With social marketing vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube all the rage, blogging has become somewhat of a forgotten stepchild. But this doesn’t make sense.
Blogging can be one of the most effective marketing tools for the small business owner. It’s easy to start, it’s easy to maintain and it’s easy to leverage in enhancing your marketing mix.
To that end, here are 11 reasons why your business needs a blog:
1. Engage Continuously with Prospective Customers
Blogging presents a unique opportunity to engage in dialog with your prospective customers on a continual basis. And anytime a new prospect visits your blog, you immediately leverage the vast arsenal of posts, comments and writings in helping to sell your products or services.
2. Dig Deeper
The pace of business is fast. Blogging is an opportunity to dig into a particular subject a little deeper without slowing down. You can write an extended blog post, or you can break up your thoughts into a dozen posts related to a particular topic. Or you can dissect someone else’s blog post, article or book.
3. Supplement Your Other Marketing
Support your other marketing investments by leveraging your blog for promotion, marketing and feedback.
4. Listen & Learn
Read all the blog comments and email you receive, and read the comments on other blogs about your writings. Learn what the community is thinking.
5. Test Ideas
Innovation is the engine that drives business growth. A blog is an excellent platform to test thoughts and ideas in a relatively risk-free environment.
6. Build Authority
Prove your expertise to new prospective customers with your knowledge and insights.
7. Demonstrate Your Uniqueness
Too often marketing materials such as corporate brochures are dreadfully boring. Blogging empowers you to inject a little personality into your marketing. Let them see the real you, and your uniqueness could be the difference in winning you the business.
8. Become a Better Writer
This is not talked about much, but it is a true benefit of blogging. The more you write, the better you get. Keep writing your blog, and watch your writing skills improve, helping all of your marketing and sales efforts.
9. Gain Traffic
Blogs can rank high in the search engines, helping you to gain more qualified traffic to your website.
10. Get Subscribers
Many readers who like what you write will subscribe to your blog, providing you with a direct, ongoing communications channel with your target audience.
11. Uncover New Opportunities
The more you blog, the more opportunities will present themselves to you. For example, I was contacted by a PR firm earlier this year to create a series of blog posts for the launch of a new website. This was certainly not why I maintained a blog for my business, but it was a nice surprise that added incremental revenue and a new relationship with an additional PR firm.
These are just a few of the reasons you should take the plunge into the world of business blogging to strengthen your online marketing mix. If you need additional help or guidance, feel free to leave a comment below.
