Should You Have A Business Blog?

Now obviously, here at Frogspark we love a bit of blogging, so don’t blame us for being a little bit biased throughout this blog post for whether or not you need a business blog. But the idea that B2B marketers who use blogs generate 67% more leads than those that do not speaks for itself really. However, there is much more to it than that. Our top tips and stats for business blogging might give you that much needed motivation to get started on your business blog.

Why Do People Actually Go Onto The Internet?

The first question to ask yourself is why do people go onto the internet? They are in need of information. In a user’s search for information they are met with various advertisements, and useless information that doesn’t actually meet their needs. This offers you the opportunity to meet their needs – by providing them with the information they need in a blog post! So if you’re asking yourself, “do I need a blog?”, then simply think about if you’re wanting to meet your target markets’ needs, drive website traffic and convert leads – and there’s your answer.

SEO Benefits

With any website – the search engines are grading you. So if you provide high quality, original content that is littered with keywords AND meeting your target market’s needs, you’re doing well, and blog posts provide the perfect opportunity for you to do this. Websites that have a blog have 434% more indexed pages compared to those without, and with more crawlable content out there, the search engines will recognise that your website contains more valuable information for users to consume – aiding your SEO efforts.

When it comes to website grading, the search engines love a good backlink as they reflect on a domain’s authority, and how trustworthy a site is. If your page doesn’t have backlinks, search engines will assume you provide useless content, which will negatively impact your rankings. Blogs enable you to create high-quality backlinks, as each blog post provides another link for people to share. Social media is also the perfect channel for creating your own backlinks with the blogs you share, again really helping out your SEO efforts.

Increase In Website Traffic

Perhaps one of the most notable reasons you should start blogging is the increase in traffic coming onto your website. The average company that blogs generates 55% more website visitors, which gives you the opportunity to convert that traffic into leads – something every business is looking to do. The increase in traffic comes from greater visibility in the search engines, due to the increased amount of your pages indexed on your site, as well as from social media. Organic searches and social media are key channels for driving traffic to your website, and if you can increase your visibility on these, it is key to creating leads.

Using social media is a great way to increase brand awareness, and reach a greater proportion of your target market. Blogs offer content to be shared across a variety of social media platforms, and easily provides the opportunity to drive traffic to your website.

Converting Traffic To Leads

So whilst blogging allows more traffic to be driven to your site, this provides you with the chance to convert more of that traffic to leads. This comes down to putting the right call to actions in your blog post, or linking the post back to the services you offer, or simply with a contact form – this is what really adds value to the blog post from your point of view, and can be key in securing a lead.

Show Off Your Personality & Expertise

The importance of showing off your business personality is something that can really make you stand out in your marketplace (something we discussed in greater detail in this post), and blogging can be the perfect way to do this. As well as showing your expertise in your given field, and providing value to the user, you can use blogs to show how your business is performing or to tell the user a little more about your team. This can be a great way to show there is a face behind your business and something that users can generally more easily relate to.

What The Future Holds For Blogging

With more and more companies beginning to blog, whether they’re large enterprises or small businesses, why not make use of this popular inbound marketing method? With the endless benefits it can bring you, from ranking better in the search engines to reaching more customers, blogging is a must for businesses. By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships without talking to a human, this means that users are more likely to take their time to do research into you before making contact. Blogs offer a great source of content for users to learn a little bit about you before that initial contact – and this can be detrimental to securing a lead. And what is the cost? Simply your time.