media update’s Taylor Goodman dives into the importance of a blog for small businesses and how it benefits them. 

Over the years, content marketing has evolved from print ads in the local newspaper to to what is currently all the rage — blogging

The Internet has since revolutionised the way brands think about advertising, with blogging proving to be an effective way to get consumers to come to you for information as opposed to your business pushing sales. 

On the popular blogging platform WordPress, “over 409 million people view more than 21 billion pages each month.” And this is only on WordPress, so imagine how many blog readers are actually out there!

When it comes to tapping into the blogging space, it’s a common notion that it will be a ton of work and effort, which is not untrue — but it will benefit you tenfold. 

With that said, let’s break down the three reasons why your small business needs to start blogging:

1. A blog is a great marketing tool

As a small business, your budget for marketing and advertising may not be as large as bigger brands, so why not kill two birds with one stone by starting a blog! 

According to Hubspot, businesses that utilise blogs as a part of their content marketing strategy get 67% more leads than those that don't. 

In essence, a blog is the perfect fit for marketing since it helps to draw customers to you with industry-relevant content. And, it gives them a simple and accessible way to interact with your business. 

Blogging’s usefulness in the marketing space doesn't stop there; a blog can also help you to market your brand to guest bloggers and reach influencers. Additionally, it can be used as content on your social media pages and as a way to share your brand’s story.

A blog ultimately personalises a brand — as a small business, a blog helps you to market your story to your audience. This can help you to build a genuine reputation in your industry and gain consumer trust over time. 

2. You can grow your brand’s email list

To further elaborate on a blog being a marketing tool, it can also help you to expand your email contacts list. 

How? Well, to get people to sign up to your email list, you can add an area on your blog’s homepage where readers can enter their address to get updates on your business. 

This will allow small businesses to reach more people, because, let’s face it, almost everyone has an email address in today’s day and age that they actually use. 

This can increase sales as email marketing is a great way to nurture leads through the marketing funnel. 

Using a blog to garner more email contacts is a smart move for businesses that are just starting out because, once they build up their email repertoire, they will be able to reach more consumers with their newsletters or promotional mails.  

3. A blog can help you better your SEO

One of the chief reasons why your small business should start a blog is to increase visibility. This can be done by optimising your blog posts for SEO. 

A great place to start optimising your blog for SEO is by incorporating long-tail keywords, correctly-named images and videos into your blog posts.

Blogs are also the perfect tool to use when trying to improve your website’s SEO ranking, convert leads and drive sales. This is because, when writing new pieces, you can easily include relevant keywords, giving Google fresh content to index. This increases the likelihood of your brand’s blog popping up on search engine results pages.
For more SEO tips, check out our article, White hat versus black hat SEO: All you need to know in 2020.
Google prioritises quality over quantity meaning that you should not try and overload your audience with content in order to have high SEO rankings, and the same goes for keyword stuffing. This is when you shoving as many SEO keywords onto a page as physically possible.

Would you start your own blog? Why or why not? Be sure to let us know in the comments section below.

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Now that you know why starting a blog is a good idea, you need to learn how to start one. Be sure to check out our article, Starting a blog: Five things you need to know to learn more
*Image courtesy of Vecteezy