Why does your business need a blog? Good question. The short answer: it’s good for business.
Want the long answer? Well, to really understand why a blog helps your business, we need to start with search engines—particularly in the business-to-business (B2B) marketplace in which companies compete.
Surveys like this one on how people approach B2B purchases show that search engines are integral to the process.
- 93.2% said they would research the purchase online
- 92.5% would use a search engine at some point in their online research
- 63.9% would start their search using a search engine over consumer review sites, e-commerce sites, manufacturer’s sites, and industry portals.
When a business consumer searches for a solution that you provide, you want your business to appear at the forefront of the search engine results.
This is particularly important when it comes nonbranded search results, which are ones that don't mention the brand name of your business or product.
Prospects who know the name of your company already know how to find you. A person searching for “Mama Borgia's pasta sauce” will probably find Mama Borgia right at the top of the search results. But searching for pasta sauce without "Mama Borgia" probably won't help people find the company's products. So what about people who don’t already know about your business? Will they be able to find you?
To get your company to appear more prominently in results for searches related to your products, you need to provide more online content about relevant topics. Doing this creates an online association between your site and those topics, and raises your search engine rankings.
The easiest and fastest way to create this content is blogging.
Increasing your visibility in search engine results is a primary benefit of a blogging program, but it’s far from the only one. I'll cover more benefits of blogging in my next post.