You’ve heard it time and again… Content is king. But if you have a new business with limited traffic, is there any point to starting a blog for your small business?
In this post we’ll run through the pro’s and con’s of starting a blog for your small business to help you decide what the best course of action is. Although if you just want the answer without the explanation… Yes, with a few caveats.
5 disadvantages of of starting a business blog:
- Time is money
Writing a blog is a significant time investment. If you’ve just started your business, you may not have a huge financial runway, and it’s understandable that you’d want to get to selling your product or service straight away.
- It takes time to see the fruits of your labour
It can take months for your article to reach its heights in the search engine results page (SERP). If you will not see any results for several months, why not focus your energy on something more productive today?
This is a trap we see so many small business owners fall into. By focusing on short-term wins you are often left chasing your tail trying to generate new leads/sales each month. When you focus on short-term gains, it’s easy to neglect foundational work that will pay dividends long into the future.
- Sloppy writing can worsen your reputation
Because blogs take so much time to produce, you may be tempted to rush your blog posts. If you’re not careful, and your blog posts are riddled with spelling mistakes and inaccuracies, you may find your blog posts will have the opposite effect and actually turn potential customers away.
- What if no one reads it?
As a new business, it’s unlikely your site is getting enormous volumes of traffic. What if your blog posts never rank on Google and you spent all that time creating content for a ghost town?
- Inconsistency
It’s very hard to keep to a consistent blogging schedule. All over the web you’ll see company blogs that haven’t been updated in years. This can make the business look inactive. In fact, in some cases they would have been better off not starting the blog in the first place.
11 benefits of starting a business blog
- Intellectual property
When you write a blog, you are building the intellectual property in your business. The more IP your business has, the more valuable it will be. If you ever come to sell your business, having an established blog could mean extra dollars (or pounds) in your pocket.
- Consumer confidence
If you write a helpful, consistent blog, you will not only be building IP, but trust too. Your potential customers will see that you really know your industry and will be filled with confidence that your knowledge will carry through into your products or services. They’ll also be more assured that should they have a support issue they can trust you, the experts to help.
- Page views
As we mentioned in our previous article on how to generate leads for a new business
There is a direct correlation between the number of blog posts you put out and the number of page views you receive. Of course, it’s impossible to tell which posts will perform well and which won’t ahead of time. However, there’s one thing that’s certain. If you swing your bat enough times… eventually you’ll hit a home run. With enough volume you can consistently bring in 10s of thousands of page views each and every month. What would that do for your business?
- Domain authority and backlinks
By creating high-quality, shareable content, people will naturally start linking to your site and blog posts. This will build your domain authority and improve your SEO over time.
- Credibility with business partners
Anyone out there can easily see your company’s domain authority and an estimate of your monthly page views. All this work you have been doing to build both will now start to pay off. Whether you’re bidding for a contract or trying to pitch a strategic partnership, you’ll be taken more seriously and are more likely to get a seat at the negotiation table. Perhaps you’re a B2B business? In this case, a blog is essential (if done correctly).
- Repurposing of content
A well-written blog can serve as a hub for all of your content marketing efforts.
You can repurpose blog content into video to build your audience on platforms like YouTube or TikTok. You could take highlights from your blog posts and share them as short form content on LinkedIn or Twitter. You can even take a blog post and use that as the foundations for a Podcast.
Whatever you do with your blog posts, the point is, it will give you something to talk about, providing you the platform to grow your audience across the web.
- Building an email list
Creating great content will bring subscribers to your email list. We cannot understate the power of this direct channel of communication with your prospects. Want to conduct a new product launch? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could reach thousands of engaged subscribers at once?
- Ownership and control
Your websites and your email lists are things you own. Your own corner of the web. While social media platforms are fantastic for spreading your message, they are still private platforms. With your own platform, you can share whatever you like without fear that your audience will disappear overnight. What if you had put all of your content marketing efforts into MySpace, Google+ or Vine? And these platforms don’t need to go out of business for your efforts to have been wasted. What if your account gets blocked or an algorithm change dramatically affects your reach?
- Business Development tool
Blog content can make an excellent tool for your sales reps. It’s important for sales teams to provide value to potential customers and clients. This opens up a two-way dialogue. What better way to provide value than to share relevant blog posts with their prospects and their wider following?
- Sales
Most of the above is ultimately driving at one thing… Increased sales. By increasing your page views and email subscribers you have more opportunities to get in front of potential customers. It’s as simple as that.
- Passive income
Finally, and possibly the best thing about writing a blog, is that once the up-front work has been done. That blog will bring in potential customers and clients 24 hours a day. Once you have sufficient traffic, you can sit back and watch the sales roll in.
How to get started?
Hopefully, by now we have convinced you of the benefits of starting a blog for your startup. However, you may still be unsure if you can commit the time necessary to write a consistent blog, week in, week out.
Well fortunately we have a solution for you. Us!
We are experts at blog writing and will write your company blog for you, SEO optimised, so you can get the most out of your blog, while saving you time to work on other important areas of your business. Check us out. If you’re even considering clicking that link, then you have proof that blogs can work, right?
