How Blogs Help Small Businesses

Blogging can boost a small business’ sales, visibility and authority. According to DemandMetric, companies with blogs produce about 67% more monthly leads than companies that do not blog.

As the third most commonly used content marketing strategy (behind video and eBooks), blogging can be an excellent pathway to share your small business’ mission and offerings. HubSpot reports marketers who prioritized blogging in 2019 saw 13x more ROI than companies that did not.

With more than 600 million active blogs publishing this year, readers have their choices of what they want to explore. This is splendid news for small business owners. Readers/potential customers are hungry for a solution to the problem or challenge your small business addresses.

In fact, more than 400 million people look at more than 20 billion blog pages a month, according to WordPress.

That is a lot of people reading a lot of blogs.

Increase Your Sales

Business blogging can boost sales because the content marketing strategy gets your service or product in front of more eyeballs. Blogs can double how many visitors check out your website. According to (HubSpot), businesses that blog see more than 55% more website visitors than businesses that do not blog.

With more people reading about your unique selling proposition and innovative product, you boost the probability of finding the right client for your small business.

Boost Your Know, Like and Trust Factor

Not only does business blogging boost your small business’ visibility, but the content marketing strategy can also build the “know, like and trust” factor between your business and a potential client. By writing about your business’ product or services, readers get to know your voice and personality.

The more a potential customer reads about you and your business (and if they like what they read), the more likely they are to become paying customers — or at least join your email list.

Build Your Authority

Writing consistently about your small business’ services and products also helps build your authority and credibility. Blog posts can showcase various parts of your services and products to help readers better understand your expertise.

One way to make sure you strategically write about different parts of your business is to create a content calendar. While this can sound daunting, creating a content calendar can be simple.

Here is a quick and dirty four-step guide to creating a content calendar:

1. Set a 20-minute timer and write all the blog post topics that come to mind.
2. When the timer goes off, find common themes among your ideas and organize your topics into two to four “content pillars.”
3. Decide how often you want to post a blog. Based on your decision, slot your topic ideas into a calendar.
4. Stick to the content calendar!

Another benefit to blogging helps the business owner more than a potential customer/client. The more you write about a topic, the more you learn. So, blogging can be a useful learning tool and help make you more knowledgeable about your business.

More Tips

Here are a few tips to help you with your blog writing journey:

1. Write clear and clean blogs.
2. Use editing software to strengthen your blog posts.
3. Enable comments on your blog posts and reply to reader comments.
4. Promote your blog posts on social media and in your email newsletters.
5. Do not be too “sales-y” in your blog posts. Blogs are content marketing tools to help educate and inspire readers. There are other avenues more suitable for traditional sales strategies.
6. Search engine optimize (SEO) your blog posts.
7. Add images to your blog posts. Blog posts with images tend to get more page views,