The Benefits and Drawbacks
Blogging for Business
If you’re working with an agency for your company’s web design, you’ll be asked if you want a blog. In our experience, most clients are excited to have a blog on their website. They want to share company news and industry articles. And we often hear about their big blogging plans. Business leaders picture themselves spending their afternoons sipping coffee and typing away. But they usually have a romanticized view of it all.
You see, blog posts don’t just create themselves. They must be written, which takes time, planning, and research. However, many clients haven’t worked out the logistics of it. They can’t make time for the blogging process because they simply have other things to do. And that’s where we see them eagerly overcommit but underdeliver.
Before you enthusiastically agree to have a blog on your website, we want you to weigh the pros and cons. We’re here to give you a more realistic look at blogging for your business. Let’s see whether you’re ready to take on the extra workload, if you should leave it to the professionals, or skip the blog altogether.
The Benefits of blogging
It Improves SEO
Search engine optimization is a multifaceted system of organizing a website, but it all boils down to one fundamental factor—content. SEO is about creating visibility by increasing the amount of relevant content on a website. According to Hubspot, adding a blog to your site can increase traffic by up to 434 percent because of the increased number of pages.
Blog posts are new pages filled with helpful content that can help drive organic traffic to your site. Essentially, they’re additional opportunities for someone to find you within Google Search. You can also publish a wider variety of content and use keywords that don’t usually appear on your website. This gives you a chance to reach larger audiences without paying for ads.
The Content Is Sharable
Filling your social media calendar is challenging, and inspiration can quickly run dry. Thankfully, you can promote a new blog post across your social platforms, which takes some stress away from planning original social content. Many businesses announce recent blog posts on social media. They also promote new blog posts via an email campaign, getting the blog in front of clients who aren’t on social platforms.
Most importantly, social media posts and emails can help drive organic traffic to your site. They’re clickable, shareable, and relatively quick to create. You can easily tack a website-focused call to action onto the end of either campaign, like “Read the Blog” or “Learn More” with a link to the blog post. According to Statista, 97 percent of bloggers use social media to promote their blog posts, and 66 percent use email marketing to direct readers to their blogs.
It Establishes Credibility and Relevancy
When you have a blog on your company’s website, you can demonstrate your expertise within your industry. Publishing blog posts centered around a niche will signal to Google that you’re a trustworthy source of information for that topic. Any type of blog post will do—listicle, Q&A, or long-form article—as long as it somehow relates to the main focus of your website.
And you can further increase your authority within search engines when other credible websites provide a clickable link to your material as a reference, known as backlinks. These links are one of Google’s top three ranking factors. Having backlinks tells Google that your content is valuable, which in turn, helps your website rank higher overall.
The Drawbacks of Blogging
It’s Time-Consuming
You could love the idea of a blog, but your schedule may not allow for it. This is a big commitment, especially if you plan on writing your own blog posts. And blogging takes time. You’re looking at hours of additional work for content planning, research, and writing. You can’t just wing it. Statistically, blog posts take over four hours to write.
Be honest with yourself. You realistically may not have time to maintain a blog. You’re busy with other aspects of your business. That’s why company blogs tend to fall by the wayside. It may make more sense to outsource blog writing or trim the number of blogs you publish. By outsourcing, you’ll have a reliable source for skillfully written blogs that meet SEO standards.
You Need to Be Consistent
Blogs are usually the first internal task on the chopping block when things get too hectic. Over and over, we see companies blogging sporadically, with considerable time gaps in between each post. Sometimes, we see years between posts. Or they’ve completely abandoned their blogs, and no one wants to read posts from a dead blog.
You don’t have to post blogs weekly. You could publish a quarterly blog post and still appear relevant to your readers. And if you cannot keep up with a set schedule, it’s best to hide the dates and only publish evergreen content, which means the blog post isn’t time sensitive. It doesn’t announce new releases or upcoming events. Instead, it’s relevant to readers, no matter the date. That way, it won’t look like you’ve given up if you end up falling behind on blogging.
Blogging Is Intimidating
You don’t need to be a professional writer to keep up with a company blog. But it helps.
You may not be a confident writer, and that’s okay—writing isn’t everyone’s forte. We’re not necessarily talking about skills like grammar or spelling. Those can come with practice. This is about abstract concepts like storytelling and developing a unique writing style. These are the things that differentiate your blog posts.
You’ll be competing for readers with other blog writers, so your blog needs to bring something new to the table. But one of the most challenging things about blogging is coming up with new, engaging content ideas. You might not know what to write about, and research isn’t your thing. These can cause major hang-ups when trying to produce quality content, and blogging can get overwhelming for someone who isn’t used to writing. That’s what professional writers are for.
Tips for the DIY Bloggers
- You don’t have to do it alone. You may want to write the content but need a trained eye for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Or you might want to change your tone but need a second opinion to get the format right. That’s where a professional copy editor comes in. You’ll have complete control over the piece but will get extra help where you need it.
- Don’t add a blog post to your website and expect overnight success. That’s not how this works. Like with all things SEO-related, patience is key. Not every post will be a smash hit right away. Some blog posts are popular immediately, but some slowly grow in popularity over time. On average, blog posts at the top of search results are over two years old.
- Design matters. Large blocks of text can be very overwhelming for readers. But that’s all your readers will see unless you have web design skills. Sometimes it makes more sense to provide the content to a web designer. From there, they can create a post that feels more organized and engaging than endless paragraphs.