Businesses need to have a company website to have a strong presence on the Internet and be more competitive both in the online and offline market. That is why many business owners hire website designers and developers to build a company website for their business. But although a company website will make your business accessible on the Internet and discoverable on search engines and social media, it may still not be enough to attract constant followers or prospective customers for your business.
Many companies, small or big, are now maintaining an updated blog to share interesting stories and the latest updates about their products and services. Other companies build a blog, not only to blog about their business, but also to communicate personally with their audience and create a deeper and long lasting relationship with them.
A company website will help your business have a virtual office or store where you can showcase your products and services to potential customers. But in order to keep people from coming to your virtual office or store, your website needs to have interesting and useful content that will drive more people to your site. This is what a blog can do for your company website.
An updated blog will make your company website rich in content. More content means more pages that will be indexed by search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. More content also means more pages or blog posts that would be shared and spread by people in the social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
If you already have a company website, you could build a blog within that website or domain. If your website is powered by WordPress, then it is already ready for blogging. You just need to create a blog page to serve as your blog’s index within your company website, and start blogging or creating blog posts.
A company website that has a quality and engaging blog within it has the following advantages over other company websites that don’t have an updated blog or don’t have a blog at all.
1. Rich content – regular publishing of blog posts adds more content to your company website.
2. Fresh content – regular publishing makes your website updated.
3. More visible on search engines – the more content and pages you have, the more pages will be indexed by Google and other search engines.
4. More attention from the social media – the more blog posts you have, the more content your audience will share in the social media.
5. More growth for your brand – by constantly blogging about your expertise or edge, your business can stand out from the crowd. Blogging can establish yourself as an expert in your field or your business as the leader in your industry.
6. Improved customer service – blogs have a commenting system where your customers can ask questions and where you can give answers to their questions.
7. More lasting relationship with your customers – by consistently communicating with audience through blog posts, businesses creates deeper connection with their customers.
The bottom line is that a blog could boost your website’s reach. Some popular blogs can even drive a million readers to their site – just imagine that! Aside from expanding your business reach, a blog also digs deeper to your audience. With the constant communication through your blog posts and comments, a business owner can know his or her customers better. Finally, blogging can also be a good way to practice your social responsibility by educating, not only your customers, but also the public.
So… are you interested to start blogging about your business now? If you are, then you may read these 100 tips to make sure that your business blog will stand out from the crowd.
Victorino Q. Abrugar is a marketing strategist and business consultant from Tacloban City, Philippines. Vic has been in the online marketing industry for more than 7 years, practicing problogging, web development, content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, and consulting.
This is very helpful.. thinking of having a blog soon.