AUTHOR:
Thomas Dufour
Director of Accounts and Business Development
For many clients, developing a blog may seem like an infinite amount of effort without any reward. We get it. With your limited amount of resources already dedicated to business-critical tasks, freeing up those resources for non-critical pipe dreams seems like a fool’s errand, right? That notwithstanding – say we did have that coveted extra hour in the day: What to write about? How often? Is anyone even going to read this thing?! Why not dedicate that extra hour to something tried and true — like cold calling. I’m kidding.
As the first post in this series, I find it to be a requirement that we explain our intentions for developing this publication in the first place. As such, the following article will go into the details of the top ten reasons any business, especially small businesses, should start and maintain a blog. Oh, and in a roundabout way, I guess I’ll explain why we’re embarking on this journey.
There is an “old” joke that goes:
An SEO Specialist walks into a bar, brewery, pub, public house, grill, beer, wine, liquor…
First, let’s both you and I agree to ignore the fact that anything involving SEO can be considered old and focus on the greater context here: There was a time where keyword stuffing and repeating yourself incessantly was all the rage and produced effective results in the SEO world. But with the keyword meta tag being depreciated, those techniques becoming detectable and therefore punishable, and search engines focusing more on relevance rather than repetition the game itself has changed. Now SEO has transformed into something which is altogether better for users, infinitely fairer, but much more difficult for folks just getting started.
While there are other factors at play, like mobile usability, security, and how your site is constructed, search engines today more or less do their best to rank based on how relevant the current user will think your website is to the question that you are asking of it. Search engines today are made to prioritize content that is meaningful, contains references to and are referenced by other trusted (authoritative) sources, and sites that encourage engagement. The bottom line here is this:
Blogs vastly increase the chances of all of these things.
By creating more content, you’re ultimately casting a wider net for ways people find your business’s website, not just now but forever. The bigger your website gets, the more opportunities for people to find and share your content, the more relevant your website becomes, and the higher it ranks. Additionally, continually generating fresh content is a signal to search engines and your website is active, and they’ll send their bots back more frequently to see what’s new.
Have more questions about SEO? Our Summit Collective partner, MDR can answer them!
That’s a good segway to item #2…
If your goal is to be completely hidden on the internet, have zero interactions with customers, and never sell anything, well, I’m not sure why you’re reading this article in the first place, but having a blog will generate traffic for your website. Statistics range from all over the place, but most sites report a vast majority of their traffic coming from blog entries. Think of your site as your sales funnel – once people are on it, they’re in the funnel.
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Your business is inevitably going to do cool things and learn new tricks. So tell the world about all of it! For example, last year, we moved to downtown Akron and into the Bounce Innovation Hub, the region’s first open innovation hub serving northeast Ohio’s entrepreneurial and innovation community!
Your business might be deploying new products, releasing new updates to products, or implementing a new process – it’s worth blogging about. As mentioned above, the more content you create and the more relevant it is, the better.
Generating new content gives you something to share on social media and allows your business, brand, and content to be shared by a multitude of people, potentially new customers! Brand visibility is important for a lot of reasons – sort of how a nice storefront used to attract motorists and pedestrians inside to shop, having an active social presence is along the same lines. This is one method of generating new traffic which we mentioned above, which again unless you’re trying to hide on the internet, is kind of the point of the whole thing…
This will apply to some companies more than others, but offering up product-related posts that solicit customer feedback can only serve to benefit your business from a customer service perspective. Having a direct line of communication with your customers and responding directly to their needs on your website and social channels will ultimately let them know you care about their experience with your product/service and show other prospective customers that you care as well.
Steve Jobs famously said, “customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” Similarly, if customers don’t understand your product or service, see the potential in the product or service you’re offering, or know you offer a product or service that they may or may not have known they were looking for, a blog is a great way to show them the depth and capabilities of what you’re putting out into the world. Similarly, to reference the above point in #5, generating questions from your blog posts in comments or social channels about your product or service gives your company brand awareness and also serves to allow potential customers to learn from others’ questions.
If you have expertise in your field, use your blog as an opportunity to showcase it! A lot of industries have an expansive community and becoming an authority in that community that provides quality content will only serve to establish yourself as a top provider of that product or service. Especially if you’re on the bleeding edge of something, establishing your blog as a resource for the entire industry to learn from only serves to increase the perception that you are the authority in the industry, helping your search engine rankings (a callback to #1) and making clients want to do business with you.
Sure, people could find your product page organically, but if you write a blog post about a problem and link to your product that solves that very issue and a user finds that instead, now you know what I mean when I say that blogging can help improve internal site linking.
Searching for a product is fine when you know what the solution already is, but let's be honest, neither you nor I use Google that way a lot of the time. Looking for answers to a question provides us an incredible opportunity to write something worthwhile that a prospective customer might find and lead them to buy one of your products.
Additionally, linking pieces of content that you have developed increases the likelihood that people will spend additional time on your website, learning more about your company, products, and brand.
Blogging is one way to keep in touch with your customers, as outlined in #3 and #5, but e-mail marketing is a tried and true method for keeping in touch with your prospects and customers about your products, services, and things going on around your business. Asking for someone’s email address is easy. We already did it once earlier in this article, and you so kindly submitted your email address, so thank you for that.
Only one person didn’t submit their email address above, so here is the form for them since we know you submitted it above. That was you, right? Ok, thanks.
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Customers can always send an email into the abyss, find a neat looking website, check some Google or Facebook reviews about a company – they can pray your company knows what you are doing, that you have a solution tailored for them, or assume that they’re a real, in-business company based in their local area.
Or you can show them.
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Everything we’ve discussed above is a part of being a living, breathing brand which is an important goal for emBold in 2022. We want to showcase our expertise, discuss the newest and latest digital trends that are transforming the website development industry – we want to tell you all about how we’re transforming manufacturing through digital automation and process modernization.
Keep in touch with us via this blog or reach out on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram for more information on what emBold is up to and learn more about how we can help you.
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For many clients, developing a blog may seem like an infinite amount of effort without any reward. We get it. With your limited amount of resources already dedicated to business-critical tasks, freeing up those resources for non-critical pipe dreams seems like a fool’s errand, right? That notwithstanding – say we did have that coveted extra hour in the day: What to write about? How often? Is anyone even going to read this thing?! Why not dedicate that extra hour to something tried and true — like cold calling. I’m kidding.
