Metro Insider

Blogging is an effective way to market your business.

Blogs are an important digital marketing tool that offer the opportunity for your small business to not only inform your audience about your company and interesting topics, but also to drive traffic to your website. According to Hubspot, using blogs to market your business gives you endless opportunities to get found online.

You can send blogs in emails to existing and new customers as part of your digital marketing campaign.

Related Article: Promoting Your Business with Email Marketing 

Why Blog?

Blogs are a great way for your business to connect with your customers and potential new ones by providing information about products or services. Your business can build trust by providing industry-related information. For example, an insurance company can offer tips on how to be properly insured while a painting contractor can blog about color selection.

Here are some reasons from Hubspot.com why your marketing campaign should include blogging:

• Drive traffic to the website – Search engines such as Google “read” blogs to learn what a business website is about. Every time a blog is posted it creates a new URL that can be ranked in search and discovered by people that didn’t know a company even existed.
• Tailored audience – A blog can be about topics that will bring the type of lead your company wants to its website. The articles should be industry-related that will be of interest to those who would want to purchase a particular product or service from you. If 100 people read a blog it’s 100 opportunities to turn those readers into leads.
• Long-term effect – Blogging is the gift that keeps on giving. Once a blog is posted, it’s out there on the internet forever working to bring in new traffic and leads. If an article was published several years ago it can still be found by search engines or on social media if it was shared.

Related Article: Designing the Right Website for Your Business

Planning a Blogging Campaign

There are several ways to plan and create a blogging campaign for your small business:

1. Keep it fresh – Fresh content is the key to beating out competitors in search engine results, says Wishpond.com. New blogs should be posted frequently and contain keywords and topics to keep your website at the top of the list.
2. Link it – A blog on a business website should be the foundation of for all social media platforms, according to Wishpond.com. Post links of blog articles to such social media sites as Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This will help drive traffic to specific landing pages on your website. It’s all about giving a reason for visitors to click through your site.
3. Leave it to the professionals – A professional marketing consultant knows how to shape a blog that will include keywords to be picked up by search engines and turn drive them right to your website. A blog needs to be polished and properly crafted. Having a professional handle your blogs would free up your time so you can concentrate on your business.
4. Mission statement – People can tell when a company’s motive is to help rather than just to sell, says Social Media Examiner. Consider offering tips and new ideas in your blogs. By focusing on helping and informing your customers through your blog, visitors will keep coming back for more.
5. Track results – Important blog metrics such as visitors, page views and social shares can be tracked.

Consider using blogs to market your business. It’s a great way to converse with your customers.