If you’ve browsed through the websites of your favorite businesses you’ve probably noticed a curious thing; they all have blogs. Whether it’s a local small business in your neighborhood or an international mega-corporation like Walmart, they all make space on their website for a blog section. Sometimes, you’ll notice that these sections get much less traffic than their regular product pages, so why do they keep maintaining and updating them? Well, the answer is quite simple, it brings in more overall traffic and helps them maximize their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with minimal effort.
What is a Blog?
Typically a collection of short text-based posts, a blog can be anything you want it to be, such as a place to post information about your most recent promotions, new products, industry news, or industry-related opinion pieces. For example, Walmart’s current blog is called their ‘news’ section and releases information regarding their new community initiatives or business deals. Whatever you decide to center your blog on, make sure it’s a popular or engaging topic you, or your staff, can write about enthusiastically. The more dynamic and engaging the content is, the more likely people will be to take note of your blog and return for more information.
The Advantages of Writing a Blog
There are many reasons to start a blog, and that’s why nearly all successful online companies make the effort to maintain their own blogs! These are two reasons that just might convince you to try your hand at writing a blog:
A blog helps you with SEO. As previously mentioned, a blog will help you maximize your SEO with little effort. You can achieve this by writing a blog on a new topic in your industry. For example, if you make and sell 3D printers and members of the 3D printing community become interested in eco-friendly printing materials, that topic may begin trending on Google. Even if you don’t offer that particular product at the moment, that term should appear somewhere on your website to take advantage of the surge of interest in it. As it is a niche topic, your blog post may rank high in the Google search results of someone trying to learn more about it. As more people click on this link and read your blog post, Google will recognize that your website is attracting more diverse visitors and rank other pages of your website higher too.
Blogs allow you to build better relationships with your customers. If you’ve only ever connected with your customers through marketing and customer queries, this is the perfect opportunity to build better customer relationships. A blog’s goal is to attract visitors, so you can use a much more relaxed and intimate voice with your audience. Reading a blog, particularly if it’s infused with a personable voice, helps customers see you and your business as a more multi-dimensional entity. Even if you use a simpler informational voice, your customers will garner new respect for your expertise and seek out your opinion on industry topics.
How to Write a Blog
Writing the first blog post may be somewhat difficult, but the rest should flow quite naturally. Remember, each blog post is a capsule of its own, so one blog post may be friendly and highly opinionated but the next could be direct and plainly informational. However, before you sit down to write your blog post, take a look at the recent industry and market trends. What are people talking about? This could be anything from a new innovative product to a scandalous industry news story, as long as you think you can write about it engagingly. And this is where your secret power comes in. As an industry professional with employees who are presumably industry professionals themselves, you have all of the expertise you need to talk to your customers about the things that interest them. It’s best to regularly post on community and industry trends, and dip into your expertise whenever possible.
How to Start a Blog in 2022
Having gone through the main points of preparing and maintaining a blog, now it’s time to launch your blog. If the research, consistency, and technical aspects of writing necessary for launching a blog seem too daunting, consider hiring a digital marketing professional to write your blog posts for you. If you have any particular blog posts you would like to have in your blog, they have the experience and knowledge to see your vision through. But best of all, if you don’t know where to start, they can conduct all the necessary research to select the perfect topic for your blog.
Although you can tackle your blog on your own, there’s always the option of getting help from a digital marketing professional!
