You’ve got one hundred and one things to do by the end of the week (and it’s Thursday), so the concept of starting a blog for your start-up or small business probably doesn’t sound appealing – even dedicated marketers struggle to keep up with managing their own blogs.
But in 2024, the marketing world is different than ever before: to get leads and new customers you have to work harder AND smarter.
When you blog strategically, you can generate more revenue for your business and even save yourself some social media work along the way.
There’s three main benefits that make blogging essential in the modern business world – whether you’re a brand new start-up or a proprietorship 50 years in the making:
- Building Brand Awareness
- Increasing Website Visits
- Telling your Story
Building Brand Awareness:
In some ways, this is the end all be all of marketing. Nobody will buy anything you’re offering if they don’t know you exist!
Blogs build brand awareness discreetly. While you’re publishing educational content about your industry and helping customers solve their problems before they ever talk to a salesperson, you’re positioning yourself in their mind as a friendly, helpful expert.
When this semi-frequent blog reader who has been turning to you for help realizes they can’t fix it all on their own, who will be the first business that they call?
This is the power of blogging when building brand awareness.
Blog marketing isn’t about “selling” your product or service, instead it’s targeted to customers who know they have a problem but aren’t sure what the solution is yet. By diagnosing the issue and explaining their options, when they decide to start shopping you’ll be the friendly face they trust and will turn to.
Increasing Website Visits:
Websites are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and take up hours of work to top it all off.
If it’s consuming all this time and money, you deserve to have people look at it!
There’s two main ways to increase your website’s visibility on a browser like Google or Bing: paid ads and SEO (search engine optimization).
Both have their advantages, for sure. Paid search ads will get you listed at the top of Google quick and easy, but as the name implies, it costs money.
The beauty of SEO is that it can get you on the first page of search engines without paying to be there. Not only does this save money, but it also adds some authenticity to your name (some people just scroll right past the sponsored links).
How a browser like Google ranks your SEO is based on two things: keywords and backlinks.
Keywords refer to how accurately your site and posts match the search the user entered. If they look up “banks,” Google will go through and search for words including and about banks (teller, ATM, savings, etc.).
Blogs are a great way to include keywords in your site. When you write posts about industry relevant topics, you will probably naturally include the buzzwords that tell Google you match the search query. You can also do keyword research to find what words you need to include.
Backlinks are how Google determines the credibility of a site. When another blog or website refers to your page, it increases your authenticity to Google’s algorithm – in other words, it tells the browser that you’re an expert on this search.
You can also improve your backlink credibility by citing other blogs. If there are blogs you find useful and educational on the first page of Google/Bing, you can include a link to them in your blog like this.
When you post useful information on your blogs, other businesses will cite you as well, creating a network of links and backlinks that build up credibility and help you rank on the first page of a search!
When you combine backlinking and keywords on your blog, you are setting yourself up for a cost-efficient uptick in site visitation, which directly correlates to leads and revenue.
Telling your Story
Narratives are more engaging, personal, and entertaining than data & facts. For thousands of years, humans have used stories to inspire, teach, and instill values in each other.
Through blogging, you can harness the power of storytelling in your marketing campaign!
A great way to do this is a customer success story. Walk your reader through one of your client’s buyer’s journey.
It starts with their life before your product/service, the issue they were having. Detail how they began searching and what they tried before discovering your solution.
Don’t skip their experience during the sales process (the blogs they read, the salespeople they talked to, etc.)
Ultimately, you’ll wrap up with their success – how the problem has been solved for good and their continued positive experience with your team (customer support, further purchases, referrals, etc).
When this is done, the reader of your blog will have a memorable and personal connection with your business’ solutions. What do you think will stick with them more: A story like this or a data point that says “We have solved this problem for X amount of people?”
People love stories, and when someone is considering spending money, it is comforting to know someone like them has had the same experience and came out better on the other side thanks to you!
Bonus Tip:
One way you can cut down on the time commitment that writing a blog takes up is by taking snippets of your published blogs to use as social media captions! This way, for every 1000ish word blog, you might also get up to 10 social media posts built-in.
For example: After publishing this blog, we could post this quote as a caption on our social media pages, “Through blogging, you can harness the power of storytelling in your marketing campaign!”
Once you slap on some emojis, relevant hashtags, and find a suitable image, this post is ready to go and it took no time at all to plan!
Conclusion
We won’t tell you writing a blog is easy, because it’s definitely not, and it never will be.
What we ARE saying is, it’s worth it.
Blogging allows you to show your expertise in the industry, build awareness for your brand, improve your search engine rankings, and build a personal connection with readers. There is no other form of marketing that can do all of these things simultaneously with just one or two posts a week!
If you need help getting started with your blogging journey, contact Beth Woodson Marketing. We have decades of writing experience and have made businesses six figures in new revenue with the help of our marketing efforts in less than a year!
You can contact us at 540-613-7784, hi@bethwoodson.com, or visit our website: www.bethwoodson.com.
Happy Writing!