Want to drive valuable traffic to your business’s website? Starting a Blog can do the trick!
Many business owners don’t want to create a blog because either it takes too much of their time or they don’t know what to write about but don’t let this stop you. There are several ways to fit blog posts into your schedule (or you can hire someone to do it). When it comes to deciding what to write about, you’re the best person to ask –you’re an expert in your industry or you wouldn’t be running a business!
Blogging is a critical piece of an inbound marketing strategy. Here are some key points to consider when deciding on a strategy to drive traffic:
Did you know…?
- Nearly 40% of us companies use blogs for marketing purposes.
- Companies that blog have 55% more website visitors.
- B2C companies that blog get 88% more leads per month than those who don’t.
- B2B companies that blog get 67% more leads per month than those who don’t.
(Source: HubSpot.com – How to use business blogging for marketing success)
According to HubSpot.com, they’ve collected data that shows companies with an active blog and posting 20 or more times in a month see the highest return on traffic, and subsequently, leads.
What is it about regular blogging that drives traffic to your site?
Several things actually.
- For starters, creating valuable content on your website’s blog improves your site’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Each website page you publish gets indexed by search engines. The more blog posts you publish, the more pages you’ll have to be indexed by search engines. When you have a lot of content being indexed, the better your chances are for being found by people searching for your specific topics.
- Creating valuable content is King. Being ‘found’ isn’t where the game ends in this pursuit of web traffic. The caveat here is that your content must be valuable if you want that traffic to stick around –and come back for more. Creating content that solves your target customer’s problems is a key factor in a successful sales funnel. One way to do this is to research the types of questions people are asking about your topic. Try searching discussion forums like Reddit or Quora and see what concerns people have within your industry, then create content that addresses those topics.
- Another function of a business blog is establishing you as a thought leader. Being an industry authority on a subject helps you gain readers’ trust and informs their purchasing decisions. Here again, we see why quality content is a crucial point in any sales funnel. When you build trust with your readers, they’re more likely to engage in social sharing of your posts as well as sharing things like their email address in signing up for any lead magnets you’re offering. Once you’ve built an email list, you can begin more pointed marketing efforts to an audience who already knows you and, by signing up for your list, is ready for more.
- Engagement with your target audience is one of the best ways to build relationships and brand recognition. That’s where having an active blog and a social media presence comes in. With an active blog, you are regularly creating the content your audience desires. With an active presence on social media, you can share your blog posts with a much larger audience. And when people find your writing valuable, they share it. Many people will even comment on social media platforms, allowing you a golden opportunity to engage with them. Becoming active in these forums with your audience says you’re not just on-the-ball, but you also CARE.
There’s a lot more to writing quality content and sharing it with your target market. You should also be optimizing each piece of content for search engines with things like relevant keywords, images with tags and/or alternate text (alt text) which helps search engines understand what an image is about, as well as easy-to-understand sentences and blog structure with good use of whitespace and subheaders.
Using attractive headlines are just as important as the content itself. Structure your blog post headlines in a way that results in more clicks to your article in the first place. This is really important because even the best content won’t be clicked/read if the headline isn’t enticing! Use headline tools like the free one at CoSchedule to help you learn to develop headlines like a pro.
Starting a blog with quality content can take time, but it pays off in spades in the long run.
For help with your entire website’s SEO or advice for starting a blog for your business, you can talk to one of our representatives at Think Big Marketing. We’re here to help!