You own a business, so of course you’re busy, but if you’re not writing blogs as part of your daily operations, you may want to rethink that. You can drastically grow your business using blogs in 3 key ways:
A blog may be little, but it is mighty. Perhaps you haven’t known just how valuable blogs can be for your business or you’re simply not a fan of the form, but now’s your chance to implement some changes and see your business begin to soar!
The “blog boost cycle” shows how each of the 3 ways you can grow your business with blogs feeds into the next.
The more you blog and have new content on your site (or updated older content), the more you will enjoy a deeper and wider audience base, sales, and reputation in your field.
It should be easy to digest, contain links to other relevant sites, and engaging for the eye so it’s a pleasant reading experience.
When you write blogs, you’re showing your audience that you are invested in their well-being within the realm of what you do or provide.
This goodwill gesture plants itself in readers who recognize you’ve done this to be helpful, community minded, and to support them to live better or be more informed.
It also establishes your authority; people who blog share their wisdom, and that helps your readers trust your business over another competing business that remains quiet (or writes blogs that aren’t as rich, full, or interesting as yours).
Think about the very nice businesses who don’t blog; a quiet website nowadays illustrates that the business is too busy to extend itself into the community. While they may in fact simply be busy running their business, the optics make it seem like they care less.
Writing blogs regularly invites connection through you taking the time and care to extend what you know and offer to your community.
This connection creates trust, and people will feel a genuine rapport with your business. This is invaluable currency when it comes time for that person to want what you do or sell and will set you apart from your competition.
Naturally, once you’ve created connection with your customers and clients, they will feel invested in what you’re doing. They will check your site regularly to see what you’re up to and what new insights you have.
This leads to increased and repeat online traffic and longer site visits.
How it works is this:
a) You post blogs for a while and people begin reading them. Because familiarity or repeated contact with a brand breeds trust, such folks will be more likely to read your next ones. This means Repeat Visits to your website.
b) Since your blogs are good and interestingly presented (and since readers already know and trust you), these visitors are more likely to read the whole blog and even leave a comment, which account for Longer Site Visits.
c) The more content you post, mixed with the repeat visits, and the longer periods of time people linger on your site all lead to your website ranking higher in internet searches. Sites that land on page 1 or 2 get all the visitors, so you can bank on Increased Traffic.
Here’s how that works:
Google tracks these 3 things to determine how “valuable” your site is. Google uses over 200 algorithms to make this determination, but topping the list are sites that are well trafficked and have low “click-through” or “bounce” rates (meaning people stay longer on the site).
This means the more content you’re putting up, the more your loyal fans are visiting your site, which tells Google you’re a good site, and as such, ranks your site higher on the search list.
Additionally, when a potential client or customer searches online for something you’ve written about, now that you’re deemed “useful,” that user will be shown your blog over your competitors.
That new person will now navigate to your site, see that you’re posting great content, that you’re engaged, and that you’re trustworthy, and wham, you have another loyal follower.
That’s the circle of website life in action, baby!
Helping along the increased traffic issue is social media. Social media may not be perfect, but it is useful to an extent for spreading your blogs around to both familiar and new people.
Also, using social media for its true purpose of being “social,” people who feel an affinity for your business will make it their business to personally share your blogs, especially when they’re pertinent to others in their community.
People align themselves with businesses whose moral code, aesthetics, and culture elevate them or make them feel like they’re keeping good company.
When people share content on social media, those shares are a reflection of that person’s tastes and perspectives.
*In The Blogshop, our comprehensive online course, we talk about “totebag effect” which if you look at the bags people carry, you’ll notice is an easy shorthand for people to assume or align themselves with the characteristics of a business or brand.
Where you win is in the personally recommended blogs people share with one another, which drives new people—warm to your business straight out of the gate!—to your website.
These 3 tenets of good blogging create a perfect harmony to help you get and maintain clients, keep them happy, and do the good work of boosting your business.
Take the time and care to do it right- and the millions of people who see your blogs will be clamouring for more.
(Wait. &%#. Did she say millions?) (She did.)
If that makes you feel a little anxious, in “Write Great Blogs Every Time Using These 6 Steps,” you’ll learn exactly how to write your blogs so you keep calm and cool—all the way to “publish.”
Blogging is vital to every business, but it’s also an art and a science that can be learned in order to see maximum impact.
In 6 comprehensive lessons, learn about how to write good blogs in short order AND generate 12 months’ worth of blogging material: The Blogshop
Our 4-month Mentored Book Programs, Online Courses, & Writing Coaching and Editing Hours. From November 21-27, 2023
2 Responses
I’m not sure if this is the correct area to post a blog post for critique. I’m going to blog from Provence while on vacation and the blurb below will be one that I want to publish before we leave. I’d be very grateful for any comments and suggestions. I also have an image from my own photo file to post with it. It’s of Ingrid, Andre, Paul, and me in Ottawa. However, I don’t see how to share that here. Please let me know what you think.
Two authors, Marianne and Ingrid, their husbands in tow, are meeting in Provence this year at a rental Air B&B. Their friendship came because of a virtual friend – Facebook. Neither remembers the post that cemented the two into their lasting bond. Ingrid and her husband live in Ottawa. She writes erotic romance with titillating intimate scenes. Marianne and her husband live in Cambridge Ontario and has a flair for intrigue writing mystery thrillers filled with spies and psychopathic killers. When promotional business took Marianne to Ottawa, they decided to meet up in person. It was like they had always known each other; but, with two completely different genres, you’d wonder what they had in common. The chance meeting was probably meant to be. Now together in a peaceful dreamy French landscape they are ready to shake up and rewrite the way most of us see the bucolic nature of Provence.
Both ladies will be guilty of smuggling their fictional characters along with them and to that end this blog will report on the daily interludes not only of the couples on vacation but the adventures and perhaps the foibles of the beloved characters in their novels.
With a mixture of fiction and reality this visit to Provence will be filled with surprises. Please follow this blog and don’t miss a single day. (that would be a call to action to press my ‘follow’ button.
Thanks
Keep up the great work! Thank you so much for sharing a great post.