How Can Blogging Help Promote My Business?

It is extremely important to use digital marketing to create an online presence for your business. Here is how blogging can help promote your company.

Did you know that 86% of content marketers use blogging as a part of their digital marketing strategy? Not only that, but businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don't.

No matter what kind of business you run, it’s an undisputed fact that blogging and marketing go hand in hand. Countless businesses use blog posts to boost their search rankings, acquire leads, get clicks and shares from social media, and more.

From online affiliate marketing businesses to brick-and-mortar stores, a blog is a perfect way to spread your message, establish your expertise, and connect with your current audience.

Of course, starting and running a blog takes time. Even if you hire the best digital marketing agency to do the work for you, it will still be up to you to choose topics and ensure your brand is being conveyed effectively.

How can you be sure that blogging would be worth the cost and time investment?

That’s the question this article will try to answer. We’ll discuss some of the biggest benefits you can experience from blogging. Read on for everything you need to know about how blogging can promote your business.

Increase Website Traffic

Whether you make sales on your website, sell advertising space, or direct customers to your physical store, you can agree that more traffic is better. In fact, website traffic is so important that it’s usually the primary focus of a digital marketing company.

More visitors to your website mean more people who will see your ads, learn about your business, join your mailing list, and even buy from you. For many businesses, having people visit their site is essential to turning a profit.

But how does blogging increase website traffic?

There are several ways. First of all, if your website regularly gets updated with relevant, valuable blog posts, search engines will tend to rank your site higher in search results. This means more people will find your site by searching for your products or services.

A frequently-updated blog has benefits to your social media strategy as well. When you’re regularly publishing useful written content to your site, your existing audience will have something from you they can share on their own social media profiles.

This is especially significant if you’re in a niche that thrives on sharing ideas, such as tech or self-help.

Finally, if you have an established email list already, blogging may be the single best way to get click-throughs from your emails to your site. Your subscribers might not be interested every time you have a sale or a new product, but they’re likely to pay attention if you send them high-value information in the form of new blog posts.

Promote and Inform About Your Products

One of the best uses of content marketing is demonstrating what your products or services can do for your audience. This is most effectively done with video, but you can use blogging for the same thing. It’s especially effective when you use strong, eye-catching photos throughout the post.

Before people buy something new, they usually need to see how the product will appear in real life. They need a frame of reference that allows them to visualize using the product themselves.

A visual-rich blog post detailing the significant features of your product or service and walking customers through use cases can help with this. It can also serve as a handy tutorial for those who have already purchased.

To turn an informative post into a marketing opportunity, you have to do it creatively. You might come up with a surprising or absurd scenario to demonstrate your product in.

Simply going to an unusual location to demonstrate and photograph your product in, like that secret spot with the waterfall, might do the trick. Blogging works especially well for surprising ideas because the weirder something is, the more likely it is to get shared on social media.

Whether you want to let more people know about your products or teach existing customers how to use them more effectively, blogging is a great way to do both.

Establish Your Expertise and Build Your Network

No matter what business you’re in, you want to be perceived as an authority in your niche. The more people perceive you as an expert, the more willing they are to buy from you.

One form of perceived expertise is social proof, such as having connections with other experts in your industry. The more you can publicly interact with trusted and respected individuals, the better your business will look.

An effective blogging strategy can help accomplish both of these things. When you publish accurate, high-quality articles to your blog, your audience will naturally see you as an expert. And by producing valuable content within your niche, it will be easy to get the attention of respected people in your niche.

For networking, it’s important to combine your blog with a solid social media or influencer marketing strategy. This doesn’t have to be complicated, however.

By striking up meaningful conversations with well-known people on LinkedIn, or providing real value to existing experts, you can get the attention and support of your industry’s elite. In turn, they might share one of your best blog posts on social media, or agree to let you interview them for your blog.

Blogging may be the single best way to prove your expertise on a subject. Combined with effective networking practices, it can also pave the way for meaningful industry connections.

Keep Getting Results With Evergreen Content

If you’ve done much content marketing research, you know about evergreen content. It’s digital content that continues to be relevant and useful to people over long periods of time. A common example of evergreen content is a tutorial on how to tie a tie. No matter how much time goes by, that kind of article or video will continue to be relevant to people.

You don’t have to create fashion tutorials to make evergreen content, of course. Anything you can write about that will still be relevant and interesting a year from now probably counts as evergreen content.

The reason evergreen content is so important is that it continues to bring in traffic over the long term.

When you publish blog posts about breaking news or up-to-the-minute trends, they might go viral, but they won’t mean anything to people after the trends have changed. When you write about significant topics that people are always looking for answers to, you stand a better chance of staying relevant over time.

By focusing on content that’s relevant today but still has staying power, you will create a library of digital assets that will continue to bring in traffic for years to come. Search engines like Google will continue serving up webpages that have been useful to people in the past, and social media users will keep on sharing these posts with their friends. It’s a win-win.

Engage in the Public Conversation

Did you ever stop to think about how there’s a conversation happening online for every subject?

No matter what niche or industry you’re in, there are people on the internet talking about it. Sometimes these conversations take place in Facebook groups or subreddits. Often they happen on Twitter and answer sites like Quora. But they also happen in email exchanges and between blogs.

When you have something you want to sell, it’s important to be a part of the conversation about that topic. But you can’t just start talking and expect people to listen to you. You must give them a reason to pay attention.

Blogging both gives people a reason to listen to you and contributes directly to the conversation around your niche. Every accurate, well-written post contributes to your brand image and expertise. And every post that gets people’s attention and gives them value has a chance to add to the public conversation.

Whether you’re just starting in business or you’ve been in business for a long time, blogging should be an essential part of your digital marketing strategy. Everything else you do can benefit from a good blog, from your email list to your social media content. It’s a worthy investment for any business.

Adding Blogging to Your Digital Marketing Strategy

With that, you now understand how blogging can benefit and promote your business. Although blogs used to be a tool for self-expression, today they can accomplish far more, from increasing website traffic to building trust with your audience.

Of course, it’s one thing to know about the benefits of blogging for your business. But what’s the best way to get started?

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, you might start by connecting with a digital marketing agency like COASTR. We can do the heavy lifting for you, including writing content. Learn about all of our marketing services here.