benefits to many other areas of your business too. Blogging is proven to improve your search engine optimisation (SEO) which in turn will help improve your online traffic.
By providing useful, valuable content, your blog can help improve your brand awareness and ultimately help your traffic turn into potential customers.
However blogging doesn't always have to provide value or give detailed information through how-to guides. Blogging can evoke other emotions in your audience too. If you audience loves to see cute cat pictures or read funny stories, then that could be your blog. Look at sites like buzzfeed.com where the content is not necessarily valuable but it is interesting to their audience and therefore a hugely successful blogging strategy.
Your blog can be extremely relevant to your audience, no matter what you're trying to sell or what your business does.
Do you have the ability to write blogs?
As mentioned, some business may not necessarily have the in-house talent to produce expertly written blogs.
There are a load of resources out there designed to help budding blog writers such as yourself. Free online courses, videos, how-to guides, examples and templates that can help writers create amazing content.
You can also turn so many different pieces of other content into blogs. Radio interviews, podcasts, surveys, product launches, events, webinars and so much more can be turned into interesting and valuable blogs with creative writing.
Whatever your topic or your market, blogging is so valuable to show your audience (and search engines) that you are an authority in your industry. Your website is much more likely to generate more traffic if you produce more relevant and interesting content about your market or industry.
Search engines love blogging because of this reason. They feel like they can trust your site more because you talk more about that topic.
In addition to this, if more of your audience shares your blogs and your content this also tells search engines that your content is really engaging. Your blog or website will really benefit from this trust or authority.
However, do not be disheartened if you have started your blog, posting new blogs regularly but nothing happens for ages.
Search engines typically take 6-12 months to rank content in their results. This means that although it may take a while to rank, a blog you wrote over a year ago may suddenly start bringing in a lot of traffic, so keep an eye on your blog performance throughout the year.
Typically, businesses generate more leads, more sales and more traffic after they have written 50 blogs.
Although this may sound daunting to many, if you chip away at these, not only will you improve your blog writing skills, your online content will increase and you will see improved traffic performance.
Blogging is such an important part to almost every website, and if you haven't set up your blog yet, do it now!
If you need help setting up your blog, get in touch and I can help you out.