I get asked all the time by Business Owners Why they need to have a Blog and What good does it do for them.

I hear them say that they dont have the time, the technical knowledge or the money to set up blogs.

They have no idea at the opportunities that they are missing out on. So i decided to share my thoughts with everyone on why every business should have a blog and be blogging.

First of all I’m gonna cover why every firm should have a Blog and then what not to do while setting up your blog.

Reason 1: Positioning

Positioning is about how you are perceived by your audience. Don’t confuse positioning as branding, its more then that. Its how you communicate to your audience what you are about and how you can help them. A Great blog can create credibility for your business in your industry. Blogging about your perspectives on recent events within your industry sets you as an authority within your Industry.

Reason 2: Communication and Interaction

At the end of each blog post that you make, most blog platforms like Word press allow readers to post their comments and feedback. You can encourage your readers to post their feedback and get them involved in your blog. It gets readership to be high and lets you know how your customers are thinking. This also lets you know what are your customers looking for so that you may provide them solutions accordingly. eg Your customers are looking for phones with ability to email and you keep on carrying phones without email functionality. So using Comments on Blogs you can see what your customers are looking for. Also its free market research, where you get to get real feedback from customers on how they feel about your firm.

Reason 3: Visibility and SEO

When you post blog posts you are essentially adding new content to your site. New content means more pages which means that search engines will index your site more often. Its important to ensure your content is unique and added on a regular basis. Now if you have properly placed your top keywords in the blog posts then Search Engines would rank your site higher for those keywords. Eg. Say your Blog is about Encryption Software and you would like to get ranked high for that. You would ensure that keywords like Data Encryption, data security, data encryption software, data security software, full disk encryption are included in your content  so that you get targetted visitors to find your blog post and thus know more about your products and services. This co relates to my next point.

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Reason 4: Lead Generation
You can softly and discretely mention about how your products and services can benefit your readers in your blog posts. You can hyperlink your products and service pages in your blog post. Here’s how you do it. What you do is talk about a problem or situation that you know readers are facing and then you show your expertise by giving advice on how to deal with the situation and how your product can actually help them in their scenario. You should provide the ability for the reader then to click to a contact page for more assistance. This then leads to a lead for your firm. You can see how this is done quite well by AlertBoot, a managed disk encryption software solution firm.

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Reason 5: Recruitment

A blog is a great way for you to show your values and thus let your HR Department to attract wanted Talent to your firm. When  people search for new jobs they do google to find firms that are in their field and seeing your blog they may relate to you.  A warm and informative blog can make good talent feel a connection and make them approach your HR Department to look at opportunities.  Of course you may also post all opportunities on your blog as well along with a contact form.

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Having said all this, i hope that you can see why your firm should have a blog and why you should be blogging. Remember its easy to set up a blog on your site. WordPress is a free blog solution that can be hosted on your server.  In case you need an expert to install it on your website you could always outsource that to a wordpress expert.  Also you could just post one blog post per week and its good enough. In case you dont have time to even post one blog post  you could again outsource it by getting a professional blog post writing service .

In my next blog i’ll talk about what not to do on your blog.

Don’t forget to comment below and let me know your feedback.  Also do sign up for our free newsletter and get updates via email to read at your own convenience. In case you need any assistance in your blog feel free to contact us.

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Next Week  I’ll discuss what not to do while setting up your business blog