Blogs – packed with social media, can become a powerhouse conversion, branding, and customer acquisition tool for small businesses. Then why most small businesses refrain from tapping the blogging opportunities? What benefits can small business blogs bring in?

Three Reasons Why Small Businesses Avoid having Blogs

• Lack of time
• Knowledge and technical know-how
• Unaware about blogging benefits

Small Business Marketing Blog – A Lost-in-the-Crowd Blogger Syndrome?

When I started blogging (remember blogger.com?) – and wrote on essential issues – ranging from politics, life, health to trends – I did it as a part of my hobby. Never thought of continuing it as a part of our in-house marketing strategy.

Why am I Working on my Company Blog?

• Share information, communicate key messages and connect with our users
• Drive traffic to our site
• Conversion

And these three reasons are equally relevant for small businesses too – that currently are absent of blogs.

Top 10 Benefits of Small Business Blogs

1) Connect with the Target Audience and Keep Them Informed About your Business

A website has its core pages – About Us, Services, Contact Us, and other pages – and each is designed and created for meeting a particular purpose. But these pages cannot connect your business with the target audience.

A blog is a single entity of your website that will act as a bridge – filling up the gap between your small business and audience. You can add content discussing your new products, launches, services, buzz around your enterprise, and more and give your audience a direct ticket to the same.

You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on campaigns, billboards, press media, and other paid resources to connect and share information with your users – The blog will do the JOB!

2) Leverage and Drive Active SEO Results

When updated with fresh and optimized content, small business blogs boost SEO scores and suffice the sites’ SEO criteria.

With a blog, you can add content, images, and creatives – integrated with backlinks and targeted keywords, which will enhance your website’s SERPs.

Update blog for your small business on a scheduled basis – aligning with the best SEO guidelines and techniques – and you can be ahead of the SEO game – called high PageRank.

3) Enhance Social Media Presence

Having a strong social media presence is essential for small businesses. And a blog helps in meeting this component of both small business marketing and social media marketing.

Social media is where you can find your potential customers. The platform not only connects brands with users but also creates a two-way communication system for both parties.

A blog acts as a trigger to boost the social media entity of small businesses. Add social media buttons to the blog and help users share and build awareness among your brand’s community.

4) Build and Maintain Relationships with both Old and New Customers

When you create valuable and informative content for your small business blog – you’re building authority in your sector. And your audience will consider you as a reliable source and start believing in you.

More than SEO ranking and brand promotion – a blog helps in building a cohesive customer relationship. It will work as a tour guide for your audience – taking them around the website and providing them beyond a set of informative static pages.

Blogs talk about the different experiences, pain points, ups and downs of the concerning business and the customers, which enables the audience to connect and relate to. With a blog, you’ll create a foundation for a more substantial and long-term customer/business relationship.

5) Cost-Effective Marketing Campaign

If you know the basics of Blogging and are driven by your business’s purpose and proposition value, you’ll definitely make the best use of a small business blog.

Blogging is one of the most cost-effective and result-oriented marketing investments. Creating regular posts and updating blogs with fresh, original, and engaging content will drive users to your site and build brand identity and awareness and help promote your services/products/brand value to both old, existing, and new customers.

And the best part of having small business blogs – is that you don’t have to spend a dime in using Blogging as a marketing tool – unless you hire writers and professionals to work on your blog.

 

6) Create Opportunities For Sharing

One of the most significant advantages of having a blog is that it gives users the chance to share the blog or post—people who read your blog and like the content can share it with others. But, again, this is only possible if the content you create adds value.

If your blog does add value, then the possibilities are endless. Visitors can share our post via social media platforms or even email the post – you could be the next Brian Dean of your industry!

7) Collecting Emails of Interested Customers

Small business owners can use Blogging to collect interested customers’ email addresses by asking them to subscribe. These can be used in the marketing funnel to promote more business. The more touchpoints you have to your customers, the better chance you have of connecting with them and converting them.

8) Generating Demand 

Generating demand is the first step when it comes to lead generation tactics. Most companies use their blogs to help peak the interests of their customers. Adding useful information such as product features, how-to-use, and the solutions your brand provides are all great ways to generate demand for your products.

Take a look at what Apple does. Before the launch of a new product, they host a keynote presentation explaining the product’s advantages, features, and benefits. This helps excite followers and users to buy the latest upgrade.

9) Converting Leads

When it comes to connecting with customers, there are three stages of the customer journey:

• Awareness Stage
• Consideration Stage 
• Decision Stage 

No matter which stages your customers are on, you can showcase your brand and highlight product importance via blogs.

You could use ‘checklists and tips to help attract new customers in the awareness stage.

Additionally, in the consideration stage, you could showcase blogs based on ‘how-to’ topics. Finally, in the decision-making stage, testimonial content pieces can act as the push needed to buy.

Remember, Blogging is an essential part of converting your customers into leads.

10) Building your network with Influencer Marketing

Along with Blogging, another great addition is influencer marketing. Giving an influencer the option to create content for your eCommerce store is a great way to get more customers interested in your brand. With the right influencers’ correct reviews, your brand could reach more people than you thought possible.

For small business owners, what matters is getting your brand out there. By tying up with the right influencer, you could gain access to the right audience, which would open doors for your brand that would not be possible otherwise. Think about it. Influencers have hundreds if not thousands of followers. Just by posting a review or writing a piece about one of your products could give you the push to jumpstart your brand.

Wrapping Up

We all know just how important a blog is for a website. But adding only one or two posts will not help you. You need to make sure that you have a solid content marketing strategy in place with a robust content calendar.

Make sure that your posts are engaging and that whatever you write helps add value to the customer. Only then can you hope for brand visibility and an increase in sales.