Why Your Small Business Should Have a Blog, From a Blogger

I have been blogging for clients in one form or another for the majority of my professional career as a copywriter.

I’ve written blogs for real estate agents, doctors, apartment buildings, tech startups, car services, pilates studios, dance retailers, cannabis companies, insurance agencies, ergonomics consultants, and more that I either can’t remember or have blocked out.

There is a multitude of reasons why I believe that blogging is valuable for basically any and all businesses who have a website and online presence.

The first reason being SEO. Search engine optimization. Google and company are always changing their standards and reasons for pushing sites to the top of the search engine results page (SERP), but I think if we keep it simple its easy to understand.

Just make your website not suck. Don’t forget about it. Don’t set it and forget it.

If you want to make the most of having a website you SHOULD want it to rank well, so keep posting new and relevant content and Google will notice and love it. A new page per week, be it a blog, or “article,” or whatever you want to call it is the goal. As long as these search engines see that you are posting awesome stuff that’s new and valuable, they will know that you’re not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes and that your service can do just that – SERVE people.

I’m also hearing that Google is prioritizing mobile-friendly sites over the other OG ones that look all janky on mobile.

So if your website isn’t responsive on mobile, it’s time to get a new one. What’s “responsive” mean? It means that your site looks nice and is easy to navigate on your phone and also on the desktop. Most new themes on WordPress are already responsive – like the one I chose – but older sites might not be. Also, Squarespace is a good option to build your own site that will also be mobile friendly. So what’s this have to do with blogging? Well, nothing really, but it does help your SEO. If your site works well on mobile google will like it better, and then all that hard work you put into writing blogs regularly will pay off.

Anyways, I digress. As a blogger, there’s something important I want businesses to understand.

When I am writing blogs, articles, listicles, etc. for my clients, guess how I’m doing my research? I’m Googling things. I’m Googling best sushi in long beach, I’m Googling tips for decorating your studio apartment, and often times it’s from either other list driven blogs that at least point me in the right direction to research a business on their site to write about them.

You see, many of us writers don’t really have the time or the means to go around an explore whatever area we are writing about for that week. We depend on the interwebs for that.

So if your website is kicking ass and getting noticed with organic badass content on a regular basis, the chances of it getting picked up by an outside blogger or other business are way better, and that means more exposure for the biz. And we love that.

As someone who blogs regularly for clients, its amazing to me how similar multiple blogs from different publications writing about the same topic end up being.

Lists for “the cutest and most affordable Easter baskets” seem to repeat the same tips over and over. And why? It’s because the person writing it isn’t going to have the time or get the compensation to create all original content for these lists, so we Google a topic, put our spin on it, and make it as new and original as we can. That’s why you see a lot of the same restaurants, businesses, or services listed over and over on these blogs– our online resources can be limited.

By having a blog you are setting yourself apart from the competition and establishing yourself as the brand authority.

Aside from getting good rankings and getting sourced by other bloggers, think of your blog as a go-to resource page for your followers, customers, and fans. Think of it as a nice thing to do, to give back to your community. Offer free tips, lessons, advice, etc. Give out the stuff that you could theoretically charge for someday. The more you give, the more you receive.

Want to know a bonus about having a regular blog on your website, too? You can reuse that content as social media posts! Say you go and write a 500 – 1,000-word blog. Do you think everyone is going to read the whole thing and remember every little word? No. But does that mean that there isn’t value in every word? Nope! You packed that article full of useful information that deserves to be read. It’s perfectly okay to go into your articles and pull out little gems of information in quick, one or two-liners and use those for your social media posts.

If you’re thinking, “yes Amy I understand I should be blogging but I don’t have time,” don’t fret. I got you.

I help my clients create a blog strategy that plans out their posts so they can write them internally, and I also offer blog writing and content strategy services where I take care of this whole blogging thing for you. From soup to nuts. If you want to learn more we should definitely chat. You can contact me here or email amy.a18media@gmail.com.

Do you have a blog but want to know more about using keywords? Check out this article.