"Sorry, I don't really see the benefit of blogging for my type of business."
Ouch!
To think that there are still business owners, both large and small, who believe that they are somehow immune to the benefits of publishing industry-leading content via a company blog is scary. It goes right along with brick and mortar guys thinking that social media has no direct connection to offline sales, when in fact, the numbers have proven the exact opposite.
Whether your business revolves around products, services or even buying other businesses, having a blog will not only improve the search engine visibility of your website, but it can also act as an ABM (authority building mechanism) that will help your content to get linked, mentioned and commented about for years to come.
A perfect example is a blog post we did on creating a solid case study template that is now #3 in Google for "case study template" and brings in an additional 200 unique visitors per month. Was it a lucky blog post or Google's way of saying keep up the good work? We'd like to believe it was the latter.
Adding a blog to your website can and will:
- Help you rank for a whole bunch of keywords beyond your initial strategy
- Help your company build it's email list for future marketing endeavours
- Help you establish your company as an authority in your market/niche
- Fuel your social media accounts with in-house content to link to
- Connect you with other thought-leaders and form partnerships beyond the web
So back to the initial question at hand: can any type of business benefit from blogging? The short and long answer is the same... YES. It doesn't matter how many employees you have or what your stakeholders may think they know, a website without a blog isn't much more than an online brochure full of static information that never changes.
The truth is, the bigger your company, the bigger your blogging strategy should be i.e. multiple in-house blogs that focus on industry specific topics, featuring guest authors, contributors and sponsored content. If you've tried blogging before and it didn't pan out, here are some tips to ensure you get off to a healthy start:
1. Blog on a regular basis. A blog that's only updated once every four months won't do anything for your business. Create a content schedule and have scheduled blog posts publish at set intervals i.e. every other day.
2. Blog as if you were writing an article for a recognized magazine. Leave your keyword-stuffed blog posts for when you're finally able to travel back in time and visit 2004. Be useful, solve problems, challenge convention and your readers will do the same. Quality content is king and that will never change.
3. Use social media to blast your blog post. Utilize Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare and any other social profile you have to provide the initial traffic to your blog post. This will create links and get your post indexed faster than usual.
There are tons of reasons why blogging works - and very few scenarios where it doesn't. Open up your mind to the power of self-publishing and use it's popularity to reach new clients, prospective partners and gain momentum beyond your typical "visit my website" elevator pitch.
Image courtesy of xiaming