“Does my business really need a blog?”

Yes. I don’t even know you, and I can tell you that with complete certainty. Whether you’re a start up, a life coach or a multi-product established brand, there should be a blog on your website and its content should be as high a priority as any of your other marketing endeavours. Here’s why.

Expand Your Brand & Create Depth

Blog posts are an invaluable opportunity to help others see your brand as complexly as you do. Where consumers may see a lip balm, you may see a dedication to natural ingredients, a love of simple beauty and a reflection of a specific kind of overall lifestyle. Your blog and its contents are the gateway to sharing that depth of identity with others. Well-crafted posts will also tie the richer identity of your brand to the needs and interests of your ideal client.

Position Yourself As An Expert

If you’re a business owner, chances are you’re an expert in at least one field. This is your chance to leverage that - whether it’s rooted in life experience, years of business building or higher education - and position yourself as an expert in that field. Sharing your knowledge with others will help them to trust your opinion and authority, and in turn make them more likely to choose you or your product over competitors. Sharing your personal philosophies or why it is that you’re so passionate about the field you operate within also allows people to feel as though the information they’re receiving is authentic, and not simply being rephrased from a google search.

Improve Your SEO

As a business owner or a marketing manager, Search Engine Optimisation is either your jam or your biggest headache. For me, it used to be a daunting foreign concept hanging over my work, but I pushed myself to find out more and was pleasantly surprised by how intuitive it can be. Like anything else, there are multiple levels of attack; some deeper levels of SEO are still daunting and foreign to me, but there are also some accessible ways of increasing your site’s discoverability, and the most obvious one is a well-written blog. You should be applying SEO-based copywriting principles on all of your website pages, and having a blog gives you countless more opportunities to load up on those keywords in a natural way that won’t be penalised by Google’s bots.

Provide Value

In order to gain, you must give. Providing value without immediately getting something in return may seem counterintuitive, but it’s an integral part of building a relationship. Providing prospective clients or consumers with value - whether that be in the form of tips, insider experience or a roundup of your favourite compatible products - will help them to feel more connected with your brand. This is particularly important if your business is service-based, as consumers want to have a solid idea of what sort of quality they’re paying for before jumping in, and inability to provide any value without payment is often a red flag.

Build Trust

Building upon the concept of providing value, the more people are able to see and explore for themselves, the more comfortable they are likely to become. No one sees a blacked out storefront and wants to go inside; similarly, if all a potential customer can learn from your website is your list of products and your price point, they’re likely to think twice before jumping in. In addition to trusting your authenticity and ethos as a brand, people also need to be able to trust that you know what you’re doing, and in over-saturated or more complex fields - for instance natural skincare, or business coaching - demonstrating your own competence is essential in order to stand a chance.

Create Context & Position

Your website is the domain in which you get to completely control the narrative, and it’s one of your strongest opportunities to clarify the context in which consumers should place you. Where in the market do you fit in? If your price point is premium, you’ll need to convince people you belong in that sphere. If you’re on the other end of the scale, you’ll need to position yourself as accessible rather than cheap. Where do you fit into their lives? Building blog content around the practical everyday positioning of your service or product helps others envision you as part of their every day reality. Are you part of a niche within your wider industry? This is your chance to drive that individuality and deeper context home. It’s one thing to present this information in the main copy of your site, and another entirely to demonstrate it through a more immersive medium.