The modern consumer does everything online—from shopping to doctor consultations to finding solutions to their current problems. While having a website helps you reach your digital customer by giving online visibility, it doesn’t guarantee that your customers will choose you over your competitors.
In fact, with over 1.8 billion websites today, they might never find you. And if they can’t find you, how will they know that you have one of the best solutions to their problems?
This is why great blog content is critical to your website and digital strategies. It doesn’t only improve your search engine result page (SERP) ranking, but it also builds rapport with your customers. And these aren’t the only benefits you’ll experience. Below are four ways good blogging habits contribute to your long-term growth and success.
4 Advantages of Having Blogs
A blog page is a type of website content that’s updated regularly and aims to provide insight through storytelling or writing an informative article.
While blogs might seem like a costly and unnecessary expense to your website strategy, you have more to lose by not including them. So much so that brands who use blog posts as part of their marketing strategies experience 13x higher return of income (ROI) than those who don’t.
What else can you gain from producing a successful blog post? Here are four benefits that you can’t ignore.
1. Puts you at the front and centre of your customers’ research
What’s the first thing you do when your keyboard no longer works? Chances are, you’re looking for blog reviews on the different keyboard models and brands before buying anything.
Your customers go through the same process: they research first before they purchase a service or product. And blogs help ensure that you’re the first thing they see when they start researching because it provides the answers or solutions to what they’re looking for. Plus, it makes you more searchable by using the keywords that your customers use when they research.
Another way new blog posts improve your searchability is by increasing the backlinks and indexed pages on your website, which improves your SEO/SERP rank.
All of these, in return, drive traffic to your website and expand your reach, which also means more chances to convert them into customers.
2. Establishes your brand as an authority figure
Do you immediately trust someone you just met? No? Well, neither do your customers.
If it’s the first time your customers are buying from you, they’ll first wonder why they should trust you. Next, they’ll think about why they should choose you over your competitors.
Blogs are the perfect tool to quell those doubts. They showcase your in-depth knowledge and skills in the industry by giving them expert insight and advice. Even more, it proves to customers that you know what they’re going through—their specific pain points, questions, and problems—that they’ll feel that they can trust you.
And once you gain their trust, they’ll realise that your brand is superior to your competitors because you know what they’re looking for.
3. Builds customer trust and strengthens loyalty
Here’s the deal, customers don’t like being sold to. In fact, they hate in-your-face selling so much that 80% ignore sponsored content.
So how can you sell your products when your customers dislike self-promotion?
You have your blogs do it for you. Blogs tackle topics that your customers care about and provide insights or solutions to some of their most pressing problems. In doing so, you show customers that you care more about them than your own profit. Thus, they start to trust you and your products.
Not only that, blogs let your customers know more about you by showing your brand persona and business values. And just like in every relationship, the more they get to know you, the more they trust you, and the more they feel loyal towards you.
4. Ensures your long-term continuity
A blog lasts forever, and so are the benefits it brings. For example, you published Blog A on Monday and it gained 100 views on the same day. Then, 75 of those viewers shared it with their friends and family, which they shared with their friends and family, and so on and so forth. While there may be fewer people sharing it by Friday, your blog has reached thousands of people by then, ranking high in online searches. This means that your blog is passively bringing you more potential customers.
In fact, your brand can continue to experience the benefits of your blog content even 100 years later. Just take a look at the Michelin Guide: it was a guidebook that Michelin established in 1889 to entice more people to travel and increase tire demand. Nearly 200 years later, it still helps the Michelin tire company generate sales and establish its position as a business leader.
Now, who wouldn’t want that kind of benefit?
