Why Your Small Business Needs a Blog

Your small business relies on networking, marketing and social media to increase your sales and become a leader in your industry. A key component to all three of these areas is by having a business blog. Whether you write the posts yourself or have someone else handle the content for you, it can be valuable to your business. These are some of the most important reasons to have a blog.

Interacting with Customers and Clients – One of the more significant benefits of having a blog is being able to interact directly with your current and prospective clients or customers. This gives you a unique opportunity to create an open forum where you discuss important updates in your industry and ask for customer feedback. This creates a relationship between your business and customers, as well as getting helpful for suggestions on how you can further improve your business model.

In addition to improving your business model, this ability to interact with your customers and clients will allow you to increase traffic and acquire additional sales. You can see from the graphic above, those businesses that had a blog and were active were able to acquire a larger percentage of customers than those who were using their blog infrequently.

SEO and Page Rank – If you’re experiencing lack of viewership to your website, a blog can help you improve your page rank. SEO, or search engine optimization, relies on content throughout your website to increase your website’s page rank which puts you at the top of search results. Having a blog gives you the chance to utilize keywords you think prospective customers would use to find the product or service you’re offering. With every blog post that includes these keywords, you gradually increase your SEO capabilities.

Branding – Believe it or not, maintaining a blog improves the branding of your small business. To start with, you will be features your company logo and slogan on your blog; however, it goes further than this. A business blog should preferably combine business and casual blog posts, all the while offering valuable information to your readers. Readers of your blog soon recognize your content and remember you based on your branding. This increases the success of your business branding overall.

New Product Launches – Releasing a new product line or series is an exciting prospect, but when your customers aren’t informed of the newest offerings, it can be hard to get good sales. With a blog, you can regularly update your readers and customers about the newest products and designs to hit your online store, or new service your company is providing. By keeping the blog updated regularly, customers continue to offer you their business.

Social Media Integration – Social media networking is more important now than ever before. Small businesses rely on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and bookmarking sites to get more exposure. By starting and maintaining a blog, you can post your social media icons on the blog which get seen with every post you have. You can also use social media as a way to announce new blog posts; it works both ways nicely.

Starting a blog is a great way to increase your fan base, get more sales and increase your lead potential. To gain the most from the blog, keep it updated on a regular basis. Aim for several times a week, but update at least once a week. The longer you have the blog and the harder you work at it, the more people will begin reading it and following it. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have a lot of readers right away; it takes time to gain a good amount of followers.