Laura’s Blog

By Patricia Forrest
Guest Contributor

Wondering whether you should invest time and resources into blogging?  Examine these 10 rewards your business can reap once you start making yourself known in the blogosphere.

1. Boost Credibility

Every business has something meaningful to share with their target audience and their existing customers. The value of your writing and everything you share with the online world will resonate with your consumers on a personal level, especially if you use reliable sources to make your claims.

When you share your expertise, knowledge, tips, advice, even entertainment, and offer a continuous line of communication with your audience, they will be more eager to return to your online realm and perceive you as a trustworthy source of information.

2. Provide Invaluable Engagement

Just like various social media platforms which ensure that your customers can establish a relationship with your brand, a blog is another way of enabling your business to reach more people.

Sharing, commenting, asking questions, informing the public on your latest achievements and efforts, competitions and giveaways – these are all ways of establishing your brand’s personality and values, and giving your audience something that will resonate with them.

3. Drive Traffic

Every search engine appreciates a website that consistently posts fresh content. Unlike paid ads, which will give your business a certain amount of increased visibility online, blog posts are a much more efficient and organic way of growing your online presence.

Since other pages of your website mostly remain the same, every time you publish a new blog post, you create an extra indexed page that will improve your search engine ranking and bring more people to your brand.

4. Generate More Leads

Now that you have more people perusing your website and reading your informative blog posts, you have a perfect opportunity to turn those visits into leads, which then become more likely to become your customers.

Simply include a call-to-action at the end or beginning of every blog post by offering your visitors a free e-book, webinar, coupon, first purchase discount, samples, anything of value, in exchange for their info.

Then leave it up to your sales team to work their magic!

5. Increase your Conversion Rate

With a greater number of people clicking through to your website thanks to your blog, newsletters, and social media posts, even those who have never made a single purchase thus far will be more likely to do so in the future.

According to research, long-term, high-quality blogging can make a great difference in your ROI, as much as 13x more over a certain period and with consistent content creation efforts.

6. Endorse Social Media

It’s all connected and intertwined – that is why every blog post is a chance for your readership to share it on their platforms, as well as your business partners to spread the word via their own social media pages.

Combining the power of social media with your written word can help your audience understand your brand better and thus encourage them to visit your website. Moreover, such valuable content makes for a perfect newsletter basis to further engage with your (potential) customer base.

7. Enable an Emotional Connection

The greatest challenge of starting your own business is establishing that emotional bond with your target audience.

While clever slogans, taglines, and a well-developed visual identity are necessary, blog posts are a unique medium for building a lasting emotional connection.

People will look for your services and shop for your products when they have a need, but this emotional bond will give you a competitive edge over your rivals in the market. It also makes you memorable and allows you to provide an intangible value to set you apart from your competition.

8. Gain Insight into How Others Perceive Your Brand

This two-way street of blogging is ideal for learning about your brand perception and how your product or service appears in the eyes of the public. Based on the levels of engagement, the number of shares and the depth of spurred discussion, you can extract meaningful data to drive your brand’s success.

Readers will leave useful feedback, reviews, testimonials and direct comments on your posts, but sometimes you can read between the lines and make changes in your online presentation where necessary in order to improve your online image.

9. Bring Your Brand to Life

It takes much time and effort to create lifelike charisma for your online presence.

A blog gives give your brand an authentic voice.

You can use blog posts to send a valuable message, express your views and reveal your passions, which will not only create a vivid personality out of your brand but further empower your emotional bond.

10. Define Your Purpose

Many start-ups genuinely wish to make a difference, and your blog can accomplish precisely what you need. Whether that is increasing your professional network and partnerships or raising awareness in your local community for a good cause, a blog is an invaluable channel of communication.

A blog allows you to establish your brand’s purpose, gain support and voice your concerns.

This will further define your business’s presence and influence in your field and your community.

Stepping Stone to Success

From measurable factors such as increased profit, all the way to intangible values such as building and maintaining your brand’s persona, a blog is more than a mere option – it is a prerequisite for lasting success.

If you are looking for the right strategy to develop your online presence, don’t underestimate the power of your blog and make the most of its power to grow your business.

About the Author

Patricia Forrest is passionate about numbers. She has an accounting degree and has made its way in the business world being now part of the Corporation USA where its passion lives daily.