According to Jeremy Wright, author of Blog Marketing: The Revolutionary Way to Increase Sales, the world of advertisement is changing from transmitting to engaging. Prior to the internet age, most businesses and companies functioned in a “transmission” method, where when they have a new product, they show an advertisement of it, and try to create buzz by displaying SALE! or some form of discounts that will please the customers. However, companies are realizing that engage method of advertisement is far better, in terms of customer satisfaction and company growth. You can broadcast your message, and simultaneously obtain customer feedback. For example, the Microsoft product engineering team are well known for looking at blog feedbacks before making significant changes in their products. So, should you start a blog for your business now? Definitely! And if thats not enough to persuade you to blog, here’s 3 reasons why you should start blogging right about now.

Gives you a voice on the internet

A blog gives your company a voice. It’s a place where you can show your customers what you’re all about. You can honestly share whatever you want, including thoughts, experience, strategies and even some tips and tricks to further promote your product. As you do so, you’re essentially telling the world what the company is capable for outside of the product itself. Those helpful content you produce on a daily basis can build up trust from customers. Trust will turn into leads and traffic, and finally into sales.

The graph above by HubSpot shows the importance of blogging. This method, is said to be “kindergarden content” approach coined by Marcus Sheridan, an influential blogger at Social Media Examiner. He states that, this way of acquiring customers are similar to when kindergarteners trust their teachers — you start to respect and appreciate someone that patiently teach and share knowledge with you. As company’s take this approach, they see and explain things that are otherwise left unclear from the customer’s perspective, and not their own. This is crucial to build customer relationships and gain more sales.

Increase SEO

SEO, or search engine optimization, is crucial for your business visibility. Fresh and knowledgeable content is key to beat out your competitors. You don’t have enough profit to have paid keywords by Google? That’s totally fine. Keep blogging on a daily basis, and build your content upon several keywords that you want your company to be found for. For example, if you’re in the fishing business and what to promote your company’s new fishing rod, emphasize the word “fishing rod” with several features, such as “rigid and easy to use”. You don’t necessarily have to actively seek to cram keywords in a single post. If you’re passionate enough, regular blogging about your industry, experience, useful tricks, or customer lifestyle will naturally increase your SEO, which will potentially increase your customers.

Be knowledgable about your surroundings and your competitors

Blogging not only creates buzz and increases your company visibility on the internet, it will also make you an expert on your field of expertise. Firstly, when you write a blog post, you have to be aware and know if the topic you’re writing about is already somewhere on the internet. If it is, you’ll either have to alter your content, or choose a completely different topic to write about. As you do this process, you’ll notice yourself going around many blogs potentially created by your competitors, and eventually understanding their product and what they specialize in. This will make you not only knowledgable about your competitors, but also make you create original content which differentiates from those “cliché” posts. In addition, you’ll also learn to answer and explain things in a way that your customers could easily understand, because searching for content to write about by constantly following the news will make you well educated in the field of your product.

Yes, blogging is time-consuming, but the benefit it brings to your company is immense. So what are you waiting for? Start blogging!

Sources:

Kolowich, L. (2015, April 9). How Often Should Companies Blog? [New Benchmark Data]. Retrieved January 31, 2016, from http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchmarks

Sheridan, M. (2011, December 02). 5 Reasons Your Business Should Be Blogging : Social Media Examiner. Retrieved January 31, 2016, from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/5-reasons-your-business-should-be-blogging/

Wright, J. (2006). Blog marketing: The revolutionary new way to increase sales, build your brand, and get exceptional results. New York: McGraw-Hill.