7 Benefits of Business Blogging

By Trent Dyrsmid

Have you been putting off creating a blog for your company? Are you worried about the time you’ll need to invest to create and maintain a successful blog?
The benefits of starting a blogfor your business are undeniable, with one study showing that B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads than companies without a blog.
In another recent survey, eight out of ten executives claim to read at least one industry blog on a regular basis.
Are you starting to think maybe you should get a business blog started? Here are seven more benefits of starting a blog for your business that should fully convince you.

1. Build Trust and Demonstrate Your Expertise

Creating blog posts is an effective way to address your customers’ concerns, keep them up to date on trends affecting your industry, and help them address problems they are facing in their business. Just make sure your blog provides actual value and doesn’t sound like a self-serving marketing vehicle.
If you provide real value, you’ll build trust with readers and potential prospects. The goal is to provide tons of useful content so they can do research based on their needs and then reach out to you for a potential solution. Surveys show that people trust information from blogs and are more likely to pay attention to blog content than traditional advertising.

Over time, you can become known as a go-to resource that provides consistent and useful information to help your readers learn about new tools and resources, solve tough challenges and advance their own businesses. – Alyssa Gregory, About.com

2. Attract Relevant Traffic to Your Site

Every time you add a new blog post, you improve the odds that you will increase your page rank and draw more traffic by creating relevant, keyword-rich content. In addition, each post adds another indexed page to your site and demonstrates to Google that your website is being actively maintained and updated.
Posting frequency has a measurable effect on traffic from blogging. Companies that blog 15 times or more each month get 5X more traffic that companies without a blog, according to the Marketing Benchmarks from 7,000+ Businesses report.

3. Blog Posts Provide Valuable Content for Social Media

Sharing your content on social media is a proven way to drive potential customers to your site. Once you’ve put the work into creating a new post, promoting it through your social media outlets adds extra value. You engage potential customers through providing them with useful information, and you make it easy for them to share your content with others in their chain of connection.
SEO rankings are determined in part by social interactions so aim for social signals like the following to make your content more visible:

• Twitter retweets
• Facebook shares
• Google +1s and shares
• LinkedIn shares
• Pinterest Pins

4. Blogging is a Marketing Investment

It may take some time reap the benefits from starting a blog, but consider this to be an investment towards future growth, not just an expense. Whether you create content in-house or hire an agency, the blog posts you generate become an ongoing source of value to attract visitors to your site.

7 Benefits of Business Blogging

Starting a Blog is a Long-Term Investment

This is different from other types of advertising, which attract customer attention only during the length of the campaign. As you continue to grow your company’s blog to hundreds and then thousands of posts, its value will compound over time.

5. Your Sales Team Benefits Too

Your sales reps probably hear variations of the same questions and concerns about your products over time. When you address these in blog posts, you’ll clear up any confusion readers may have about your company and create a permanent record that you can point prospects to.
This saves your sales team the time of addressing individual requests and also adds the credibility of a well-planned piece of content instead of a quick email. You’ll also let prospects poke around and do their research before reaching out to you, so by the time your sales people get engaged the prospect is better educated and potentially closer to making a sales decision.

6. Blogging Generates Leads

Adding compelling calls-to -action (CTAs) at the end of each blog post is a proven way to generate a steady flow of leads. A CTAshould be a concise, actionable request from your potential customer.
The most common form of CTA is an offer for premium content behind an opt-in form. For example, you might create an eBook from your most popular posts, offer a popular whitepaper, or provide a free consultation in exchange for a prospect’s contact information.

7. Get Feedback from Customers

Encourage readers to comment on your posts to gain insight into the thinking of your customers and prospects. Over time, you’ll probably hear feedback on your sales process, your company’s customer service, and suggestions for product improvements.
By actively engaging with customers and addressing their concerns in this public forum, you’ll demonstrate that you care deeply about the people you are serving. This adds credibility to your company.
What about you? Has your company seen increased sales and lead generation as a result of starting a business blog? We’d love to hear about your experiences.

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