Do You Really Need a Blog for Your Website? Some Compelling Reasons to Note

What’s the purpose of a blog? For most people, a blog is a space to express opinions, to share ideas or simply to write for the love of it. But for businesses, a blog can mean a lucrative marketing platform with some serious practical benefits. For starters, it has the potential to boost your ROI, your online search engine rankings, your customer conversion and your brand image. Thousands of businesses have witnessed an increase in rankings, lead conversions and increase in ROI just by maintaining an awesome blog.

Many businesses still don’t take blogging seriously though and would rather prefer to have their website loaded with keyword stuffed articles than to actually invest in a great blog that offers true value to their readers. This has proved to be a great failure with the Google’s search algorithm updates (also known as Penguin and Panda), where such websites were penalized. We strongly advise all business owners with websites to start considering the possibility of running and maintaining an informative and appealing blog.

A quick online search for tips on growing your business online will talk about how 2015 is the era where “content is king.” What this phrase refers to is the importance of having valuable, practical content focused on your niche audience posted online on a regular basis. If you’re still considering whether or not you should have a blog, here are five compelling reasons to convince you:

Google and other search engines are now really making it compulsory for websites to have quality content, rather than mere SEO implementations. And content doesn’t mean keyword stuffed articles; here it actually means valuable information shared via blog posts. These are the very posts that will encourage readers to share or comment on when they visit your website and so this will boost your ranking even more.

No longer is it about just keyword optimization, but about generating high quality, authority posts either in the form of words, images, videos…whatsoever comes to mind. And a blog is that perfect space to accommodate these content demands.

Ever thought about what your audience needs to know from you? If you have a latest offer or special running, how would you talk to them about it? You’re just not going to load huge Facebook statuses or bombard your landing pages/home pages with the information right? This is where you will need a blog. It’s very important for the audience to read about the offer or even view a video on it. Without adequate information, these offers are bound to fail.

Guess what? When you give the audience the information they need to know, there is a 90% chance of them to becoming your followers/fans and respond to future deals. They may include your blog in their RSS feeds, subscribe to it via their email address (which is also a great chance to run a successful email marketing campaign) and will eventually share the content you post. Sounds good right? Moving on to the sharing part now.

Coming back to the brand loyalist aspect, your blog becomes a voice for our products and services to your audience. Having customers extol the virtues of choosing products is the best advertising anyone can ask for and this is made easier via well-placed social media sharing buttons on your blog. With just a few clicks and keyboard taps, people can share blog posts and information with their friends and followers. This enhances traffic to your website and allows the chances of meaningful conversions. Great posts can initiate viral sharing and that is a pretty big deal!

Blogs build credibility. If you can’t come across like an expert in your line of work, customers cannot take you seriously. And what will be the best way to show how intelligent you are? Rhetorical question. Now, please note that by blogging, we don’t simply mean writing about your favorite movies, weekend plans, or random topics…we mean producing posts that can depict you as a sensible, responsible professional and that could include anything; from self-made video intros to animated ads, from images to quotes, to how-tos and instructional tips. The more instructional content you give out, the more you represent your expertise. So, if you’ve got a magic trick under the hat, don’t be afraid to share it!

Did you know that a well-maintained, authoritative blog scares away competitors? We are not kidding here. You see, when you give out important information on the latest happenings in the industry or share your insight over it, you are essentially telling everyone that you know your industry well. That would definitely keep your competitors on their heels and motivating you to be make your business/product more effective, more customer-friendly.

If your website needs a blog, its time to call in the experts at N2Q to strategize a great plan for you! Enhance your business, get on friendly terms with search engines, show some love to your customers and ofcourse tease your competitors mildly!