Nowadays and with the age of instant information, no brand of media has a quicker turnaround and a larger readership than the blogosphere. Blogs are free to own and manage, apart from time, and they’ve been known to turn regular Joes and Jane’s into famous bloggers.
The trick: fresh, interesting content, regularly updated. It’s the perfect way to advertise anything, and everything small business should be operating on the blogosphere for exposure.
Five Reasons Your Business should be Blogging
1: Show a real side of your business
Blogging allows everybody to express their thoughts and opinions, but not anything will do here, of course. You wouldn’t want to alienate any possible clients by posting about religious or political issues. So, instead of making the blog personal to you, you can make it personal to your business yet still express a human side. Show people that there are real people behind your business. Inject some humor, professional insight, etc, into your posts. These ties directly in with the 2nd reason
2: Opening a dialogue can bring surprising returns
By blogging about your business, you’re able to open up real conversations with people. Of course, this isn’t a FAQ section or any type of support, but rather a place where, if a customer has a genuine concern, a full and thoughtful answer can be displayed. The only real difference between this and the type of help you should provide with your business is that, on a blog, this dialogue is open to the public. Others will have the opportunity to see how you engage customers.
3: It’s a great aid to Search Engine Optimization
If you’re operating a business on the web, then you already know all about keywords and other ways to optimize content for search engine results. New content on a blog is the perfect opportunity for free advertising. Obviously, you don’t want to post nonsense that’s watered down with pointless, redundant keywords. But with a little searching for popular words and phrases, you can lace your blog content to get high placement and link people to your site form your blog. It’s a great way to get noticed and to drive traffic.
4: Blogs are informal
Unlike professional business websites, blogs can be carefree, fun and full of links and other information that you wouldn’t necessarily want to post on your website. This allows you to earn higher search engine placement without sacrificing any credibility. It also opens the door to any businesses you’re in a partnership with, such as referrals and the like. You can place their links on your site and vice versa.
5: Google loves new content
Sure, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines are around, but Google still has a solid 80% market share. And with numbers like that, you absolutely must be on Google. There no way around it. With Google’s website crawling feature, new content will mean that you always have a chance of a high ranking. With your blog, you can get this new content without touching your main business site. It’s another great advertising tool.