Why Blog? 19 Benefits Of Blogging For Business
Searching for the benefits of blogging? You’re in the right place.
Many years ago, blogging was seen as an online journal or diary where you could jot down your thoughts and ideas. But those days are long gone.
Today, blogging has grown to become a powerful online marketing tool.
And a necessary item in the content marketing strategy of most marketers and businesses.
In fact, statistics reveal that:
- 92% of marketers consider blogging to be worth the investment
- At least, 54% of Fortune 500 companies now have public facing blogs
- 89% of marketers used blogs in their content marketing strategy in 2020
In this post, we’ve rounded up 19 benefits of blogging for business you need to know, whether you’re a new business owner or an experienced entrepreneur
Ready? Let’s dive in.
What is business blogging?
Different from blogging about your hobbies or interests, business blogging involves creating and publishing high quality content on topics of interest to your target audience that also relates to your business.
For example, SnackNation is a healthy office snack delivery service that makes healthy snacking fun, life more productive and workplaces awesome.
On their business blog, they publish content on workplace wellness, employee engagement, improving company culture, creating office environments where people are healthy and happy and similar topics.
19 benefits of blogging for business
Here are 19 benefits of blogging you can enjoy when you start blogging for your business.
1. Provide value and engage your target audience
Blogging is one of the best ways to provide value for your audience and potential customers on a regular basis.
Wondering why? Check out these blogging statistics:
- People read around 10 blog posts per day
- 77% of all internet users still read blog posts
- 61% of US consumers spend 3x as long consuming blog content than emails
Because people enjoy reading blog posts, you can engage your audience when you create valuable content that provide:
- Information they’re searching for
- Answers to their questions
- Education on their topics of interest
- Solutions to their pain points and challenges
This is one of the major benefits of blogging for business.
Not only will blogging attract potential customers to your business but it can also engage them and help you develop a strong relationship with them.
2. Create awareness for your business online
Are you aware that people constantly go online to find answers to their questions and learn about various topics?
These days, most people also do research online before making a purchase.
That’s why strangers can discover your content online once you publish valuable content on your business blog often.
The higher the number of blog articles you publish regularly, the higher the chances that more people across the globe can come across them on the internet. This can help you attract new customers, meet and connect with more people, build relationships and expand your network
In short, blogging for business will improve your online visibility and create more awareness for your business.
3. Build trust and boost your brand credibility
When you habitually create content that provide value, your readers and audience will notice.
With time, this habit can reposition you as an expert and industry leader in their eyes and also influence them to trust your content and business offerings.
Because of this trust, don’t be surprised if they now turn to you every time they need :
- A product or service your business can provide
- Free information that can be found on your blog
This is one of the benefits of blogging every business can’t do without.
With consistent blogging as part of your online marketing effort, you can develop a solid online identity and reputation, build trust, become an industry leader and continuously boost the credibility of your brand.
4. Delight current customers
As a business owner, most likely you want customers to buy from you again and again
After all, statistics show that:
- Repeat customers typically spend 33% more than new customers
- Conversion rate of existing customers is a whopping 60 – 70% compared to only 5 – 20% for new customers
Depending on your products or services, you can use blogging to engage and delight your customers when you create:
- In-depth guides that explain key features and benefits of your products and services
- Blog posts that answer some of your customers frequently asked questions
- Step by step tutorials on how to use your products and services for best results
Such relevant and evergreen content will help them get maximum value from their purchases, position you as a responsible business and most likely convert those that buy from you into repeat customers and brand advocates.
This is one of the benefits of blogging that can improve sales and boost your revenue.
5. Attract backlinks to your site
You can also attract backlinks to your website when you start writing blogs for your business.
According to statistics on blogging, businesses that blog have 97% more inbound links than businesses that don’t.
Also called an inbound link, a backlink is a link that connects another website to yours.
When other websites discover your content online, perceive it to be of great value and decide to link to it, they’re giving you a backlink. Anyone reading their content who clicks on that link will automatically land on your website.
More inbound links can boost your website search engine optimization and improve your rankings because:
- Top ranking pages have somewhere between 10 and 100 backlinks
- Pages that rank in position one has 3.8x more backlinks than those in position 2 – 10
With an increasing number of inbound links from other websites, yours will rank higher in search engine results and also attract more website traffic
6. Generate more internal links
Unlike backlinks, internal links are used to connect different pages on your website to each other. They help visitors navigate your website, to quickly locate the page or content they need.
Internal links also helps Google and other search engines to:
- Identify important pages
- Understand how your website is structured
- Identify related website content.
Without a blog, your site will have less content and pages that can be linked.
But when you have a business blog and create content often, you can generate more internal links and influence search engines to rank you higher.
This is one of the main benefits of blogging for business.
7. Boost the SEO of your website
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long-term strategy that helps websites to show up and rank higher in search engine results, when people search online.
This is one of the major benefits of blogging.
To be honest, blogging boosts your website SEO in multiple ways since it:
- Updates your website with fresh content regularly, which search engines love
- Attracts backlinks to your website
- Enables you to create lots of internal links
But it doesn’t end there.
Business blogging also allows you to identify keywords people search for online that’re related to your business. Once you have them, you can insert relevant ones in each blog post you create, using best practices.
So, the more often you create blog content that’s optimized for relevant keywords, the higher the volume of keyword rich content on your website.
This can boost the overall SEO of your website and signal to Google and other search engines that you’re an authority on these keywords
And before long, your website can start ranking higher.
8. Drive more traffic to your website
If you’re looking for ways to drive traffic to your website, you need to start blogging for business.
According to statistics, blogging can increase your:
- Website visitors by as much as 55%
- Website ranking potential by as much as 434%, which means more website traffic and leads
Remember, so many people go online daily to search for information, get answers to their questions and so on.These can be members of your audience at different stages of the customer journey.
But you can also have reporters, competitors, other bloggers, news organizations, influencers, many other businesses and brands doing research online and coming across your content.
So, the more blog posts you publish, the more often your content can show up when these people search for terms related to your business, products or services.
In a nutshell, business blogging remains one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website on a regular basis.
9. Generate leads & build an email list
Are you struggling to generate more leads and build an email list for your business?
Well, businesses with blogs are known to produce 67% more leads every month than businesses without blogs, according to content marketing statistics
All because business blogging helps convert traffic into leads.
A lead is a prospect or a potential customer who has shown interest in your business or products or services, in one way or another. They may not buy immediately but they can be nurtured and converted into a paying customer with time.
To convert website visitors to leads with blogging and also build an email list, simply insert a call to action (CTA) at the end of each blog post.
This CTA can urge interested readers to provide their email address and get future emails about new blog posts and other company news. You can even offer a valuable gift or freebie, known as a lead magnet, to encourage more people to sign up,
Whether you’re a small business or a big enterprise, having a business blog that’s updated often is a great way to generate leads on a regular basis.
10. Encourage repeat visits to your website
Do you want visitors to return to your website again and again?
If you don’t have a blog on your website, visitors who’re not ready to buy may just look around and leave, without coming back.
But when you have a business blog that’s constantly updated, many people will have a compelling reason to visit your website again and again.
This is also one of the main benefits of blogging.
Remember, business blogging can drive more traffic to your website, encourage visitors to come back and also boost lead generation and email sign ups.
11. Reach more people when readers share your content
Have you noticed that people share content online when they get value from it?
Once a piece of content solves a problem or provides value, readers will likely share it with friends, family and all their connections and network.
And not just on social media but also in online groups, forums and communities they belong to. Think Slack channels, Discord groups, Reddit, Quora and so on.
Imagine if someone with thousands or millions of followers on social media decides to share your blog post with all of them. Or maybe another person who belongs to a community with thousands of members decides to share your content in that community.
As a result of blogging, each blog post you create becomes a sharable resource that can be shared countless times online.
Therefore, your blog content can travel far and wide on the internet, possibly go viral and reach more people than even you can imagine.
12. Promote your products and services in an acceptable manner
Believe it or not, people are getting tired of being bombarded with aggressive sales tactics, messages and adverts everywhere they turn.
But guess what? Quality blog posts are still popular and in demand.
In fact, statistics show that as high as 70% of consumers would rather learn about a company from a blog post than from an ad.
So, it’s possible to create a high-quality blog post for your audience and also use it to promote your business, products or services in a subtle manner.
This is one of the major benefits of blogging you can’t afford to ignore.
Compared to ads, promoting your business through blogging is more acceptable to consumers. Because it’s a less aggressive and intrusive marketing tactic that also provides more details about a business.
13. Share company news and updates
Blogging for business also allows you to share company news and updates on your own blog.
Are you planning an event or getting ready to launch a new product or service? Or have you just recorded a major achievement or scored a big win or received an award?
Or maybe you give back to your community in a specific manner or support a certain charity?
You can create a blog post about all these and publish on your blog.
When you share these kinds of stories through blogging, your business can appear more real and genuine to the general public.
This can further boost your credibility and reputation and generate more interest in your products and services.
14. Promote customer testimonials and success stories
Want to recognize some of your loyal customers and give them some free adverts in the process?
You can celebrate, recognize and advertise your loyal customers when you use a blog post to share who they are, what they do and how much you appreciate their patronage.
Also, you can share and promote customer testimonials on your blog. This is a subtle and effective way to promote the fact that people are getting a lot of value from your products and services.
According to a survey of US online customers:
- 94% of respondents stated that positive reviews make them more likely to use a business
- 79% trust online reviews as much as much as personal recommendations from friends and family
At the end of the day, blogging about customer success stories and testimonials can influence and convince more people to buy from you.
15. Recognize and appreciate employees and team members
Looking for more exciting ways to recognize and appreciate your team members?
You can also use your business blog.
For example, you can create and publish blog posts that:
- Feature individual employees and celebrate their contribution to the business
- Highlight an entire department or team and congratulate them on a recent achievement or win
In addition, you can:
- Interview your people about their experience working in your company and publish it on your blog
- Encourage team members to write for your business blog and give them credit using their picture and author bio
All these can make everyone on your team feel recognized and appreciated.
16. Have quality content for email marketing
Eager to start email marketing but clueless on what to share in your emails?
Blogging on a regular basis can help.
Each time you publish new content on your blog, you can send an email to inform all your subscribers and share a link to the new blog article. Don’t be surprised if many of them click the link, land on the blog post and start reading, once they open the email.
Because emails that’re used to share blog posts also provide value, statistics show that businesses that blog generate twice the email traffic of businesses that don’t.
Remember, as long as you blog regularly, you’ll always have a steady supply of relevant content to send to your email subscribers.
17. Make the job of your customer service and sales teams easier
Sooner or later, blogging for business will help you build a library of blog posts that:
- Answers frequently asked questions from customers and prospects
- Provide guidance on how to get the best out of your products and services
If a potential customer asks a question and the answer is already published on your blog, your sales people can quickly direct them to the blog post, without wasting time.
And what if a customer is struggling to use your product or service after purchase?
As long as you have guides or tutorials that address the issue on your blog, your customer service team can respond faster and guide customers to the relevant blog articles.
This is one of the benefits of blogging that can boost the performance of your sales and customer service teams and also improve customer satisfaction.
18. Have enough content to share on social media
If you have a social media presence and always struggle to come up with relevant social media content ideas, business blogging can help.
Depending on your social media strategy, you can repurpose your blog content for different social media platforms, either in full or broken down into bite-sized nuggets of information.
For example, you can extract quotes, key phrases and takeaways from your blog content and share on Twitter as a tweet or a series of tweets.
Or you can turn these bite-sized content into eye-catching graphics and attractive visuals and also share them on social media.
In addition, you can repurpose blog content into a:
- LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook post
- Video or video series
- An infographic
Here is a Click to Tweet snippet taken from a blog post on Freelancer FAQs:
And here is the same snippet when it was repurposed into a social media graphic:
When you repurpose blog content for social media, you will save time, energy and resources required to create new content from scratch all the time.
19. Create additional streams of income
Looking for ways to create multiple streams of income as a business owner?
Once again, blogging for business can help.
Apart from making money from your core business products and services, you can monetize your blog and earn additional income when you:
- Create and publish sponsored content on your blog for a fee
- Create and sell digital products like eBooks, checklists, webinars, subscriptions and so on
- Promote other people’s products through affiliate marketing and earn commissions
- Create and sell online courses
- Join an advertising network and display adverts on your blog
- Sell coaching and consulting services
This is one of the exciting benefits of blogging that can boost your income and also lead to business growth. For best results, always choose monetization options that align best with your business model and the needs of your target audience.
Conclusion
So, that’s it. The 19 benefits of blogging for business you need to know.
No matter your industry or niche, blogging can advertise your business far and wide, improve your online visibility, attract and retain customers, increase your sales, boost your bottom line and lead to business growth.
But you have to blog the right way, follow blogging best practices and remain consistent until you build a successful blog.
Due to the extraordinary impact their business blog had on Groove’s bottom line, here’s what Alex Turnbull, CEO & Founder of Groove, had to say about the return on investment (ROI) of blogging:
“Blogging can be hugely valuable to your business. It can bring you more authority, more validation, more customers and more revenue. But only if you do it right.”
If you’re ready to start blogging for business the right way, we recommend the following resources:
