If you ever find yourself asking, “Does my business really need a company blog?” The answer is probably… yes.

Blogs are an effective tool for businesses to connect with their existing and potential customers.

A blog is a way to improve a company’s online visibility, answer questions, share a point of view and educate your potential customers.

Here are 7 ways a blog can help boost conversions and sales for your business:

1. A Company Blog Helps Your Site’s SEO

Search engines look for consistent and regular activity on a website as a ranking factor. This means if your website is stagnant for months, it won’t rank as high as it could, if at all.

With a blog, you can update your site regularly and easily. Blogs are great because they can be short and sweet, or extensive and in-depth depending on who you are writing for. And who are you writing for? Your potential customer.

This regular activity will help boost the SEO of your site. This means:

• better rankings in the online search results (your blog or website appears more often earlier in the search results)
• more hits to your website (the thinking being that if you appear higher in the search results, the person searching will most likely click on a result that is on page 1 of Google vs. searching all the way to page 5 to find a result to click on)
• all this leads to more people discovering your company and how you help, which gives you the opportunity for more revenue

2. It’s All About Your Keywords

Related to the above section, SEO works when you are using regular and consistent keywords on your blog. These keywords need to be researched to find the words/phrases/questions that your customers have.

What better way to show up in the search results on Google than with answering the problem or question your customers are typing into Google.

This way your blog efforts will be matched to what your potential customers are searching for.

With a blog, you have the opportunity to write about different topics that relate to your business from your customer’s point of view. This allows you to incorporate more keywords for better rankings and more online visibility. Write for people and include the use of keywords so you get the search benefits as well.

When you match what people are searching for with helpful information – you can be on the road to more sales.

3. A Company Blog Has a Humanizing Effect

Forbes Magazine states that having a blog on your business website is one of the best ways to build and humanize your company’s reputation.

This is helpful because today’s customer, whether B2B or B2C are always looking for a trustworthy ally, reliable advice and helpful insight on questions they have.

Blogging allows you the chance to voice your company’s point of view opinions and give your potential customers an inside look at your business, your methods and your knowledge. Yes, you can write without sharing all your trade secrets! And, people do business with people, not companies.

4. Promote the Creation of Inbound Links

Google doesn’t tell us everything about how their algorithm works. But they have shared that they look at your site, the frequency of new information being published on your site. That is where a blog can help. Further, they look at links – inbound links.

An inbound link is when another webpage links to your site. An inbound link to your site from a reliable and trusted website is like a third-party stamp of approval for your website in Google’s eyes.

Google sees it as “this website says they do XYZ, but another website thinks they do XYZ so well that they are staking their reputation on linking to it. That’s a good sign. Perhaps I’ll show them higher in the search results). I am simplifying and humanizing Google to make a point here.

When blogging, you have the chance to branch out and discuss topics that relate to your industry and are interesting and exciting to read.

This makes it more likely for your posts to be shared or linked back to on other sites as a source. These inbound links are important when it comes to search engine rankings. Better content leads to more links and improved SEO rankings, leading to more opportunities for sales.

5. Entertaining Content Keeps Readers on the Page

OK, I personally have trouble with this. Entertaining? To me this kind of pressure stops me in my tracks. I’m not funny in my writing, I’m not funny on cue, now I have to write a funny blog?

No. You can substitute the word “entertaining” for “insightful” or “helpful”. The main goal of your blog is to help your readers (potential customers) find the answers they are looking for.

The more helpful your information is, the longer they stay on the page, the more likely they are to facilitate a purchase (or put you on the short list), sign up for your newsletter, opt-in for email updates, etc.

The best way to keep users online is with valuable and helpful information. Your blog should have a direction and purpose, while enticing readers to continue scrolling.

6. Helped by a Content Calendar

Ideally, your blog should follow a schedule. A content calendar is essentially a calendar with a blog topic listed – mapped out through the quarter or year. This helps you stay on track and know what to write about.

There is nothing worse than knowing you should blog and then staring at that white Word doc wondering “what am I going to write about?”

A content calendar, also called editorial calendar is your guide for the year to help you plan in advance what you’ll write about. It can be very flexible – so if something happens in your industry and writing about that topic makes more sense – go for it. Just move the topic on the calendar over to the next week.

By defining what your editorial calendar will look like, your business will come across as structured, professional, and efficient. A blog calendar will also help define the types of things you post on other social media channels to portray a cohesive image.

7. Your Company Blog Provides Content for Other Channels

Keeping in touch with your customers is important. Things can start to feel a little overwhelming when you try to create newsletters, emails, blog posts, social media posts, and more.

The great thing about a blog is that it already provides you content that can be repurposed – getting more mileage out of your content.

This saves time and allows you to reach more people more often. If you send out a monthly newsletter you can include some of your most popular blog posts from the month, as not everyone on your email list may have had the chance to visit your blog.

Getting a Company Blog Started Is Easy

Keeping it going is the tough part. It is important to know that fact before you start. The entry price is low, but the web is littered with blogs that got started and then quickly stopped.

Producing quality, helpful information continuously can be very challenging.

Consider working with a marketing company who can get to know your business, find the best keywords for you, create a content calendar and even ghostwrite your blogs for you ensuring that they match your executive’s voice and do an effective job of sharing your company’s expertise with the world.

Jen Kelly is a marketing consultant in Toronto and CEO of New Initiatives Marketing Inc. (NIM) serving growing businesses in Canada and the USA. NIM is the team to call for marketing execution excellence. Contact us today for a no-obligation conversation about your company blog.