Blogging for Small Business Success

Small business marketing has changed significantly since the dawn of the digital era.

The days of posting adverts in local newspapers and leaflets through doors are over for a huge number of SMBs. Instead, entrepreneurs are turning their attention to online forms of marketing, which not only have the power to reach a wider audience but are typically more cost-effective as well.

A form of content marketing, blogging has proven itself to be a powerful way of reaching customers. It was originally a way for individuals to share their thoughts and experiences online but has since evolved and been adopted by businesses looking to forge deeper connections with their customer base and attract new interest. There are currently over 600 million blogs in existence, which shows just how many people see creating written content as a worthy use of their time and money.

If you’re yet to fully appreciate how blogging could transform your digital marketing strategy, then this blog will help you understand how written content can fit in with your business goals.

Increase Traffic

Posting high-quality blogs on your business’s website can result in more visitors landing on your pages and going on to learn about your products and services. This is largely down to search engine optimisation (SEO), which involves researching the best keywords, phrases, and intent to help would-be customers find your site in search engine rankings. Identifying the words your audience is using to find services like yours is a pretty strong cornerstone of online business success; whether they’re typing them into Google, or asking an assistant like Alexa or Siri. The higher your pages appear on these search engine results pages, the more likely potential customers are to click on them over your competitors’ pages.

However, while keyword research is a crucial part of your strategy, SEO depends on a wide range of factors, including the way your website is built. Luckily, most of the best blogging platforms are designed with SEO in mind, so all you’ll need to think about is content. Make sure all your blogs are relevant to your industry and provide real value to your audience. While keywords are important, they’re not nearly as important as good writing.

Educate and Convert

The great part about blogging for business is that each and every post you produce is multi-purpose. For example, once your blog has drawn a visitor to your website, it can then go on to educate them about your business and encourage them to become a converted customer. Blogs can be directly or indirectly about your services, so whether you decide to write a long-form, in-depth piece about an abstract concept like design; or offer shorter, more practical tips about fitness and nutrition; blogs will allow customers to build a clearer picture of who you are, what you do, and – most importantly – whether you can answer their burning questions.

Every blog, more often than not, ends with a call to action: this is where customers will be invited to do something after they’ve finished reading. Call-to-actions can encourage users to buy a product, read more blogs to learn more information, or sign up for an email newsletter. Blogs can also benefit from peppering product links throughout the content (especially for ecommerce brands), or gentle prompts to visit other landing or transactional pages. The best blogs are often subtle in the way they sell to customers, but this is one of the things that makes them so effective.

Repurpose and Build Links

Out of all the digital content produced for your business, crafting decent blog posts usually requires the most time, effort, and research. While this can be initially labour-intensive, it also makes them prime candidates for repurposing: The information in your blogs could become, with a few tweaks, a series of social media posts, infographics, short videos, podcasts, or ebooks. Identify which of your blogs have performed particularly well and use them to reach a wider audience and improve engagement across channels. This will help you to build and solidify the rest of your SMB content marketing strategy.

Repurposing your blog content also increases your chances of receiving backlinks. Backlinks are a key part of SEO and help search engines to see your website as being more authoritative in your industry. While blogging on its own can encourage others to link to your posts on their own websites, having many different forms of content will make it more likely that the information is seen and shared by your audience in other places.

Is business blogging right for you?

Every business’s content marketing strategy can benefit from blogging. Whether your goals are to increase traffic, encourage more conversions, share expert knowledge, or cement your business’s standing within your industry; starting and running a blog can help you achieve all of this and more. Why not give it a try?