A blog is like the Leatherman of marketing tools for small business owners.
It’s an efficient and affordable tool that can help you perform a variety of essential tasks. It may not be able to open that flat top beer can, but a blog—hosted on your business’ website—can help you with everything from establishing your company’s credibility to improving your search engine optimization.
But like a Leatherman, a blog is only helpful if you use it. Check out six noteworthy things a blog can help you do for your business and put your most valuable marketing asset to work.
Demonstrate Your Expertise and Build Authority
“Content is king. To increase your site's authority on a subject, the first place to start is by having content on your subject (keywords), “ advises Ben Lloyd, president of Amplify Interactive. “You can only talk so much about what you do or sell on a product or service page. A blog is natural extension that allows you to create content that demonstrates your expertise—your command of the subject... your authority.”
Establish Credibility and Provide Value
“Blogs can give businesses a lot of power to build the company’s credibility,” says John McPhee, vice president of Formic Media. “Talking about the latest and greatest things happening within their company or industry can help turn the blogger or company into a pioneer or thought leader. Everyone wants to work with those people who provide value and are on the cutting edge.”
“When talking about content creation, it is imperative to provide value,” McPhee counsels. “When you search for a how-to article and you get exactly what you’re looking for, don’t you get excited? I know I do. It’s this type of valuable content that can help elevate your company as you become the ‘go to’ blog or website because of the value you’re providing.”
Improve Search Engine Results
“If you do a bit of keyword research, then place your targeted keywords into the appropriate page elements (title tag, meta description tag, header tag, alt tag, etc.), it can have a very positive effect within search results,” McPhee explains. “Google loves fresh content. The more valuable, optimized content you’re pumping out, the better chance you have at obtaining increased SEO rankings.”
Lloyd adds that it’s important for businesses to understand the search results page landscape. “There really isn't such a thing as a No. 1 ranking anymore,” he says. “Considering the personalization of search results, the growth of Google+, and search engines' increasing focus on using social signals for rankings, brands that put in the work to engage visitors and gain links, likes, shares, and +1s will be rewarded with rankings.”
Create Relevant Content for Long-Tail Queries on Local Search
“Blogs can be great for businesses trying to get traffic from local searchers,” offers David Mihm, president and CEO of GetListed.org. “Although high-level categories like ‘restaurant’ or ‘florist’ are quite well addressed by the traditional structured formats used by Internet Yellow Pages and local/social sites like Google+ Local and Yelp, the major search engines have a hard time surfacing relevant businesses for long-tail queries because there's just not a lot of content out there on the web on local business websites. [Examples of long-tail queries include] searches like ‘top restaurants to take a date in Portland’ or ‘green hydrangea bouquets Portland.’ Blogs allow business owners to drill down into very specific products and services they offer, and are a thousand times more likely to get spread around other social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., giving them a knock-on effect beyond just Google and Bing.”
Attract Links, Social Likes and Shares
“No matter how great your business, few people are going to link, like or share your homepage just because,” Lloyd says. “Blogs just make it easier to create more content. When you create great, unique, useful, interesting, and shareable content on your blog, people will link, like and share it. When it comes to links and social attention, all boats rise with the tide. When deep pages on your site (your blog) gain links, likes and shares, it raises the authority of your site overall.”
Build a Strong Social Media Presence
Your blog is mission control for online marketing. With the right workflow, you can easily and efficiently share your unique, useful content (articles, photos, videos, quotes, etc.) on social media. This is important because your blog is an asset you own. The goal is to share your content on social media sites, not create your content there.
P.S. Don’t forget that engaging your audience is equally important as sharing your content with them.
