While blogs may have their roots in personal public diaries, they have become much more than that. Blogs have become the most useful tool for driving traffic to a contractor website. In fact, most contractors can expect a significant increase in website traffic with the addition of a high quality blog. A website with an established blog can expect 150% of the traffic of a website without a blog. If you’re not convinced yet, consider these benefits of blogging.
- Exposure to potential customers
If you write blogs that interest and inform your customers, they are likely to share your content with their friends who can also benefit from your expertise. These friends become followers of your blog and eventual customers. Through social media sharing, your blog articles can reach potential customers that you would never reach with traditional marketing.
- Build loyalty with existing customers
When you build an online community around your blog, you can increase loyalty among customers that you already have. If people regularly read your blog, interact through comments, and know what is going on with your business through your articles, they are more likely to think of your company when they have a need that you can fill. Customers will feel a greater connection to your company when they consider you an online friend.
- Increase customer service.
A blog is a great place to address the kinds of questions that your customers frequently have. This helps customers who would rather not call or stop by to ask a simple question, and it saves you time fielding the same question multiple times each day. Free up valuable employee time by addressing the information customers are looking as blog topics.
- Increase your online presence.
If you’re doing it right, your blog will be shared by you and others across various social media platforms. This puts your company name in front of thousands of people who may not have heard of it otherwise. The other benefit to this sharing of blog articles is the increase in your company website SEO. Show up higher in search engine results for more hits to your site.
- Collect customer feedback.
Customers may be more willing to say something in the comments to your blog than in person or on an official survey or feedback form. You can receive vitally important information about your customers’ thoughts through interaction on your blog. Gauge how they react to product offerings, sales, and advertising campaigns, as well as learning what new things they would like to see.
- Establish industry expertise.
Through your blog, you can make your company name the one that people think of when they think of your line of business. Through an informative blog that helps customers get more from the products or services that you provide, you establish your company as the reliable place to go for expert advice.
- Collect customer email addresses.
When people subscribe to your blog, you will build a valuable database of email addresses that you can use when you have business announcements to make about new products or sales. Not only is sending email much less expensive than direct mail campaigns, people are more likely to read email than snail mail, so it is more effective as well.
- Increase SEO.
A blog is a valuable tool for increasing SEO through the sharing and linkages that take place. This is a benefit of business blogging because the overall goal of a blog is to drive traffic to your company website. This is easier to achieve if your URL shows up on the first page of search engine results related to your company. Links within your blog and social media sharing can create hundreds, or even thousands, of links to your site that wouldn’t otherwise exist.
- Create a modern image for your company.
People expect every company to have a website and blog. Even the smallest home businesses or independent contractors often have an online presence. If a potential customer searches for your company online and finds nothing but a yellow pages listing, they are going to frown and wonder what decade your company got lost in. Having a company website with an informative blog is almost a necessity of doing business.
- Make people forget you are a small business.
With a professionally designed website and blog, people visiting and interacting on your site will be convinced to forget the mom & pop shop image, even if you are running a business out of your home. Through an online store and blog that establishes industry expertise, readers may not consider that there is a small business owner behind the screen. A huge benefit of business blogging is that you are able to grow your business through big online presence.