We must get this question all the time from clients wondering how to get more value from their website:

“Should I be blogging? Does my business need a blog? Is blogging worth it?”
Every time we give the same answer: Yes!

The benefits of blogging for business are tremendous — if you’re willing to put in the necessary time and do it the right way.

Improve customer relationships: A business blog should satisfy one simple thing: answering customer questions. In your business there must be common questions that you get asked on a regular basis.

Write a blog post about them to demonstrate your expertise while providing valuable content for your customers.

Other businesses in your industry probably aren’t even taking the time to blog. This gives you the opportunity to stand out as being great teachers and customers will appreciate that you’re taking the time to solve their problems.

Better understanding of customers’ wants and needs: Blogging will give you a better understanding of what concerns your customers.

By looking at analytics and social shares, you’ll get to know exactly what types of blog posts to which your customers are drawn, and interacting with them in the comments section will help you learn even more.

More content equals more leads: As you keep producing great content you will find that your search engine ranking will go up.

Google loves websites that are regularly updated with useful content and awards them with higher rankings, leading to more traffic to your website and ultimately more sales. Blogging is an essential tactic for any search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

Social media marketing: If your company is active on social media (which it should be) all of this awesome content will give you something unique to share with your followers. If people find your content useful, they will share it with their followers and your traffic will continue to grow.

E-mail marketing: A blog is a great place to insert an e-mail capture form. As you give valuable advice in your blog post you will naturally grow your company’s list with people wanting to learn more from you.

With a bigger list you’ll be able to put together a much stronger e-mail marketing campaign and open your company up to more list-marketing opportunities.

Repackage content for later use: The more content you write the more content you will be able to use later. With a few dozen blog articles published you can easily grab older content and repackage it into something else: fill your company newsletter or turn your content into a white-paper or eBook.

The more you do it the easier it gets: Your first few blog posts might feel like a chore, but the only way to get better and quicker is to keep doing it.

Successful business blogging has an especially simple formula: Customers have problems, your blog helps to solve them. That’s it!

How do feel about blogging now? If you were on the fence, we hope we helped to convince you why blogging is a good idea. Now, get out there and start blogging to see the benefits for yourself.

Nico Taus and Frank Chartrand write on behalf of Bureau.ca and DesignTalk.ca.