Why your business needs a blog

You’ve read it multiple times, maybe you’ve might have been told by a marketing friend, but let’s step back a minute and think about why your business really needs a blog (today). Content marketing isn’t new, maybe you’ve even have given it a go, but most likely gave up after a few weeks. Why isn’t your business capturing the narrative around topics that you have expertise in? Are your competitors already doing it and succeeding ?

The top answer to not doing it we hear, “Content marketing is just too tough“, “Nobody is interested in reading about X“, “I don’t have time to write” or “I don’t know what to write about”.

You could say, if it’s worth doing it will be hard, if it’s not hard, then it’s probably not worth doing. If it was so easy wouldn’t everyone be doing it already? Wouldn’t you ?

Creating interesting, readable, engaging content is an effort, but it’s probably the most impactful thing you can do for your business. Euro for euro, investing in content, especially for B2B companies, will be the best ROI you will see over the long term. If you just want to spend money to bringing customers via ads, you can do that, but as soon as you stop paying, the visitors stop being delivered by Google.

We are going to show you why your business needs to be in the business of creating content. And it’s not simply about keeping copywriter in a job ! Content is the best way to drive more visitors and ultimately more sales to your business.

Here are our four key reasons why your a blog for your business is the best thing you can do.

1) Position your business as an authority

If we are honest, business customers can buy from multiple vendors, geography is history as they say. Now with the proliferation of access to information it’s easier than ever to compare all the vendors together. Sites like G2Crowd, Capterra, etc. do a really great job in brining real reviews to the fore.

It’s rare when businesses compare vendors that it’s down to just price. And if I’m honest, you probably don’t want those penny pinching customers. Pricing may be an important ranking factor, but it’s rarely the most important metric. Businesses want to buy from a business that knows what they are doing. They want to buy from businesses that have already delivered successful results. And they need proof.

Having content displaying this expertise isn’t ground breaking or impossible to do. It just takes time and a bit of effort.

2) Add content to your website

Search engines love content, in fact they crave it. Adding blog content is one of the best ways to feed these search engines. It’s not like you can add a 2nd or 3rd contact us page, is it ? By adding content, you give the search engines more information about what you do, why you matter, and ultimate more chances to rank you higher for those keywords that people type into the search engines to find businesses. You want your website to be an authority on the topic.

Fresh blog content also shows your customers that you are still alive and kicking and also gives a signal to search engines that they should check back regularly for new content.

3) Shareable content

It’s time you joined the conversation. With hundred of thousands of conversations happening on LinkedIn every day, having content that can be part of that narrative is important.

Produce content that will help stick your neck into these discussions. Is there some updates to law, like GDPR or Brexit that you share give your company’s thoughts on? Can you share some learnings from a particular project, like hiring your CFO, rebranding your company, moving to a new office?

This content doesn’t just have to be about what you sell, it can be more about what you are doing that might be interesting for others. Creating content that can be shared helps in getting your brand in front of those people who should know about you, but as of yet haven come across you.

4) Creates value for ever

Let’s at look SEM (Search Engine Marketing) compared with Content Marketing, once you stop SEM, the traffic dies off, with content marketing, those pieces of content should be delivering traffic forever. Ranking for keywords that show buyers intent i.e. “Where to buy a BMW X1 in Dublin” means that you don’t need to spend money on these ads anymore.

We do recommend that you look back and analyse your content on a regular bases, say every 6-12 months (we use Frase.io to analyse our content). See what’s working, what’s ranking, what may be in need of an update or a more in-depth blog post.

What does it mean?

You’ve gotten this far, it most likely means your business needs content and you basically have 3 options:

• Ignore the advice and keep wasting money on ads.
• Get your pen out and start writing !
• Use a service like copywriters.ie 😉