Blogging is one of the most powerful tools that any business owner can use to grow and compete in today’s digital landscape. However, many still question the need of having a business blog.

They question whether having a website is enough and whether a blog will be able to give them the return on investment they are looking for. To me, whether you’re a carpenter, handyman, baker, hair stylist, fashion consultant, medical professional, artist, musician, tutor or anything at all – you will definitely be able to grow your business by having a blog!

Here are my 15 Reasons Why Every Business Should Have a Blog:-

Establish Yourself as an Authority and Expert

Blogging gives you the ability to demonstrate your knowledge, skills and expertise in your field. When you provide your target audience with relevant information and write-ups that help them solve their problems, they will begin to regard you as the expert in the field and use your blog as a go-to resource whenever they need to learn more about your field. And when they become your regular blog readers, they will become interested in knowing what you do and the types of products or services that you offer. These regular readers might become your leads and sales. And if they don’t, they might recommend your products or services to friends or family members who may want to buy from you!

Motivates You to Improve Your Knowledge and Skills

When you’re constantly updating your blog with fresh content, you will be motivated to do more research, experiment and connect more with people in your industry. The more you write about the topics in your area of expertise, the more knowledgeable you will become. And you will also be able to sharpen your communication and writing skills along the way while writing your blog and interacting with your others in your industry and your blog readers! Also, when you become more knowledgeable, you will begin to see more your readers being drawn to your blog to provide them with more information about your chosen niche.

Helps You to Compete with Competitors

If you’ve been in the situation before whereby you thought that having a blog was going to be a waste of time and money, there are probably a lot of your competitors who are still saying the same thing! So getting your blog started can put yourself in front of your target customers fast before your competitors get to them. And when you have a blog, you will be able to showcase your personality, values, brand and unique selling points to your target audience. Many other businesses may be offering the same products and services as you. But when you are able to differentiate your business from the rest of your competition, you will begin to see your blog readers begin to connect to your business. These readers may become loyal customers to you or even recommend your business to other people!

Grows Your Email List

Every business needs leads that they can convert into sales in the future. So by having a blog, you will get an engaged audience to opt-in to your email list. These will be strong leads that are most likely to convert into sales because those who have signed up to your list already reads your articles and know that you have expertise in your area. You can include call-to-action to encourage your blog readers to opt-in to your email list by offering them free digital downloads, reports, case studies or trainings. And by moving these people to your online sales funnel, you will be able to introduce them to your products and services so that they will eventually turn into customers.

Encourages Two-Way Communications With Customer

By having the ability to showcase your personality through a blog, you will become more approachable in the eyes of your customers and future customers. Besides providing valuable content for your blog, you should also encourage customers and prospects to leave their feedback and comments on your blog. This will give you an insight as to how your target audience sees you. And you will also be able to clear any doubts or negative thoughts of people towards your business by responding to any negative comments.

Provides Content for Social Media

You can also connect your blog posts to your social media channels to reach more audiences. Your social media channel needs to be updated regularly. So instead of just sharing content created by other people, why not share your own blog content and drive your target customers directly to your blog? You can create multiple social media posts using a single blog post to attract people who are visiting their social media accounts at different times.

Creates Opportunities for Content Sharing

When you share engaging, valuable, entertaining and fun content on your blog, chances are that your blog article may actually go viral! Ensure that you have installed plugins on your blog that will make it easier for people to share your blog article on social media. When people share your blog content, you actually get free publicity and benefit from word-of-mouth marketing. The more people share your content, the more you and your business will become well-known. The best part is that more of your target customers may come to know of you when your articles go viral!

Gives Your Business a Face and a Voice

Would you like to give a phone call to a company only to be answered by an answering machine? Probably not, right? Same goes with customers of any sort of businesses. Your customers want to deal with real people. Having a blog will enable you to personally connect with your readers by showing exactly who you are (as the Founder or staff behind the curtains) and what your business and brand is all about. When you readers begin to connect to your business this way, they would more likely want to do business with you rather than some other companies that doesn’t bother to connect with them. This helps to build brand loyalty amongst your target customers.

Opportunity to Express More Through Blog Content

Who loves receiving sales letters that are all about selling a product rather than connecting to you? None, right? But through blog content, you will find that your readers will be more opened to receiving news about your products and services if they are connected to a topic that is relevant to them. In fact, an attention span of a reader of a blog post is generally higher than someone who reads a generic sales letter! This is because blog posts provide value rich content that draws a reader to engage with it. However, you must be aware that you need to write your blog post in a way that highlights more about the problem that your readers are trying to solve rather than talking all about your products and services. There is an art to doing this and I may reveal it in one of my upcoming blog articles in the future.

Helps You To Launch Successful Marketing Campaigns

When you have regular readers to your business blog, you will find that launching a successful campaign for your business much easier. This includes doing product launches, eCourse launches, the promotion or certain ideas or events, poll competitions or any sort of campaigns that will help you to generate more leads and sales.

Grows Your Community and Network

Practically everyone loves to be part of a community or network that shares common interests and challenges. Once you have established your blog and gain regular readership, your readers will start to communicate to you by providing feedback and comments through your blog. Some of them may even contact you directly to collaborate and offer joint venture opportunities. You will find that when people begin to take part in communicating through your blog, more people will be encouraged to connect with you. This is because your blog has brought them a sense of belonging. They want to be part of a community and network. And that’s what your blog will do.

Drive More Traffic To Your Website

Relying on getting traffic from search engines when you only have an ‘About Us’, ‘Contact’ and ‘Services’ pages will be very tough. By having a blog, you will have the opportunity to rank your website by using certain keywords that are normally used by your target audience. Search engines, especially Google loves websites that constantly provide relevant and fresh content. Your blog will enable your website to rank high in search engines if updated regularly. The more visitors come to your website, the higher your chances will be to get more leads and sales for your business!

Rewards You With Long-Term Results

When it comes to blogging, the post you write today for your business will continue to help you generate more leads and sales in the future. In my previous post – ‘How to Create Evergreen Content for Your Blog’, I’ve highlighted how you can come up with blog articles that will stay fresh and relevant for years to come. You can use the tips I’ve shared to promote your own products, get affiliate products to sell or establish a connection with your readers so that they will follow your blog. You will find that the more you contribute blog articles, the more results you will get for your business – as in you will be able to generate more leads and sales!

Helps You To Improve Your Products and Services

Your customers and potential customers will not tell you directly why they are not buying your products and services. But by creating blog articles that describes about a particular product or service and asking for feedback from readers, you will be able to determine the real cause for your lack of sales. Using this method, you will be able to continuously improve your products and services to a point where it becomes a hot seller amongst your readers and target customers!

Provides a More Affordable Form of Marketing

By having a blog, you get to promote your business, brand as well as products and services in a more affordable way. For example, the web hosting company I use – BlueHost provides me with unlimited storage space for my blog at a low cost. So no matter how many posts I publish in my blog, the cost of running my blog will be the same. I can do promotional blog posts, announce about my new course, introduce affiliate products and create poll questions as well as competitions using my blog without any additional cost.

Blogging is no longer just an alternative tool that you can use to improve your business. In fact, if you have a small or medium-sized business, then blogging is a highly essential tool that can help you to beat your giant competitors. Having a blog will give you the ability to showcase your personality, brand and business to a wider target audience. It will also help your customers and prospective customers to connect with you. You will also be able to improve your products and services by receiving relevant feedback and comments from your valued readers.

I hope that you’ll be encouraged to start a blog for your business after reading my article.- 15 Reasons Why Every Business Should Have a Blog. Do you agree with any of the points that I’ve just mentioned above? If yes, please leave your comments in the comment section below. And if you already have a business blog and are benefiting from it, I’d like to know too.