Does a Small Business Owner Really Need to Blog?

Blogging takes a lot of time and is an easy task to postpone.  There seems to be no short-term payoff.

The answer is YES there is a short-term payoff for the following reasons:

A well-written blog post helps establish credibility

There is a lot of noise on the Internet.  Two million blogs posts are written every day and most are not worth reading. 

But somehow readers find new and valuable content.  A respected writer notices and mentions a blog.  Others notice and quote from it.  Google records the traffic and raises its ranking on their Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). 

Good things continue to happen that builds credibility for the author. 

There is a need to blog

All of this happens because the writer took the time to dig deeper into his research,  wrote with clarity, and built defendable positions.  And in turn, the blog post became credible. 

This person proved that yes, an SMB owner does need to blog.

Another author does superficial research, copies or plagiarizes content and his blog is never noticed.  His post will never be found or read.  So no, this business owner doesn’t need to blog.

Blogging allows you to speak directly to your visitors

Your visitors will visit your website with various questions.  One may have an “explainer” kind of question.  Another may have a “how-to” question.

Both of these types of questions should use an image to add clarity. And of course, the ultimate in answering how-to questions is to use a video post.

Using anticipated questions you can add paragraph headings that will not only help you organize your writing but also add a signpost for your visitor.  Each visitor can quickly scan your blog and find what they are specifically looking for.

But you can answer all of their questions by writing a long-form blog post. 

A blog can improve conversion rates

A well-written blog reinforces the main premise of your website.  The main focus will be explained in the pillar, cornerstone or foundation pages.  See definitions here.  They are the ones that supply the major support for the website. 

But your blog posts will reinforce the main premise by explaining and expanding on its points.  Given this reinforcement, your reader will more likely sign up for a periodic email or perhaps go directly to the shopping page and buy something while he’s there.

Blogging supports social media initiatives

Blog posts can be reused for social media content.  Write your blog post first, and then extract the most important points from the post.  Find an image that helps explain the key point and will capture the attention of your social media visitor. 

I like to create social media content and then include a link back to my website so the reader has a map back to my blog post.  You will not only improve his understanding but also increase traffic that Google recognizes.

Blog posts help build traffic to your website

Website pillar pages only increase if a major new product or service is added to the business. If you sold ladies’ hair extensions you would describe them in their pillar page. If you added a major new product like ladies’ wigs they would deserve their own pillar page. And you would use blog pages to extend advice for each of your products.

The more pages you have the more opportunities you have to include additional keywords. Each page should have one major keyword (or phrase) with one or two synonyms included. You want to offer information that satisfies many reader queries that find keywords on your site. Therefore, the more pages you have the more times you register with Google and the more likely you are to be found.