No More Excuses: 3 Excuse-Busting Reasons You Need A Blog

Blogging is so tedious.

I don’t understand how to blog.

Why do I need to blog? I have social media to communicate with my followers.

I don’t have the time.

I have nothing to blog about.

Others in my industry are already blogging so I don’t need to.

There’s no value in blogging.

Do any of these sound formiliar? No more excuses. Blogging is a valuable resource that you can add to your communication strategy for a number of reasons.

 

1. Blogs can be shared by others.

Many businesses communication strategies include the goal of increasing viewership and following. Blogs are a great way to do just that! As others read your posts, they have the opportunity to share them with their followers and readers. The more your articles are shared, the more likely you are to gain new followers.

Who can create greater visibility at no cost (unless your hiring someone to write the blogs for you)?

 

2. Establish yourself as THE resource in your industry.

There are certain topics that you are passionate about within you industry and others may not be talking about them. Blogging gives you the opportunity to be the resource for your industry, providing information, tools, resources, and perspective to your readers that others are not.

You gain credibility by providing information on topics you are already knowledgeable in. If your blogs can provide insight and recommendations into industry specific tools and resources, your readers will return for later articles.

 

 3. Create conversation.

Engaging with your audience is one of the main goals of any content marketing strategy. Although there are numerous social media platforms that allow you to create conversation with your followers, blogging is an additional tool to start the conversation. Blogging allows your readers to make comments on the blogs you have written allowing you to respond and engage in conversation. This is a great opportunity to create a relationship with your audience. Ask for their opinions, see what else they would recommend, hear and respond to their criticisms, etc.

So where do you begin?

• Pick a hosting site (preferably the same site you are using for your company’s website)
• Pick a topic that is relative to your industry. Your readers are a great resource for picking a topic. What have they been asking to know more about? What information are they needing?
• Write your article. Be sure to edit and revise as needed.
• Select an image/images that say more about the topic you are covering. They need to be of quality and relative to the topic.
• Format the article to make it easy for readers to follow. Avoid too much white space and avoid large blocks of text.
• Insert keywords, tags, and a category. This will help you categorize your blogs and help with your SEO ranking.
• Make sure you don’t just save the article as a draft. Either schedule it to publish on a later date or publish it right away!
• Promote your article on your various platforms. On social? Promote it there! Have a newsletter? Share the article there! Let your audience know you have a new article they may want to read.

These are just 3 of the many reasons your business should be blogging. If you aren’t already, start today! There are multiple online tutorials on how to blog and where to find resources. See what others are blogging about and go from there by searching for step-by-step guides in Google. WordPress has great lessons on various aspects of blogging that you can read here.

What questions do you have about blogging? Please share with us so we can help you get started!

-Jamie