If you are in business you will no doubt have heard about the benefits of business blogging.
It’s not for everybody, but if you are trying to decide if your business should be releasing digital content as part of its marketing strategy, to help convince you, here are four ways a business in any niche can benefit from blogging.
Blogs generate traffic
A Hubspot report from late 2012 highlights the benefits of business blogging and how regularly doing so generates more traffic and more leads. Here are some stats from the report (the data comes from Hubspot members):
- Companies that blog 15 or more times per month get 5 times more traffic than companies that don’t blog
- Companies that increase blogging from 3-5 times per month to 6-8 times per month almost double their leads
- An average company will see a 45% growth in traffic when increasing total blog articles from 11-20 to 21-50
- The average company with 100 or more blog articles is more likely to experience continued lead growth
The biggest advantages of a blog is that they are really easy to run and publishing new pages is simple. All you need is a browser and an internet connection. This means you can publish new content whenever you want to, which, if promoted properly and optimised for search engines, will bring people to your site.
Traffic generates leads
As you can see from the Hubspot stats above, generating leads in the early days of a blog is quite tough. But, once the blog grows to a certain size (21-50 posts) it should start seeing a growth in traffic, which in turn should generate more leads.
However, traffic doesn’t guarantee leads. And the reasons for this include poor content, poor company perception and poor page layout. You can fix these things over time; improve the content, change company perception and test page layouts to to see which ones generate the most leads.
To keep hold of the traffic you have, and to create more, it’s a good idea to put together a publication calendar and stick to it as best you can. This ensures a steady release of new content that will hopefully correlate with a steady increase of traffic and leads. As you add more content, don’t forget to revisit the old stuff so you can rewrite and improve on what you already have.
Leads generate sales
When a regular reader of your blog contacts you to provide services to them, the sale is almost closed. They already know a lot about you, they know from the things you say on your blog that they want to do business with you. They know about the services you provide, they may know about your prices and they know you are knowledgeable in your field.
It’s just a matter of closing the deal.
People who come across your blog through a search engine, a referral, a tweet or another method, can quickly and quietly establish an opinion of your company and consider if they would like doing business with you. If they like what they see and read, chances are they will contact you and become a lead.
Sales generates cash
You don’t need me to tell you that sales generates cash, and if you are doing it right, profit.
A good blog, with great content and an efficient way to capture leads can provide you with a steady supply of new customers/clients, who may become loyal customers/clients and come back to you whenever they need your products or services.
But, what if you don’t want to write about your industry?
What if you are too busy?
There are two possible solutions.
Click here to find out what they are.
About Stephen Duckworth
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