If you’ve heard of blogging for your business, but you’re not doing it, you’re not alone. Many businesses know blogs are important for building a strong base of loyal customers and for getting found in online searches – yet many aren’t fully aware of this content marketing tool as a powerful way to help audiences view them as the expert in their industry.

A recent post describes this scenario with the numbers: Businesses that regularly blog as a part of their content marketing strategy see about 55 percent increased website traffic than businesses who don’t include regular high-value blogs in their strategy. Even more, about 60 percent of organizations aren’t using blogs at all for marketing – this means you likely have an opportunity to start using blogs now to help edge out your industry competitors.

Blogs for business isn’t an arena for sharing your personal reflections about your day, about recent political events or great pet stories. Instead, they’re used for letting audiences know you really know your stuff when it comes to industry trends and insights. They’re also used to help your audience learn more about topics they are interested in, so they can’t be too “salesy” or they won’t be effective. Instead, focus on high-value, quality information in a concise and easy-to-read format.

Keep this in mind too: good blogs can stay online and be shared and re-shared for months or even years, so they have some staying power. Feel free to archive and refer back to blogs for your business that are a year or 18 months old; if it’s good information, people will click and open them.

Blogs are also used to help index and rank your website for higher search engine optimization. They can make a big difference in your search engine results; as long as keywords are used appropriately and you’re following an overall marketing strategy that includes consistent social media posts with some traditional marketing tools. Blogs for your business are a very important part of your content marketing, but they can’t stand alone.

One last point about blogs: they aren’t meant to be sporadic. Committing to a schedule of well-planned and well-written blogs is one piece of the formula for success. The work, however, is worth it when business blogging helps generate the results you’re looking for. Contact us to help you get your business blog going.