One of the top reasons people contact me about blogging services is their desire to improve SEO.
And among the first things I tell them is this:
There are reasons far more important than SEO for small businesses to invest in blogging.
When you blog with human-focused benefits in mind—like building your know, like, and trust factor and improving your clients' experience with your brand—you get the best results. And, when you blog strategically, you boost your organic search traffic while you are at it.
Here are four reasons a blog can be an incredibly beneficial channel for your service-based small business.
1) A blog gives focus and direction to your entire content marketing effort.
A strategic business blog will help you streamline your content marketing, trading messy overwhelm for a systematic and effective plan.
Feeding your social channels, reaching out to your email list, and figuring out what to talk about at networking meetings can feel like a lot. And it is. But when you align your blog's content pillars with your brand messaging and then repurpose your blog content across other channels, suddenly, things get much simpler.
Here’s how to get there:
Establish your brand messaging and solidify the one to three core offers you’d like to promote.
Create three to six content pillars for your business blog that align with your messaging and offers. These content pillars will become your blog categories, so they should have keyword relevance for your brand and be areas you love talking about.
Determine your blogging frequency and specific post topics.
Repurpose each blog into social media posts, emails, videos, and more. Doing so will give you opportunities to drive traffic to your website and become a top-of-mind resource for the subject you've written about.
Blogging will make your content creation more efficient while helping you remain true to your brand's message and differentiators in everything you put into the world.
2) Your blog posts can offer web visitors a better sense of your brand's personality.
Even more than other words on your website, your blog is a chance to share your perspectives, experiences and stories, and personality with your web visitors.
The better your audience knows you, the more likely they will remember and want to do business with you.
Here are a few ways you can use your blog to foster connection:
Share anecdotes from your life that serve as metaphors for your work.
Tell your origin story to give insight into how you are uniquely suited to do what you do.
Craft case study posts that show how you work with clients and the transformations you achieve.
Create a Q&A series featuring you and members of your team.
Write posts that offer your opinion on industry trends.
Remember, even if your overall brand voice is a little more formal, your blog is a chance to be a few degrees more casual. It’s an ideal opportunity to humanize your brand!
3) Your blog helps establish your credibility in your core service areas.
Your blog is a fantastic place to offer audience-serving content to inform, teach, and empower readers.
When you share your knowledge, you demonstrate your expertise. Instead of limiting this trust-building effort to bite-sized tips here and there on social media, a blog offers you the space to dig deeper into subjects that matter to your target audience.
By offering value in this way, your audience will begin to regard you as a go-to source of information about your industry. They will seek you out for answers. And when they are ready to invest in your services, they are far more likely to reach out to you since that foundation of trust is already established.
4) The posts you share can be used to enhance the client experience.
In addition to engaging potential clients, you can use your blog as a tool to help you work with existing clients.
You can create how-to guides, "what to expect" posts, and other content that map to specific steps in your process. These resources can serve as valuable touch-points to streamline the client experience, saving time and making you look even more polished and professional.
For instance, I've created posts for my clients on topics like bridal gown sizing, how to prepare your home for a newborn photography shoot, or the steps to take before listing your home for sale. Any of these could easily be shared as an email at a specific point in working with clients to help them maximize their investment.
Of course, business blogging is also proven to increase site traffic, and there are SEO benefits. Your blog is a great place to focus on longtail keywords (like "what does a mission statement need to include"). But, especially for small businesses, the real magic of a business blog is the human-to-human connection. Organic search traffic is like a beautiful byproduct.
Are you interested in reaping all the incredible benefits of blogging but still struggling to get started? Learn more about my business blogging services.