Blogging had evolved significantly from the old days when individuals used this platform to share their strong opinions. Now, brands and businesses are using blogs to expand and reach their customers.  Data shows that business-to-business (B2B) marketers who are using blogs get about 67% more leads than those who don’t.

Often small business owners don’t see how blogging can help them expand and neglect it. If you are operating a business with an online presence, you should know that business owners have promoted their ventures through content marketing for decades. However, the form of content marketing has evolved over the years.

You can see the example throughout history that has shaped the content marketing landscape. Content marketing began with the invention of the printing press, followed by the radio, television, and then the explosion of digital technologies. One thing that has not changed throughout evolution; one fact remained constant – companies are continually looking for better ways to give more to their potential customers and see more significant benefits.

In recent years, blogging has emerged as the preferred digital medium for long-form content marketing.

Blog Definition Or Blog Meaning

In 1994, when blogs were in their infancy, people used them as personal diaries that they shared online. People use this online journal to talk about their daily life and the things they were doing. Then, they saw an opportunity to communicate information effectively in a new way online. Thus, downing the era of blogging.

You can get a better idea of what a blog is from the blog definition provided here – A blog is a shortened version of the word “weblog.” It is an informational website or online journal showing info in reverse chronological order. That is the latest post at the top. A blogging platform is an online place where an individual or a group of writers can share their views on any topic.

How To Find Your Blog Niche?

The best way to find your blog niche is to research what you like to write. If you are running a business, your blog should be in that same niche as your business. For example, if you operate a shop that offers fishing equipment, your blog should be in that niche.

Your goal with your blogging should be to attract more people to your business as a business enterprise. So it would be best to write blogs about your work and the products that you sell.

With a blog, you can better educate your customers and show your work expertise, making them trust you more. When you write your blog in a niche that you are passionate about, you will enjoy writing it and simultaneously educating others.

Think of your blog as a long conversation with someone. So it is essential to know the subject you are writing about in the blog.  So, make sure to select a niche in which you have authority and expertise.

How Can Blogging Benefit Your Company?

The following are the reason why you must have a blogging section on your website:

Increased Traffic To Your Website

Blogging is excellent to drive traffic to your website. It will also help you improve your SEO. The more content you write, the more the search engines have for crawling and indexing. It means search engines will recognize that your website is a source of information that people can access.

You can also use your blog to create content that your audience will like to interact with and share with others. When people share your content on social media, it helps you expose your business to an audience that was unaware of your existence.

A blog can also help you drive traffic from social media sites. Instead of coming up with new and original content for social media, you can use your blog as a repository of content. Blog and social media can have a symbiotic relationship, as you can use blog content to strengthen your social reach and drive new website visitors to your blog via social media channels.

Conversion Of Traffic Into Leads

Once you get traffic on your website through your blog, you will have the opportunity to convert that traffic into leads.

The easiest way to convert a visitor into a lead is to add a compelling lead-generation CTA (call to action) to your every blog post.

Often, these CTAs lead people to things like discount coupons, free trials, free ebooks, and other free stuff, typically anything for which people would be willing to exchange their information. We can break down traffic-to-lead conversion (the process of a person coming to the website and converting into a lead) in the following steps:

  • A person visits the website
  • They see CTA for a free offer
  • They click on the CTA and go to a landing page containing a form to fill in their information
  • They fill out the form, submit information, and get the free thing

Every blog post you write should have a compelling CTA designed to convert the visitor into a lead for your business. Without effective CTAs, you will not be able to drive the oncoming traffic to your blog towards your sales team as leads.

While not every visitor of your blog will become a lead, you should try your best at writing an informative blog with an excellent CTA. Keep blogging, and set a visitor-to-lead conversion rate benchmark, and strive to improve it from time to time.

Establishment Of Authority And Credibility

Writing a blog with useful content shows your audience and potential customers that you are a trusted source. Posts about topics your audience cares about and finds interesting and helpful is a sure way to present to them that you are more than just a business selling a product or service.

If you write blog posts filled with useful information, it shows your audience that you care about educating people by spreading helpful content in your industry. Often, an educational blog post you wrote to clear things up for customers can have a significant positive impact on your credibility.

While you cannot measure credibility and authority in the same way you can traffic and leads, you can consider measuring it the same way you measure sales enablement. In the end, you are writing these blogs to enable sales.

Blogging enables sales opportunities in the following ways:

  • If a visitor finds the answer to their questions via your blog post, they are more likely to trust what you have to say and come into the sales process because you have helped them in the past. This trust develops because you assisted them even before they were ready to buy anything from you.
  • Visitors reading your blog posts will usually enter the sales process more informed about your brand, your pace in the market and industry, and what product and services you have to offer. It makes for a far productive sales conversation than one between two strangers.
  • If a salesperson encounters a specific question from the customer requiring an in-depth explanation or a documented answer, they can pull a blog from the website. In this respect, blog posts can swiftly move the sales process without requiring the sales representative to create the assets from scratch.

Logn-Term Results

When you write down a blog and publish it, initially, only a few people will see it. These will be the people who have subscribed to your newsletter or blogs. Most fanfare dies In the first few days or weeks, and you might only get about 100 visitors to your blog but don’t be discouraged. It is parred for the course for how blogging works.

The important thing is that your blog search engines have indexed it. It means that you can continue to get traffic and leads from the blog posts for the coming days, weeks, months, and even years. Though it might seem like a waste of time and energy at first, blogging is a game of patience.

The work you put into the blog now will generate results in the future. When you look at your blog stats, you will find that your older blog posts are causing most of your sales.

About 70% of the blog’s monthly traffic accounts for the posts you have published in previous months. Similarly, around 90% of the leads generated every month come from blog posts published months ago.

Other Benefits

other benefits, too, of a blog on your website. Though small and not core advantages of blogging, you can get them as side effects from your blog.

For example, you can use your blog to test out big campaigns without investing much. Your blog can be a tool to project your persona to your audience.

Though it is not their primary use, blogs can also be excellent outlets for marketers to communicate PR information. Things like a product launch or event info can easily get shared via a blog post. It is easier to get people’s attention for company-focused initiatives if you have built an audience on your platform instead of pitching your story to media outlets and hoping one of them would bite.

While these are great things to have, you should understand that these are not the primary reasons for having a blog on your website. While writing blog posts, it is best to focus on driving traffic and lead generation.