In today’s increasingly competitive business market, you must always be at the forefront of your customers’ minds, standing out from the competition.

If you’re not, what can and should you be doing differently?

Here’s a tip: If you haven’t yet considered blogging — or aren’t doing so regularly and purposefully — you should.

Leveraging the Power of Blogging

Your customers have problems. You have solutions. How can you maximize your marketing dollars and find a way for you both to connect online? When done well, blogging is an efficient way to get your name and experience in front of your target audience and convert prospects to clients.

Heather Robson, managing editor for Wealthy Web Writer, states that “61% of Internet users research products online before buying. What’s more, 44% of them start by using a search engine.” You want users to be finding your expertise when they do their searches.

And one way for you to show off this expertise is through a blog.

No longer simply a vehicle for parenting advice and vacation stories, blogs — when done right — are an almost-effortless way to make the most of your advertising budget. Not only can you see immediate results, but you’ll realize real value as you build an online repository of useful, relevant information for customers to find.

Here are 5 reasons your business should start blogging today.

1. It increases traffic to your website. Customers need your expertise, but they may not know you exist — or know where to find you. Blogging changes that. Every time you publish a post, it becomes another indexed page on your site that increases your chance to appear in search engines. The more relevant blog posts you publish — and the more indexed pages you have — the greater your opportunity to organically drive visitors to your website.
2. Blogs can improve your reputation as an expert in your field. You love what you do, and you’re good at it. You’re the expert in your industry, and your insider information is valuable.A well-written and well-researched blog post can position you as that expert in the field. For example, realtors publishing an informative, unbiased blog describing Montgomery County, Texas schools (and the communities that feed to them) can transform real estate professionals from strangers to trusted advisors on the subject.
3. Blogs can feed your other social media efforts. You can quickly and easily repurpose quality, evergreen blog content to your other sites — such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter — increasing your reach and meeting potential customers where they are.
4. It’s a smart marketing spend. According to Forbes, “content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times the leads.” This same organic content promotion effectively increases your business’s visibility without increasing in your marketing budget. Author Nick Usborne believes that “Internet marketing started a meteoric rise. It’s overtaken print marketing in terms of what businesses spend, and by 2018, it will eclipse TV advertising, too.”Your blogs will keep working for you, long past the initial post. Unlike some advertising, which is expensive and may not be remembered by your target audience, blogs last forever online. Even after they’re posted, read and shared, they’re indexed by search engines, where your prospects will find you the next time they search “Who can help me. …”
5. Blog posts offer an opportunity to improve your conversion rate. According to inbound marketing company HubSpot, companies that published 16 or more blog posts monthly had roughly 4.5 times more leads than companies that published fewer than 4 posts monthly.Smart bloggers know that each of these informational posts should close with a call to action for the reader: Download a free ebook. Complete a form for a complimentary estimate. Sign up for a weekly newsletter. To get the offer, all visitors need to do is submit their contact information.This data is valuable currency to your business, letting you stay in contact with prospects long after they download your content.

Spending just a little time today to develop a comprehensive blogging calendar can result in countless leads and views both today and in the future. Ensuring you’re creating evergreen posts —timeless information that can serve prospects well many years from now — hold even more promise of compounding views.

When you’re ready to drive business and increase revenue through blogging, contact Nine Birds Communications by emailing NineBirds@outlook.com. We can help you deliver compelling, relevant blogs that will make it easy for customers to find you.