What is a Blog & Does Your Business Need One?

Let's talk about blogs. Does your business have one? Should you think about building one(if you don't already have one). In this post we'll cover exactly what a blog is, a few examples of what a blog looks like in 2019, and then a few reasons why it might be a worthy investment for your company. Let's get started!

What is Blogging?

A blog is a regularly updated website or web page, it can either be used for personal use or for business purposes. There are blogs written on every topic imaginable, so structurally speaking they can be pretty diverse. They can be general like the general insights of a top consulting firm, or can be more narrow like a blog focused specifically around your companies exact product-offering.
The best way to understand blogs is go out and find a few, read through them, and work to discover for yourself what they're really all about.
We have a few examples below to help get you started.

Getting down to business: why an organization might want to start it's own blog?

Marketing professionals and business owners alike have see that blogs are good for business:

1. Blogs are good for business because they improve a brands search engine optimization rankings

A well-designed website is great, but even the best designed sites won't see much success if no one visits them. That's when a blog comes in. By regularly scheduling and publishing new blog posts, a brand has the opportunity to cover new topics and use new keywords to generate traffic to their site. Each new blog post is a potential goldmine for new traffic as brands work to include new topics of interest and delve deeper into their customers interests. Brands can do this by targetting new keywords (that they haven’t already targeted on their existing site pages) and scoop up that sweet sweet traffic.

2. Blogs are good for business because they help brands build relationships with their potential customers.

When a business invests in a blog they are investing in their customers. How so...? Well, business blogs are designed to attract customers by engaging them with content that they care about. When someone goes online, they research their issues, their concerns, and their needs. They look for information that will help them identify the best product or service to meet those needs. For instance, when a customer finds one of our blog posts, we hope that our readers will find our insights and expertise helpful. If a reader/client is prepared to work together and purchase one of our services right then and there, great! Even if they aren’t interested in purchasing one of our services in that very moment, they still might be more likely to come back and make a purchase later on. That's what makes blogging worth the initial investment. It helps build relationships with customers over time!

3. Blogs are good for business because they help brands establish authority in their industry.

A blog is a great way to establish authority by demonstrating that you're a trusted source of information that's up to date in modern methods and topics (in your respective industry). When you cover industry trends and news in your blog, you show your followers that you’re not only aware of the basics, but also actively engaged in your own continued education in your industry. Eventually, this knowledge will make you an authority in your field and with that it becomes easier to assure your customers that you can meet their needs with your products or services.

4. Blogs are a great way to facilitates valuable discussion between your business and your customer.

Blogging gives businesses the opportunity to connect with customers and prospects through a two-way conversation. From a business perspective, this means you have another opportunity to learn what’s on the minds of prospects, which is easily one one of the most valuable assets you can add to your marketing strategy. You can use a blog to ask questions to your target audience, gain new data into your customers’ needs, test your content and marketing strategies, shape future product development goals after feedback, and orient other marketing initiatives based on what insights you gain from this channel.

5. Blogs are good for business because they're a cheap, yet effective, platform for marketing.

One of the biggest draws for many small businesses interested in blogging is its the low barrier for entry and low cost to maintain. It costs almost nothing to start a blog, and anyone with a computer can start a blog with just a few hours of setup. Once the blog is up and running, it costs practically nothing but a little bit more time to add and publish new posts. Posts can also be updated over time(reused) as industry trends change cutting on costs creating new content all the time.