6 reasons blogging is brilliant for your small business website

Why should I bother?

I get it: you're a small business owner and you're already doing everything. So why should you add writing a blog to your ever-expanding to-do list?

There are load of great reasons to write a blog and I'm going to share some of them with you here. Hopefully once you've had a read you'll be tempted to give it a go! I enjoy writing blogs and although I don't always fit it in as regularly as I'd like to, I always feel that I've achieved something when I've hit publish.

I'll share some of the reasons why writing a blog is really helpful for small businesses, but before I do, here are some thoughts on the kind of thing that you could write a blog post about for your small business.

Blog post ideas

For product based businesses, writing about the origins of your favourite or best selling product is a great start. For Christmas you could write a listicle featuring your best festive products. To really make the most of the Christmas opportunity you could write individual blog posts featuring your top 5 gift ideas for example: 'Top 5 Christmas Gifts for a Sports Loving Dad/Girl/Teacher', etc. If you're a service based business you could use your blog to educate by sharing your expertise in a given area. I like the listicle format as it gives a simple structure and keeps me on track but you can use any format you like to share your information. Just make sure it's clear and easy to read.

1. Share your expertise

   Blogs are longer than social posts and although that could be seen as a negative because they take longer to write, the benefit is that you can include a lot more content in a blog post than you can in a social post. So you can go into more detail and share more of your knowledge. If you take the time to create something new, you may find that you learn something through researching your topic area (but make sure you don't copy: your audience to read what you think, not what you regurgitated from somewhere else). The time spent writing a blog post can also help crystallise your thoughts on your topic of choice.

   
   

2. Audience connection

   Blogs are a great way to connect with your audience. Again, socials give a snapshot, little bits of information which is what they should do. No-one wants to read huge long Instagram posts because everything about the platform encourages users to keep scrolling. Over time you can get an impression about an organisation on socials but a blog gives an immediate opportunity for your audience to connect with you. The more we connect with our audience, the more likely they are to trust us and to want to purchase our products or services. Podcasts have a similar effect - they enable a deeper connection with your audience. I'm not going to go on about the benefits of podcasts here, but if you haven't already, check out The Cultivating Podcast where my guests and I chat about business and creativity, giving an opportunity for listeners to get to know us better.

   
   

3. Increased website content

   Why do we want more content on our website? Because it's great for SEO! The more pages of relevant content that are on your website, the more material you provide Google to respond to searches. The same applies to keywords. Writing relevant content and using keywords appropriately helps demonstrate your authority to Google so that it can provide users with helpful and reliable information. Read Google's guide to creating helpful content for some helpful tips on this.

   
   

4. Keep your website up to date

   I know that we should all be regularly updating our websites to keep them relevant but it's not always top of our to do list. Blogs are an easy way to create timely content that is relevant for users right now. Think about seasons, festivals (Christmas is obviously the big one), dates in the calendar such as tax deadlines and appraisal times if this is relevant for your industry. A word of warning on this though: if you are blogging about seasonal content you need to post it at least 6 weeks ahead of the actual time. So you want to post your Christmas blog post (or posts!) in October so that Google will have had chance to find your content in time for when all those Christmas-related searches come in.

   
   

5. Increased time spent on your website

   Another boost for SEO is to increase the amount of time that people spend on your website. If you write an interesting blog post, you're keeping your audience with you for that bit longer. As well as being a win for SEO, it helps build the connection with your audience that I mentioned earlier. They get to understand more about you, your products or services, your motivation, your passions and your expertise.

   
   

6. Feedback

   Because blogs help your audience to engage with you, they're likely to have thoughts and opinions that they want to share with you. Getting to know you and being able to interact with you makes it more likely that a person will want to purchase from you. Having an option to like or comment on a blog enables that conversation. And even if people don't comment directly on a blog post, they may interact with you in a different way about it. People often talk to me in real life about things I've posted online and it's great to hear their thoughts and answer their questions.

   
   

   So there you have it. Six reasons why blogging is super-helpful for small business owners. Have I managed to convince you to give blogging a go? Let me know in the comments, or give me a shout on socials. I'm always happy to chat!