Why you need a blog – from SEO to marketing

What are the advantages of having a blog for your business? Isn’t it obvious? A business blog can be used as an effective, targeted and cheap source of marketing on the web and can represent your business in the best possible manner towards your targeted audience, or your customers. Listed below are some of the primary reasons why businesses should blog.

Blog = Affordable Marketing

All businesses need promotion and marketing of their brand as well as products/services. But this can be expensive. A blog, on the other hand, is relatively cheap to establish and manage. While most blogging services are free to use, some of them are paid but even they are not that expensive. Compare this with traditional means of advertising and marketing and you are spending nothing or a miniscule part of your marketing budget to use the opportunity.

Another advantage is that in the case of a blog, since most people landing on it would have either come through a search engine or through a referring page on the web, one can be certain that these people are currently looking for information on a particular subject / product, or are at least interested in it, thereby giving you an audience waiting to be tapped. The very fact that a person is reading your blog means that he/she is a potential client. Thus we can say that blogs are definitely a more targeted effort than the conventional means.

Blog = Starting Conversations/Creating a Buzz

Every business desires to be in the public memory for as long as possible. The only way that can be achieved is by getting people to talk about it in some context or the other. It could be the quality of your products / services or it could be the buzz about your latest offering.

Blogs provide a very good platform for initiating conversations with people and stimulating their intellect. If you succeed in doing this, people will discuss the topic beyond the blog thus creating a buzz for your brand or products translating into word-of-mouth advertising for your business.

A blog can also be used to share information like discounts, special offers, customer stories or testimonials and for holding contests. This helps retain the interest of customers and keeps the conversation going.

Blog = Lending a Human Face to the Business

People find it difficult to deal with or do business with faceless corporations or businesses. They want to deal with real people who can inform them, educate them and help them make decisions. Businesses realize this and have been looking for ways and means to get closer to their customers.

A business blog can give complete, authentic information to the customers about what they want to know, from a single location, at the time of their convenience. The conversational nature of blogs lends a human face to the business. Blog posts can be descriptive and convincing, explaining in detail why the product or service is of use to the reader. The prospective customer can then engage in the conversation if he/she is interested in knowing more.

Blog = Search Engine Optimization

There are a host of companies and their websites vying for the coveted place in the first few pages of the search results. Therefore, unless people already know your brand, they would not be able to find your website or business easily if it does not appear in the first few pages of the search results.

Search engines thrive on fresh content and blogs are the perfect way to offer it to them, thereby having your blog rank higher on the search engine result pages (SERPs). By simply integrating the blog with the website you can get the website to get indexed more frequently, thus getting higher rankings.

All in all, business blogs can be used to spread the word regarding your business and can foster trust in your customers. Of course, there is a lot more you can learn about this effective tool. If you are interested in additional facts, read “Business Blogs – The Best Social Media Tool For Businesses” written by Varinder Taprial; Priya Kanwar.

Download the free eBook “Business Blogs” right here