Do You Need a Blog for Your Small Business Website?

Having a website is an obvious requirement for marketing your business online. But what about a blog? Many business owners starting online wonder if they need a BLOG as part of their online strategy. While a website seems adequate to host all your content, your information, your online store facilities and even your social media links, why would you need to integrate a blog?

Do YOU need a blog for your small business website?

Well, it depends on your online marketing strategy, and how you plan to drive traffic to your website.

Where will your traffic come from?

There are instances where a blog may not be essential for your online marketing. This is the case if you have  a small website and you plan to mostly drive offline traffic to it (for example, asking your in-store customers to visit your website, using offline marketing strategies such as posters, flyers, TV ads, etc.).  Also, if you have a large budget to drive traffic through paid ads (like banner ads or pay per click ads), then a blog is not essential (although it still helps to improve your rankings and lower your costs!).

On the other hand, a blog is a MUST if you want to attract organic traffic (that is, if you want to be found on Google and other search engines for free). In order to gain great rankings on search engines and be found through your most relevant keywords,  a BLOG that is fully integrated in your online strategy is well worth the effort!

Blog + Social Media

Integrating social media and networking is important for 2 main reasons: Firstly, to share your content and add value for your customers, regularly attracting them back to your website. Secondly, to engage your potential customers on social networks and create ‘social buzz’. Social buzz, which is a result of effectively engaging people on social networks and getting them to share and contribute comments to your content, more exposure on social media, it actually also helps with your search engine rankings – so for example, Google will rank your site better if it sees that you’ve created social buzz, and people like your content, share it around, comment on it, etc.

Blog + List Building and Email Marketing

The online list building and email marketing is also important because you can always bring people back to your website with new fresh content. As you build your list and get people to sign up for your newsletter or free offer, you can send emails which invites them to come back to your site and read your new blog post or watch your new video blog. If you have a static website with no new content, it gets harder to find reasons to invite them to take another look. Plus, the more value you offer through your blog, the more your build trust with the people on your list, and the more you can convert your list into buying customers.

Blog + Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

And finally, having a blog will help optimise your business website for search engines. Your website will show MORE content that is fresh, relevant and popular (through social media), which is basically what search engines look for.

Are you convinced yet? Blogging is a powerful and cost effective strategy to drive traffic, engage your audience and convert them into customers. If starting a blog seems like a big task, remember that you can always outsource some of the tasks required to maintain your blog, from the blog design, to article writing and social networking integration.

Look for our Free Blogging Training!

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