by Karen Petrauskas | Aug 22, 2018
If you own or run a small business you could be asking yourself whether it’s worth the time and effort in writing a regular blog. Our answer to that question is “Yes!”.
Blogging is an inexpensive marketing material that can be used over and over again and can be used for driving traffic to your website, highlighting your industry experience or even reaching new and potential clients. It’s an all-round marketing tool that is definitely worth the effort.
In our opinion it is one of the most valuable marketing tools that you can keep in your arsenal. If you’re not yet blogging for your business, it’s time to start! If you’ve not got the time, either a) create time or b) outsource this task – it’s extremely important for your business and for business growth.
Here are our top 7 reasons why blogging is important for business:
Personal Development
While the purpose of blogging is for your audience, it’s a great place to enhance your own personal development. Blogging can open up opportunities for you that you were not expecting and allow you to express your interests and passions to an audience that is really hungry for your content.
The more you write, the more knowledge you have. The research that is involved in writing opens up a world of industry knowledge and can help build your confidence and share opinions.
It can be challenging to write a blog but when you are passionate about a subject, you have the power to express who you are and what your values are.
Tells a story
A blog is a chance to tell your brand’s story, it’s a chance to offer insight and background of who you are and what you value, offer and represent as a brand. You are able to share ideas and customer experiences, challenges and how you’ve overcome them. You can share about the staff or team that make up your business and what experience they bring to the company. There’s so much you can do to highlight your brand’s ethos and showcase everything that you have to offer – make the most of the opportunity to talk about your business and then use your blogs on your social media platforms so that it can be seen by as many people as possible.
Builds an audience
Blogging is a place where you can create value and build an audience of people who are interested in what you have to offer. You’re not writing for just anyone, you are writing for people who want to hear what you’re talking about. Aim your words to those people, this may not be exactly what you would want to hear, but understanding your audience and providing value to their needs will increase your readership and help you stand out as a thought leader.
Builds discipline
Getting in the habit of writing is a good thing! It builds discipline and routine into your marketing plan and gives you something to focus on, on a regular basis. Whether you set yourself a weekly task or allocate one day a month to writing, it shapes you into a writer’s mindset and gives you good practice.
It boosts offline marketing
When people see the content you’re writing, the value that you’re providing, this can often lead to offline opportunities. Speaking at events, writing for magazines or articles, writing a book. It allows your voice to be heard outside of internet circles and enables you to do bigger things with your content. Blogging is not just about bringing people to your website (although that is a large part), it is about showcasing who you are, what your business represents and the industry knowledge that you have. Use your blog to delve into different areas that you may not have been able to in the past. With your confidence and discipline building, push yourself to do more with your business and speak to a wider audience.
Cost effective
Marketing can be expensive with all the different aspects that you could be paying for, however blogging is completely free! The only cost is your time and as a business owner, building marketing into your business plan is a must. By blogging you’re not paying for magazine space, you’re not paying for a TV or radio advert, you’re not even paying for banner adverts (in this context), you are simply writing content for your website which has the potential to be seen by many people, and the more you blog, the more people will see your content. Once your content is out there, it’s there forever which is an extremely cost-effective way to market your business!
Blogging is inspiring
When you start to write, you start to see more opportunities in the world around you. You become inspired by what’s around you, what you see and hear and the things happening in the world. Even just walking down the street can give you inspiration for your next blog post!
There are many reasons to blog for your business and if you are a small business, this is your chance to have a voice and to be heard in a busy online world. Make your voice count, allow your business to stand out over your competition and attract customers by being an inspiration and giving value and knowledge in all that you write about.
If you’d like to provide a blog for you business but are not sure where to start, we offer a content marketing package and can write your content for you! There’s really no reason not to blog! If you’d like advice or help moving forward, get in touch.
by Karen Petrauskas | Nov 30, 2017
Keeping a blog up to date and keeping on top of it takes time and effort but is extremely valuable when it comes to your business.
Putting measures in place for your brand to become noticed and for your sales to increase, is a good step in growing and expanding your business. Everyone wants their business to expand and to be successful but not everyone manages to achieve this or has the knowledge in how to drive it forward to achieve results.
There are several reasons why it’s important to keep a blog for your business and to keep it updated regularly so let’s take a look at them …
- Increase brand awareness
- Be seen as a thought leader
- SEO
- Adds value to your business
Brand awareness
The more you write and the more you share your blog posts online, the more people are going to hear about your business. Your ultimate goal is to see your business grow and therefore you want people to hear about you and your brand.
When you write a blog post, you have an instant piece of information to share on social media, to share with your network and for people to hear about you.
Shout about it! Share it across all the platforms that your business uses, share it on you personal profiles, if you have employees, encourage them to share the company posts… The more it gets shared, the more your business will get seen.
Expertise and recognition
The more you write about topics that your business deals with and you share your knowledge about a certain topic, the more you will become and been seen by others, as an expert in your field, in your industry.
Write blog posts about topics that you know your audience will want to hear about and try to answer solutions to what they might be less knowledgeable about.
The best way to grow a business is to solve a problem. People want answers and they want them instantly. Research about what your ideal audience are trying to achieve or what they are looking for and write about it!
The further you go with keeping your blog updated and are able to provide solutions in order to help others, or to provide valuable tips and advice, the more you will be seen as a thought leader. This will result in more people visiting your site and in turn, if you’re marketing correctly, more sales.
SEO
Search engine optimisation is a very important step in a successful website and for your business to be found on Google or any another search engine, it needs to have good SEO. According to HubSpot, 80% of a websites traffic comes from a search query, so your SEO is extremely important and not to be overlooked.
You may have a great looking website and everyone looks fantastic within that, but what is the point of it if it doesn’t gain any traffic? If no one visits your website then you are putting a lot of effort in for no reason.
Writing a blog post or keeping your website updated on a regular basis shows the search engines that you are maintaining your site, that you are looking after it by updating it and that adding valuable information for people to search for and read.
Google scans through websites and will determine which websites will be shown at the top of searches. Simply filling a web page with lots of images does not give Google information to be able to use in their listings… Valuable and meaningful information will please Google. Obviously there is a lot more that goes into SEO that we can go into another time but having good structure and updated content within your website is a good start.
Adds value
Adding a blog to your website enables a researcher to see what you as a company can offer.
If there are two websites offering the same product or service but one showed knowledge and offers advice and the other website was a static one-page information sheet, you could probably make an assumption that the buyer would choose the first option.
Add value to your business, show your potential clients (and also your current clients) that you value your business and you are proving what you have to offer.
As we mentioned in the beginning, we understand that keeping a blog is time consuming and takes a lot of time to do properly and correctly. If a blog is started, it’s a good idea to keep it going rather than letting it fizzle out, to keep the above points valid.
Here at KJP Creative we offer content creation packages so you don’t have to worry about finding the time to write yourself. Get in touch if you’d like to find out more!
by Karen Petrauskas | Jun 5, 2017
If you’re really passionate about growing your business then you need to think and use ways that will REALLY bring potential customers to your door.
Especially if you are just starting out and you don’t have any spare money to be able to pay for big advertising campaigns, you need to utilise the free things that will drive traffic to your site.
The best and most effective way to do this is by creating and using a blog
A blog needs to be updated regularly. A blog needs to be kept properly and utilised well, sharing as much valuable information that is possible to create a banner of trust between you and your readers.
Blogging regularly will increase your rankings
The more you blog and add content to your site, the more the search engines will realise there is new content. The more informative content you publish, the higher the ranking gets and your site will be seen as more of an authority which will help you climb the ranking ladder.
Making sure you use good SEO (search engine optimisation) will also help promote your site and get more people to visibly see your articles. This is an important part of creating your blog posts which I will go into more detail another time.
“Writing blogs which add value to your consumers can increase your conversion rates and establish you as an authority in the industry.”
… This article was very informative from the Guardian: How to write a successful blog that also promotes your business
Make it relevant to you or your business
When you write your blog post, have a plan of what you want about – maybe you’ve been making notes through the day or you’ve seen something that’s spurred you on to write or perhaps you’ve been writing the post for a few days. Make the post informative and constructive and aim to give value to your readers. They are there to read YOUR blog post so they’re either interested in your industry or you – keep that as a key and make sure you’re giving readers what they want to hear so they’ll be looking forward to reading more of your posts. If they become bored with your content, it’s not relevant, or you don’t keep it regular – they will find somewhere else to go for their information.
Ask people to make comments at the bottom of the blog and this will start up conversations and hopefully build networks and relationships. You can also ensure that you’ve got social ’share’ buttons available so if people don’t want to leave comments, they are able to share your article to their social groups. This is a great way for you to build a wider audience and gain more interactions.
Just remember that your blog is the face of your website. When people read your posts they’re hearing YOUR voice so this will reflect how they think of your company and the impressions they get of you and your services. Bear this in mind with the content your provide and make sure you’re always giving a respectful and honest post.
I’ve just talked about the above points in my video for my 90 day Big Idea Mastermind challenge – please take a look and leave me feedback below.
Please feel free to contact me if you’d like any further information on building your business or working on your blog – I’m always happy to help.
If you’re looking for someone to help you with your blogging or if you haven’t got the time to actually publish the post and get it all written up correctly – then consider hiring someone once or twice a week to assist you with this. KJP Creative is here to help with anything like that, so it’s always worth considering.
