Business Blogging…Did You Know?

Did You Know a Business Blog Can–?

• Increase Exposure for your business
• Reach more clients/customers
• Gives your clients/customers added value

Here are 10 reasons every business needs a blog.

1. As a service for your clients/customers- By providing your clients/customers with information they want or need they perceive that your adding value to your product or services.

2. To keep your content fresh on your website which increases search engine rankings. Just throwing a pretty website up isn’t going to automatically bring traffic to your site.  Search engines bring traffic, but search engines won’t rank your site well if the content isn’t fresh. Blogging continually gives fresh content for the search engines to pick up on.

3. To add tags, categories and keywords to increase SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on your site.   By having words that your target market are searching for in your blog copy, tags and categories you’re more likely to be found when they do those searches.

4. To reach millions of potential clients/customers.  The Internet reaches more people than any print advertisement every could.

5. To gain expert status in your field. People write about what they know. Writing about your field will immediately give you credibility as someone who knows their stuff.

6. To give clients/customers a way to keep in touch.   Give them a way to interact with you by commenting on your blog posts.

7. Allow you to keep in touch with your customers/clients.  It goes both ways, blogging allows you to see what your clients/customers have to say, what they want and how they want it done.

8. It’s a relatively inexpensive marketing tool that far outweighs print ads and the Yellow Pages in it’s effectiveness.  Blogging is free.  Sure, if you want it set up on your own website under your own domain name, you’ll have to pay to have it set up, but after that, all it costs is a bit of time.  And the ROI (Return on Investment) is much higher than a costly Yellow Pages listing.

9. It gives your business a face and voice, rather than simply being an entity. Writing and sharing your knowledge, thoughts and expertise shows customers/clients that there is a real person behind the business.  This is becoming vitally important to business success in the current business environment.

10. It gives you the ideal place to run special deals, contests and other promotional events.  When you have a blog, you can advertise special deals or create special deals just for blog visitors.  Encourage more people to visit by running a contest or build excitement for a promotional event.

What excuses are you using for not having a business blog?

• I don’t know how to build or maintain a blog
• I wouldn’t know what to blog about
• I don’t have time

They may sound like valid excuses, but there is plenty of help available to you.  If you want to do it yourself, find someone to provide blog coaching or consulting.  If you’re not the do it yourself type, hire someone to do it for you.  I think you’ll find it a much better use of your advertising budget.

As you can see, a business blog is a vital component in promoting a business.  Can you afford not to have one?