A blog is a section of your website where new, fresh content is added and published on a regular basis.
Blog posts most often are arranged in order from newest post to oldest post, and can be display in a list, in a grid, or in a Pinterest-style tiled format called masonry.
Starting a blog and blogging for business is one of the most effective and efficient marketing tools available to business owners — especially when combined with a well-planned marketing calendar and content strategy.
- Blogging can help you get you found faster and more often online by people who are searching for exactly what you offer
- Blogging can help increase your search engines rankings for the keywords and key phrases you are targeting
- Blogging can help get your brand and your message in front of new audiences
- Blogging can help position you as a leader and help you establish expertise and credibility in your niche market
- Blogging helps people get to know you and keeps you top of mind, and as a result can lead to a shorter sales cycle and an increase in referrals
Why every business should be blogging:
Let’s say your business website has about 10 pages. That means you have 10 chances of coming up the search results when someone searches for what you do, right? WRONG!
Take away the Privacy Policy and Legal Disclaimer pages, the contact page (because it will pretty much never come up separate from your main URL), any coming soon pages, thank you pages, etc., and you probably have about 6 pages on your site that may be considered searchable.
But seriously, when was the last time you Google’d something and a general Services page for a company showed up in the search results? Probably never. How about a company’s About page? Maybe if you Google’d someone’s name.
So really, there are only maybe three pages that might show up if someone searches for what you do — if they are optimized well and if there isn’t much competition.
Kind of depressing, right?
Blogging changes everything.
Let’s say you want to increase the amount of business you get from the internet — you want to use the web to generate more leads and make more sales. So you hire a professional to add a blog to your website, or to redesign your site on WordPress and integrate the blog into the website.
You publish your first blog post, and now instead of three pages that could show up in search results, there are four. By publishing a single blog post, you created another opportunity online for someone who needs what you do to find you.
Let’s say you continued blogging, publishing one new blog post a week for a year. In that single year, you will have added 52 additional opportunities for someone to find you online.
If you blog twice a week for a year, you will add over one hundred new opportunities to get your website in front of people, increase your chances of appearing in the search results, and you’ll expand the visibility of your brand and business.
Pretty amazing right?
Yet some businesses still don’t blog.
Even knowing the benefits of blogging, many business owners are hesitant to start a blog.
They may be hesitant to write about something someone else is already writing about. They may not like to write. They may think there is no time for blogging. And, they most likely feel pressure to create amazing, ground breaking content.
But blogging isn’t about hitting a grand slam every time you’re up.
It’s okay to keep hitting base hit after base hit after base hit, with a grand slam every once in a while — those players make the hall of fame too. What you need to remember is that a blog is just a simple collection of content typically focused on a specific topic or niche.
A blog is nothing more than a file cabinet for your website.
- The categories of your blog are like the drawers of your file cabinet, each representing a large, overarching theme or topic.
- The tags of your blog are like the individual labeled file folders inside the drawers, organizing the content into sub-topics.
Your blog is simply a place you can store and file all different types of helpful and valuable content — articles, reviews, videos, audios, opinion, how-tos, resources, tips, and more — for other people to quickly and easily access.
We love blogging.
If you’re reading this, it’s probably pretty clear that I love blogging, and that we believe in blogging for business and then wide-spread benefits blogging brings. That’s why we have so much fun working with our clients on designing and developing custom WordPress websites — because for us, a blog and website are one and the same, and we believe the more businesses that think that way, the more successful they will be online.
Needless to say, we design and build a blog into almost every single site we build and provide hands on training to teach our clients how to edit their site and use their blog. If you’re interesting in partnering with Bourn Creative for the design of your new WordPress website, fill out our project inquiry form form a free consultation.
What About You
Are you a business owner who blogs as part of your marketing strategy? Has your blog helped you reach new audiences, make new connections, and get found more often online? Or are you new to blogging and considering getting started? Do you have questions about blogging for business?
We’d love to hear your comments, questions, and opinions in the comments below
Related Posts
- How to Create A Highly Effective Website Home Page
- How To Design A Website Header (And What Should Go In It)
- What Are Website Menus And How Are They Used In WordPress Sites?
- What Is A WordPress Widget?
- Smart Strategies For Your WordPress Website Sidebar Design
- The Difference Between a WordPress Footer and a Footer Widget Area
- Website Content Tips For The WordPress Page And Post Content Area
- Understanding WordPress Page Templates
- Understanding WordPress Archive Templates
- Sales Pages, Landing Pages, and Squeeze Pages, Oh My!
- Add An Opt-In Box to Your WordPress Site To Build Your Email List
- Responsive Website Design: What Is It, How Does It Work, Why Should I care?