Suppose your plans for 2024 and beyond involve launching and running a business with growth (and earnings) potential. In that case, you absolutely must understand the role (and benefits) of blogging in driving brand success.
After all, with 7.5 million blog posts published daily, there must be some benefit that all those websites get when investing in content marketing.
Well, as you can probably guess, blogging can boost small business growth in many unique ways. From attracting new prospects to improving customer retention rates and encouraging conversions, publishing informative, unique, and well-written articles pays off, especially if you’re consistent with your publishing schedule and employ the correct distribution techniques.
8 Ways Blogging Can Help Build Your Small Business
So, without further ado, the following are the benefits your business can gain from blogging, especially if what you’re after in 2024 is impressive (but sustainable) growth.
Build Brand Awareness Through Organic Traffic
One of the most prominent benefits of blogging is that it’s a practical and budget-friendly traffic generation strategy.
If you think about it, the fact that blogging is so good at helping businesses build brand awareness through organic traffic isn’t much of a surprise. Statistical data shows that 58.2% of people use the internet to find information, with Google being the most widely used search engine (holding more than 83% of the total market share as of July 2022).
And, if you consider how blogging works, at its core, you’ll find that it’s all about delivering sought-after information to those people looking for it via search engines.
If you’re trying to build brand awareness, publishing any content you see fit won’t be enough. Instead, you’ll have to base your publishing strategy on research to guarantee that your hard work delivers the desired results. In general, this means a couple of things.
You’ll have to invest in SEO.
By researching and targeting relevant keywords, you’ll ensure that search engines recognize your content as valuable. It will then be presented to the right audience, who will judge your post titles and meta descriptions to decide whether to visit your website.
You’ll need to provide unique & valuable information.
Anyone can write a rambling 3,000-word post on a topic. But if you do the same, ensure that web visitors won’t stick around for long. In the long run, this will signal to search engines that your content is irrelevant or invaluable, harming your chances of appearing towards the top of SERPs (which, in turn, means a considerably lower CTR and amount of organic traffic you can count on). In other words, if you want to generate high-quality organic traffic with blogging, you must identify, address, (and ideally) solve your audience’s pain points with your articles.
Make sure your website offers an enjoyable UX.
Finally, to generate organic traffic and build brand awareness, you must remember that people hate interacting with websites that perform poorly. So, to avoid the possibility of them perceiving your business as unprofessional or not catering to its customers with care, don’t be afraid to invest in UX design. If you’re only willing to cover the basics, focus your attention (and budget) on load speed, responsiveness, and removing intrusive web elements like pop-ups or auto-playing videos.
Nurture Leads by Introducing Your Product
The second benefit of blogging that you can secure for your small business is that publishing great content could help introduce leads to your products more efficiently. And here’s why.
People who browse the internet for information want to discover articles published by credible and trustworthy resources. And when they find blogs that match these descriptions, they form positive opinions of the brands behind them. In the short term, this doesn’t necessarily mean much. Especially if a blog post solved their pain point from start to finish, eliminating any need for a follow-up.
However, for most consumers, the buyer’s journey isn’t that simple because there are four stages that people generally go through when making a purchasing decision:
- First, they identify their pain point.
- Next, they become acquainted with possible solutions.
- Thirdly, they compare available products, services, and solutions.
- And finally, they make a purchase.
In other words, even if you’ve successfully attracted a prospect to your blog once (and, hopefully, left a positive impression), there’s a great chance that the same lead will continue their research before making a purchasing decision. You can use this knowledge to direct your content marketing strategy.
You can create posts for each stage of the customer journey and use these articles as an opportunity to nurture leads while subtly introducing your products.
Go Long
Choosing this long-term route instead of bombarding blog visitors with ads for your products during their first visit will help you reach your goals more effectively — allowing you to boost conversions and growth.
Being subtle about suggesting new products will signal to your target audience that they can rely on your brand to prioritize their experience over making sales. It will also make it much more likely to encourage prospects to continue engaging with your brand — whether on your blog or social media. And that will allow you to nurture them into satisfied customers who’ll continue returning to your business.
For example, if you want to see this growth strategy in action, check out the Transparent Labs Best Pre-Workout blog post. This supplements brand does a tremendous job of providing blog visitors with valuable, science-backed information. And knowing that people reading the article are likely also to explore products to buy, Transparent Labs points them toward the most popular items in its eCommerce shop.
To keep things balanced and on the up and up, the business also refers to alternative products by its competitors. Nonetheless, it highlights the unique benefits of its solutions, which will surely attract the attention of consumers exploring pre-workout supplements.
Source: transparentlabs.com
Generate Brand Credibility
In some industries, the most valuable benefit of producing and publishing content is the opportunity blogging offers for generating brand credibility. This is especially true for businesses offering services and products related to finance, social media, and health/fitness, where customer trust levels generally tend to be below average.
The good news is that blogging can significantly boost brand credibility. Mostly, this is thanks to the fact that it offers opportunities for brands to supplement their claims with science-backed data. Moreover, credibility-boosting blog posts can include expert insights (highly recommended for businesses targeting young consumers). And they can go into sufficient detail to prove their authority.
And the best part of using content to create brand credibility is that it’s a strategy that can easily be included in any article.
For example, if you check out January’s What Are the Best Snacks for a Diabetic blog post, you’ll see that this could easily have been a throwaway listicle post that notes ten low glycemic index foods. But instead, it’s a 3,000-word guide to eating well while living with diabetes, complete with links to scientific resources, explanations on choosing healthy foods, and tips for picking the perfect diet.
Source: january.ai
Generate Repeat Visits
It takes between six and eight touches to convert a lead. So, if you’re looking for ways that will allow you to increase the growth of your business, it might not be a bad idea to explore tactics that will help you get first-time website visitors to return to your website in the future.
With blogging, this can be particularly easy. All you have to do is produce helpful resources to which people will want to return.
By collecting and presenting user-friendly information, as done by Zoma in its Mattress Sizes and Dimensions Guide, you can effectively maximize the chances of your prospects bookmarking blog posts and returning to them several times before purchasing.
This automatically keeps your brand at the forefront of their minds and increases their chances of investing in your solutions, simply due to people’s tendency to choose products from familiar brands.
Source: zomasleep.com
Reinforce Your Brand’s Voice
Most businesses’ success and growth potential rely on maintaining a consistent brand voice and image.
Whether you’re looking to position your organization as a relatable, authentic, fun, easygoing, or professional brand, finding opportunities to reinforce your brand voice is a super-important aspect of reaching success. And unfortunately, it’s a task that can be difficult to accomplish on many widely-used distribution channels — like advertisements or social media — as it often relies on a medium that’s not limited by time or length constraints.
However, blogging can be a super effective way to reinforce your brand’s voice. This is the case because publishing blog posts allows for as much physical space as you need. Moreover, it gives you total control over the topics you cover, making it easier to address your audience’s pain points or create unique content without worrying about misinterpretation or not being picked up by inefficient social media algorithms.
So, for example, if you know that you’re trying to target an audience that cares about sustainability, you can use your company blog to reinforce that your business is committed to the issues they care about.
If you check out the Patagonia website, you’ll see this is precisely what this brand does in its Stories section.
In the articles it publishes, Patagonia presents readers with unique glimpses into far-away places and communities, opening people’s eyes to many world experiences they might never have come across. And more importantly, the business establishes itself as a brand that aims to be a part of these places and communities while ensuring that they’re valued and respected in a world where profit often comes before inclusion and conservation.
Source: patagonia.com
Improve Customer Lifetime Value
In some cases, the most prominent way blogging can boost the growth of your small business is that it can drive a better customer experience. This can, in turn, help improve customer lifetime value, which is a great metric to focus on, as it allows you to get the absolute most out of your marketing activities. Plus, it improves your bottom line, unlocking multiple growth opportunities, whether by reinvesting profits into product development or unlocking a bigger marketing budget to attract new customers.
If you’re interested in using your small business blog to boost CLV, producing and distributing content that helps your customers get the most out of their purchases is the best way to do it.
This content can include written tutorials, like Asana’s Podcast Planning Template.
Source: asana.com
But, of course, you can also take this type of content a step further. Supplement your CLV-boosting blog posts with images, videos, or audio, making them easier to consume and more likely to benefit your audience. Check out how REI does it in this article about How to Use a Foam Roller.
Source: rei.com
Build Exceptional Social Proof
If you look into the research surrounding consumer behavior, you’ll find that there’s one thing that all buyers have in common. They often consult social proof before making buying decisions. According to research data:
- Nine out of ten people read a review before buying a product. Plus, 58% would be willing to pay more for products from a brand with good reviews.
- Consumers don’t trust brands whose ratings fall below 4 stars.
- 9 out of 10 people say they trust reviews more than branded messages.
So, if you’re exploring ways to boost business growth, it’s worth exploring ways to use your company blog to present prospects with convincing social proof.
The best way to do this is to publish relevant case studies. They can help you share your existing customers’ positive experiences and allow you to present viable prospects with results, data, and details that will convince them to convert.
One of the best examples of a business driving growth with case studies comes from Zendesk. In its Airbnb Customer Story, this brand presents potential clients with a real-life customer pain point, a solution, and a host of information on the acquired results.
However, what stands out about this particular case study (and what you should do on your blog if you decide to use this growth-promoting strategy), is the inclusion of stats and figures in the results section. This element supports the brand’s claim that it can meet its audience’s needs. And more importantly, it gives proof that Zendesk has done so in the past.
Source: zendesk.com
Support Your Social Media Team
Lastly, as you explore ways that blogging can help boost small business growth, don’t forget that great blog posts are easy to repurpose into social media content that will attract the attention of your target audience.
You can support your marketing team and drive engagement on your targeted networks by using your existing content to enhance your social media marketing efforts.
Whether you do this by re-sharing existing articles or transforming long-form content into infographics — as done by Typeform on Instagram — or short-form video is up to you.
What matters is that you make the absolute most of your existing website content and ensure that the audience sees it it was meant for. That way, you’ll maximize your blogging ROI. Plus, you’ll make it easier to keep a consistent posting schedule on social media, which can be challenging if you aim for multiple posts daily.
Source: instagram.com
Final Thoughts
There you have it, some of the best ways you can use your company blog to boost the growth of your business. The great thing about these blogging benefits is that you (and your small business) can reap them even if you’re only getting started.
Of course, to get the best ROI from your content marketing activity, don’t forget to supplement blogging with SEO and distribute your posts on all the relevant channels where you might be able to reach your audience. And don’t hesitate to experiment with formats other than blog posts. That way, you’ll create a library of engaging, user-oriented content guaranteed to attract web visitors, position your brand as credible, help you boost conversion rates, and support customer retention.
