Business Blogs: Its Connection To Customer Loyalty and Generating Leads
Why are business blogs important for my company? Why does my business need a blog? What will a blog do for my company? How does a business blog impact the sales of a company?
I’ve been asked these and variations of these questions many times by business owners. So I decided to write a quick article from a non technical perspective to try and answer this question for you.
Maintaining a blog for your business has become increasingly important, especially within the context of your website and Social Media. Without a blog it’s just like being dropped into the middle of a large school of fish, all looking very much so the same, with nothing that really differentiates you.
Within the confines of social media, and the Internet in general, it’s difficult to be heard, seen and found unless you make a distinction of who you are and what you are about. There is solid evidence that maintaining a blog puts you in a better position, making your voice rise above the Internet noise, and thus easier for your customers to find you.
A Quick Blog History
Blogs, actually, are not really a new concept. They have been around since the mid 80’s – used within forums as a collection of documents to be shared mainly amongst Journalists. Towards the end of the 90’s, with the release of the public Internet, other blogging platforms emerged. Blogger.com was the most major blogging platform at the time, which was acquired by Google in the early 2000’s. Since then blogging has gone nuts. There is literally a blog for almost anything imaginable. Individuals seem to blog everything – their lives, families, events, experiences, products, services. This list is seemingly endless.
Even before Social Media entered center stage, website blogs evolved into something that is extremely strategic for businesses. Every business, as far as I’m concerned, should have a blog in some shape or form. It doesn’t matter if you host the blog yourself or with a 3rd party service. Here are 4 solid reasons, in plain English, WHY it’s important for your business to own a blog.
Your Voice. Your Differentiator. Your Brand.
Websites are generally static in nature. Think about it. When was the last time you changed content on your website? Unless you are an eCommerce vendor (like Amazon, eBay, Rakuten, etc.) or an active blogger, the content on your site has not changed in a long time. You and everyone else (especially your competitors) have the same old website, with the same old content, and the same old message. No personality and nothing to differentiate you from your competitor. The content is static.
That’s where blogs come in. Blog posts should be considered your unique voice. You have the ability to craft your message in your voice, at a frequency that works best you, and literally capture your audience. Blogs lend themselves to what humans desire:
- People want to connect;
- People are curious;
- People like to know that they are not alone;
- People like to improve themselves;
- People love to read good writing;
- People like inspiration;
- People like to be personal.
A business blog is your opportunity to develop what your audience wants, making you unique and something that totally differentiates you from your peers.
Your Loyal and Trusting Customers Return
You’re in business to help others and make a profit at the same time. To make a profit you need customers. They are the lifeblood of your company. Without them, nothing really matters. A business blog serves a mechanism to develop the loyalty needed to bring your customers back. As long as the content resonates well with your audience (aka. High quality content), then you’ll have the website traffic to help you generate leads, and hopefully resulting in sales and ultimately a profit.
A blog is the natural vehicle to help develop trust and loyalty, keeping your customers coming back through your front door.
Attract and Get New Customers
In contradiction to what I mentioned above you should not be 100% dependent on your existing customer base only. Through natural attrition, for whatever reason, you will lose some of your existing customers. Some of your energies should therefore be placed into finding new customers.
It’s a well known fact that the more articles you post to your blog the better chance you will have of being found by your target market. Most of us use Google to find (almost) everything. With more than 400,000,000 daily searches (updated 2020 – 3.5 trillion daily searches) there is the strong possibility that some of your customers are looking for you, your services and products on the Internet. In fact, for example, when I research information for a product that I want to purchase, I typically do so on the Internet. Most of the time the search results lead me to an authority blog on the subject that I am interested in.
From a technical perspective, search engines love blog postings. Within minutes of writing blog posts they usually appear online. If you do not have a blog, then there is the strong likelihood that search results will bury you (your static website) deep within the search engine, making it very difficult to find you. Conversely, a website with frequent blog postings tend to have the opposite effect – a better chance of being found within the search engine results.
Funnel Customers into Your List
Depending on your business, building a customer list online should be one of your key business objectives. If your social media and other digital marketing initiatives are structured correctly, your website includes high quality blog content, the links are strategically placed, and the appropriate automation in place, you will have an excellent opportunity to build a solid customer list, and generate sales leads.
Final Words and Your Take Away
Hopefully, for those of you who do not have a business blog now understand that is crucial to have one. You just have to make each of the four pieces gel correctly for everything to work well.
Your major take away should be:
- Have a blog with high quality, well written articles;
- Build a blog with a unique voice – your voice. Stand out from the crowd so that your customers can differentiate you from the rest;
- Build trust and loyalty with your existing customer base through the use of well written, interesting and helpful articles. This will keep your customers coming back for more information;
- Build a sales pipeline of new customers by continuously creating new, interesting and helpful articles. The more articles you post the better chance of being found on the Internet.
If ever you have doubts about maintaining a blog for your business please revisit this article. It should give you a healthy perspective on the importance of business blogging. Your Business Blog Should Create Clients, Brand You Uniquely, and Develop Loyalty
And if you have any questions or information on how to grow your company using digital marketing, please drop us a note. We’re happy to help.