As stated by HubSpot, businesses that do not blog are now in the minority. Nearly 65% of business have a blog and 85% of these state that blogging “useful,” “important” or “critical.”  Blogging can have several positive effects on businesses, ultimately those effects translating into increased revenues and high brand recognition. In short, the advantages of blogging for businesses are

• ‘Humanisation’ – The companies that blog are more humanised
• More visibility
• Credibility and trust
• Industry expertise
• Easier to generate leads (and revenues)

Humanising the company

We are all consumers, we like to communicate and “talk” to our favourite brands, engage with them and create a “friendship”. Blogging creates an easier path towards building a more engaging and person relationship between business and consumers. With the help of blogs, companies can communicate to consumers in a transparent and flexible way, giving the company a personality and making it more accessible to its prospects.

The most important thing to consider when blogging is creating interesting and relevant content to your brand and customers. Further to humanising your company, focus on creating dynamic and exciting content to attract the audience, promote your business and most importantly, connect with your customers.

There are different options to create a blog and get it running, using software packages like WordPress, where you can access lots of different templates (free or paid) or where you can create a custom template aligning it with your brand representations.

Enhancing visibility

You are a company. You are a brand. Now, what you have to do is make this brand visible, right? Blogging can help you there! Through the power of blogging, businesses can gain visibility by successfully implementing their SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy, enabling Google Search to find their content more easily. Moreover, you get to display your authority and expertise (we’ll be talking about that later on) in your industry, which is great! This way, you don’t just offer value, but you pave the way to solving your customers’ problems and answer their questions.

Building credibility and trust

In my opinion, the most important aspect of a brand identity is the trust between the brand and its consumers. A blogging strategy is a very important step towards creating and forming a trust relationship, credibility and confidence. There are a few steps you can take if you want to do this. First, you have to understand what audience you are talking to and what potential solutions that audience is looking for. Secondly, you have to explain why the solution is important and relevant to your consumers. Give examples (visuals are very good!) and provide tips. Remember, the audience wants tips! Thirdly, when you are closing your “story”, give a short conclusion and summary of the tips, and (again) make it relevant to your audience. If you want your audience to engage further with you, ask closing questions or offer the possibility to have a further discussion on the topic. This type of format can help create the structure that builds trust and confidence between your customers and you.

Establishing industry expertise

Remember a few minutes ago when I said that blogging helps establish your business as an industry expert? The reality is, that’s a hard step to take and it means you have to put a lot of effort into it. It’s vital that your opinion, knowledge, and expertise are mirrored in the content you’re creating. The way to get there is by knowing what challenges your audience faces and how to address these challenges. The first step is to do a bit of research. Set Google alerts for certain keywords that your prospects might search for and find topics they are interested in. Once you get an idea of what content to distribute, put some thought and effort into writing it and pay attention to the engagement on your blog, too. This way you can further elaborate on the topic of interest. Attracting the visitors who find your content relevant and interesting (and of expertise) will push them closer to a sale.

Generating leads (and revenues)

Now you know that having a blog helps your business gain credibility, trust and a more personal touch. But it doesn’t stop here and as any business owner, you want leads, right? Blogging helps you there. But you need to include a few tactics in order to generate more leads through blogging. Here is a list of tactics you can keep in mind:

1. Make it easy for readers to subscribe to your blog. They might love your content and your opinions, so let them get more of that!

2. Add CTA (Call-To-Action) buttons

CTA buttons are engaging buttons that you readers can click on and get even more relevant content, a free trial, a free audit etc. or simply get in touch with you.  The CTA should lead to a landing page where your prospect can submit their details and get that great free thing you are offering them (or send you that message). Make them visible, relevant and easy to access.

3. Give them more (free) content that they can download

Ebooks, white papers, free templates, reports etc. are a great way to keep your readers interested and to make them view you as the industry expert (and to impress them). The key to attract them is to provide them with relevant content that answers their questions and provides a solution to their problem.

Blogging is not easy, but it is an important step to take if you want your company to gain trust, credibility and to be viewed as an industry expert. If you don’t have the time to invest in blogging, get content creation experts to do it for you. And remember, your to-do list is:

a) write blogs

b) write blogs

c) write blogs

by Raluca Saceanu (@ralucasaceanu)

Image Credit: Vinography

Need help organising your blogs? Get this free Blog Editorial Calendar now!

//