Every business website needs a blog—including yours! Why? Because a business blog can help boost organic search traffic, improve your search rankings, increase sales, educate customers, outrank competitors, and so much more! Suffice to say, if you’re asking yourself, “Do I need a blog for my small business?”, the answer is yes! Here’s why your business website needs a blog in 2023—and the foreseeable future.

Does Your Business Need a Blog? Yes! Here’s Why

1. Blogs Improve Your Website’s Organic SEO Ranking

SEO, or search engine optimization, is here to stay. And publishing blogs is a wonderful way to climb your way to the top of search results. The higher your content appears in search results, the more likely people will find and click on your website. That’s because over 80% of all clicks go to the first three results in Google.

We’d wager you found our women-owned marketing agency due to this very thing: SEO-optimized blog content. That’s because when you create content around SEO keywords people actively search for, you can create the supply for actual demand.

2. You Can Cross-Promote Blogs and Use Blogs for Link Building

The marketing funnel. The customer journey. These jargony terms encompass the pathway a relevant lead takes to find and buy your products and/or services. Once you create your blog, you can keep generating value from it by cross-promoting on social media channels, email marketing campaigns, and paid social media ads.

You can also use these blogs to build links with other publications. For instance, you can do some personal outreach and offer your blog as a resource for other websites you find online. If you think your content overlaps with their audience and provides that high domain authority site with something valuable, it’s worth a shot. High-value links give your SEO a huge boost.

3. Content is Shareable

Everybody knows that reviews are worth their weight in gold. If someone shares your content with their friends, that circle is more likely to trust your business. When writing blogs, think about what will entice people to share your content. Don’t be gimmicky. Just put yourself in their shoes. If your blog is interesting and offers something unique, people will be more likely to share it. Of course, like we mentioned above, cross-promoting blogs on social media and via email campaigns can also encourage sharing.

4. Blogs Speak to Customers in Particular Stages of the Buying Cycle

Blogs give you a chance to capture the attention of your demographic at different stages in the buying cycle. Whether they’re just starting their research, not even aware that they need your product or service yet, or ready to whittle down contenders and make a purchase, you can pop into their field of view!

Vary your blog content to speak to customers at each stage. For instance, write more niche blogs to talk to customers toward the end of the buying cycle. That entails writing a specific blog like “Top nutritional supplements for Iron Man competitors” or “The best green cleaning products for your home.” You can cast a wider net with broad topics like “Why nutritional supplements may improve your wellness routine” or “Reasons to switch to green cleaning products this year.” Get the picture?

5. A Business Blog Allows You to Give So You Can Get

There’s a book out there called “Give, Give, Get” and we believe in that philosophy 100%! You need to give people something before you ask for anything in return. Why? Well, just think about if a stranger came up to you trying to push products and services into your lap. You don’t know them. Most likely, you don’t trust them. And, you probably won’t buy from them. That’s where blogs come in. Blogs provide people with information, entertainment, education, and something they seek. Blogs provide a much better place to begin a relationship than a sales pitch.

6. You Can Become a Trusted Thought Leader

The more you publish high-quality content, the more you’ll stand out in your industry as a thought leader. This is great for garnering organic links from big publications and becoming the voice people listen to when they need guidance. It takes a lot of work to write blog content that stands out from the noise online, but once you do, it’ll pay off big time.

If you do get shout outs from credible websites, tout that on your website! You’ll see we do that with our Fast Company feature When you’re the real deal, you should let people know!

How to Start Blogging on Your Small Business Website

1. Determine a Content Marketing Budget 

Like anything, your decision to write a blog should start with a very matter-of-fact question: Do you have the money, time, and expertise to execute this marketing tactic? Start with an annual marketing budget. See how much you can siphon into blog content. Once you do…

2. Hire Copywriters

Use your content marketing budget to to decide whether you should hire an employee or content marketing agency. While it may be tempting to run the blog yourself to save money, it will certainly cost you time. If you run a start-up business, you know there usually aren’t enough hours in the day to do your actual job and tackle the necessary marketing to promote your business.

3. Write for Your Audience

Write content for your audience. I repeat: write content for your audience! Otherwise, you’ll bring in a lot of unqualified traffic that won’t do anything for your sales. Sure, it’s cool to have thousands of site visitors, but if they have no interest or need in your product or service, then your marketing dollars will be spent in vain.

So how do you determine your audience for your women-owned business, green business, or health and wellness brand? You can conduct market research to learn more about your customer, client, or patient. Your team can also hold a brainstorm or conduct an SEO audit to determine your ideal demographic. No matter how you arrive at this conclusion, always think about your customer’s wants and needs before you write a blog. Your business can’t go wrong if that’s the foundation of every article.

4. Do an SEO Audit

Like we mentioned above, an SEO audit can help you determine your target demographic and discover keywords and search terms people actively use. It can also do a ton to improve your small business website as a whole. Plus, it’ll give you content ideas that you know will generate traffic. It always feels better to spend your marketing dollars on a sure thing. Likewise, doing an SEO audit for content ideas will give you a much more strategic place to start with your blog so it performs the way you want it to.

5. Publish Evergreen Content and Niche Blog Content

If you do an SEO audit, you’ll have a ton of content ideas. Although, if you don’t do one and don’t know what to write about on your small business blog, there are other ways to generate these ideas. Here are some tips to get your content strategy brainstorm started.

  • Create a content calendar complete with content buckets to cover all of your bases.
  • Interview other thought leaders that overlap with your target audience.
  • Spotlight your products and services.
  • Write about industry news.

5. Publish at Least One Blog Per Month

It’s not just enough to publish one piece of amazing blog content. You need to do it often—and consistently. We find writing one blog per week will help most businesses improve their SEO ranking in about six to 12 months. However, writing at least one blog per month is essential to achieving your website traffic goals.

6. Incorporate Video Into Blogs

You can always improve your blogs by incorporating a video summary. Why? Because people prefer video to the written word. Plus, it skyrockets to the top of SEO search results. You can do simple talking head videos with at-home lighting equipment and a smart phone. Or, you can execute produced motion graphics or live-action videos if your budget allows. Just make sure you add tags to your videos to get SEO value. Here are some of our favorite tools for video editing.

To blog or not to blog. Hopefully, that isn’t the question now that you’ve read this article. The answer, most certainly, is to blog! We love blogging and helping small businesses kick ass. If you’d like to chat more about content strategy or your marketing goals, we’re only an email away.