I already have a website, why have a company blog?
Initially, blogs were personal diaries where often futile articles were published. If this is still your vision of blogs, you’ll have to update yourself because things have changed!
Today, blogs are a marketing “technology” widely used by companies, which find many benefits.
Unlike a website, which is the window of a company, a professional blog is a more informal space of expression with the purpose of indirect communication about a company or its products/services. It is composed of regularly updated articles dealing with a particular field.
The goal is to position your company as an expert/reference in a specific field, but also to bring visibility to your company. The blog is not meant to replace your website, both are important and have different and complementary purposes.
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Business Blogging Facts & Stats That Should Not Be Ignored
- 81% of companies consider their blogs “useful,” “important,” or “critical.”
(Source: Hubspot) - 33% of B2-B companies use blogs.
(Source: InsideView) - 37% of marketers say blogs are the most valuable type of content marketing.
(Source: Content Plus) - Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links.
(Source: Hubspot) - 78% of CMOs think custom content is the future of marketing.
(Source: Hanley-Wood Business Media) - Small businesses that blog get 126% more lead growth than small businesses that do not blog.
(Source: ThinkCreative) - 81% of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs.
(Source: BlogHer) - 61% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from a blog.
(Source: BlogHer)
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Are you wondering what advantages a blog can bring you? Here are some tips to answer your questions:
1. It improves your image to stand out from the competition
The company blog will allow you to demonstrate your expertise, put forward your skills and knowledge, communicate your values, and around the news of your sector. Thanks to the blog, you can position yourself as an expert in your field.
This will have a strong impact in terms of image. Several subjects are possible: the advance is taken by your company on the development of a new product, the market trends, the news of your sector, concrete solutions to precise problems, the answer to questions often asked by your customers, and many others.
By giving free advice to your readers, you improve your reputation and make sure that once they decide to buy they think of you rather than your competitors.
The blog gives you a competitive advantage because you bring much more content than them, who only have a showcase site that presents their products or a blog rarely updated. The search engines will give you back by bringing you visibility.
In addition, the corporate blog is less formal than the showcase site, it will humanize your company. The tone is freer in a blog than in a website, and it is your collaborators/writers who transmit the essence of your company.
Even if you talk about your products in your blog you will have a less commercial tone, more in search of usefulness for your readers. This will give you a better image.
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2. It allows you to communicate about your products and your company’s news
To keep your customers informed about your company, products, or services, there is nothing like posting information on a blog. If they are interesting, they will certainly be shared by your readers with their network of contacts.
For example, you can communicate on unusual uses of your products, and manufacturing secrets, and reveal your behind-the-scenes by describing a process. As part of a promotional campaign, you can reproduce your communication materials on the blog, whatever their nature: users will be tempted to reuse your illustrations, comment on them (in the context of videos in particular), or even blog in their turn.
Having a corporate blog also allows your company to tell its story.
By producing and publishing branded content, your company moves beyond a purely commercial organization to become a source of entertainment or information and thus offer a richer brand experience.
A revealing figure: 70% of consumers learn more about a company through articles than through advertising.
But be careful, you don’t have to write only about your products and services! A purely promotional article will have no impact and will certainly annoy your readers who will flee!
It is important to publish interesting and useful articles for your readers and not only to advertise your products. You have to be more subtle.
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3. Company blog makes your website live
The blog will allow you to feed your website to stay unique, interesting, and current. It gives your potential customers a reason to come back to the site.
To keep your website alive, we advise you to integrate an RSS script on the homepage of the site, allowing you to highlight your latest blog posts.
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4. It allows you to manage the customer relationship, to gain their trust by communicating with them
Building strong relationships with consumers has an impact on the business. Sometimes it is difficult to stay in touch with the consumer and their needs. A blog provides the perfect platform for that closeness.
You will be able to open up two-way communication between your organization and your customers by enabling comments. They can give their opinion, bounce back on what you’ve written, ask questions or simply thank you for giving them useful information.
Comments allow you to learn from your readers, which will help you increase your productivity and develop your services.
Moreover, you prove that your company is not static and that it relies on a human and reactive team and not only on a virtual shop window. The blog allows you to create reassuring proximity between the company and its customers.
5. Having a company blog builds customer loyalty
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A blog is a loyalty tool because as we saw in the previous point, it establishes a form of relationship with its customers, more direct, personalized, and in a less institutional framework than the website.
The result for the company is a brand image closer to the customer, who will then be more likely to buy a product or service from this company.
In the case of a showcase site, for example, an Internet user will not have any particular interest in returning to your site once he has found what he was looking for.
On the other hand, he may decide to come back more often to your blog if he likes the editorial line and the new features announced, thus increasing the regular traffic of your site, which is bound to pay off in the long run.
It is therefore important to provide quality content at a regular pace.
6. It improves your community management strategy
Obviously, it is not enough to write an article to see your traffic increase. Social networks will allow you to make your blog known. You will promote your articles on all the networks on which you are present.
But conversely, the advantage of blogging is to take full advantage of your presence on social networks; in fact, content marketing and community management go hand in hand: producing and publishing content on your corporate blog will allow you to feed your agenda of publications on social networks, and thus to engage your community around your brand, by generating traffic to your site rather than to a third-party site.
The blog will also allow you to amplify your community by getting your “fans”, “followers”, etc… to share.
Indeed, quality content is one of the three main reasons why people follow a company on social media.
Thus, the blog is part of a global web strategy that also includes social networks. If you have a blog, you must have a social presence: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn … you choose according to your objectives and especially depending on where your customers are.
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7. It improves the indexing of your site on search engines, and thus your Domain Authority
The first reason why companies start blogging is undoubtedly to improve their web visibility through search engine optimization.
Indeed, Google loves rich and often updated content. This is the very definition of a blog! Compared to an institutional site that can be frozen, the very nature of a blog is to create new pages, and new content and thus open the semantic universe.
This permanent addition allows for improving the density of keywords and using the long tail effect. The logic is simple: with a corporate blog, prospects are more likely to find you.
By using the right keywords and articles, you can expect to have a sudden increase in search engine rankings.
One of the most effective techniques for improving search engine rankings is to implement a backlinks strategy; that is, to have as many links as possible pointing to your site. The blog is a very good tool to create these links in your articles, and thus promote the indexing in Google of your website. Companies that have a blog benefit from 97% more links to their site, and 4 times more pages indexed by Google.
By being easier to find on the web, you will inevitably increase your site’s traffic, thus your sales; and develop your credibility with your potential customers.
However, having a blog with the only purpose of optimizing its indexing, without having defined an editorial line with the search for added value in its articles, may not bring any benefit, or even a loss in terms of image or sales.
Thus, it is not uncommon to see articles stuffed with keywords whose content has no interest except to be more visible on Google. Very often, when you visit this kind of blog, you leave immediately. On the other hand, if you regularly publish interesting articles for readers, they will naturally contain keywords, and backlinks will naturally be created to your blog, so your SEO will be boosted.
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8. A blog generates traffic to your site
As a consequence of the two previous points, setting up a corporate blog will allow you to generate traffic to your site, both through search engines and social media.
The better you are referenced, the more traffic you will have on your site.
Regarding social media, an effective blog is a blog that is read and whose articles are shared by your readers. This is why the added value of your articles and the editorial line are particularly important.
Articles read, then recommended by your readership to their networks, increase your notoriety at the speed of buzz! By increasing your notoriety you gain customers! Indeed, the blog allows you to create different entries on your site.
Thus, a visitor can arrive directly at an article and then visit your product pages.
In fact, a study conducted by HubSpot, on a sample of more than 1500 of their customers, showed that the sites of companies with a blog have a visit rate of 55% higher than those of companies without one.
But that’s not all: Increasing your site’s traffic thanks to a blog will inevitably lead to increased sales! It is noted that 61% of consumers have already made a purchase after reading a blog article.
As you can see, the creation of a company blog does not lack advantages! But it requires time and, above all, thinking about a real content strategy. Regarding the frequency, we advise you to publish one to two articles per week.
Conclusion
What about you? Do you have a blog for your company? What are the results you have obtained? Are you satisfied with it? Share your experience with us in the comments