There are so many things that businesses want and need to do with their websites. The first and foremost reason that any company operates a website is to sell its products and services. Products and services take up the majority of space on any website, and that's the way things should be. The drawback of that is that it doesn't leave much room for anything else.
Some businesses want it that way because they think more content means more distractions. If they do make room for anything, it's often a feed for their social media accounts. It's becoming increasingly common to dispense with good old fashioned blogs.
We think doing away with blogs is a mistake. There's still a time and a place for a well-written blog, along with some compelling business reasons why keeping a blog is a good idea. Nobody wants to have a website so crowded that it ends up being mocked by Buzzfeed for being poorly designed, but so long as a blog is kept to its own dedicated space and presented properly, it can become a real asset. We’re about to tell you the reasons why, so stick around.
If you want an example of how a business can benefit from operating a blog, look no further than the vast array of online slots websites that are currently doing such good business. The best of the casino sister sites can’t compete on gaming content because they all offer the same games, so they have to look for other advantages in the attempt to outrank each other in Google search results.
Blogging has become a big part of that. If you check out sistersite.co.uk, you’ll note that it has a very comprehensive list of the top uk casinos and their sister sites owned by the same company on their blog website. We don’t just want to tell you where it works, though - we also want to tell you why it works, so let’s do just that.
Blogging Gives You A Voice
There's only so much room for personality when you're advertising products and trying to persuade people to buy them. So much of your copy has to be dedicated to your pitch. You're almost required to use "marketing speak" and sales language, and you can't afford to deviate much from it if you want your site to be effective. A blog gives your personality space to breathe. The tone of voice of a good blog is friendly and casual. You can drop the hard sales approach and talk about your products in more relaxed terms.
You can even use your blog to talk about the wider industry you operate in and perhaps even reveal a little more about yourself and your employees. This allows your customers (and potential customers) to feel like they know you a little - and that feeling builds trust.
Blogs Bring Visitors
A website that doesn’t have a blog can’t possibly be optimised for SEO - and a site that isn’t optimised for SEO is never going to rank well. The two go hand in hand. There are guides on how to write a good blog for SEO purposes all over the internet - including this one right here - so take advantage of them.
Talk about topics that other websites aren't talking about. Experiment with different keywords. A blog is a perfect place to experiment with both short and long-tail keywords to find what works. Through your blog, you can and should attract customers and visitors who would never otherwise have found your site.
Blogs Can Bring Income
If you have a blog, other people will want to use it. Welcome to the world of sponsored posts. Another key part of good SEO strategy is for businesses to have posts on other people's websites that contain links back to their own. The better the quality of those links, the better. Because of the benefits of having "backlinks" on another website, businesses are willing to pay for the privilege of being able to post on yours.
If you don't have a blog, you'll probably have difficulty finding space for sponsored content. However, if you do, you can accept as many sponsored posts as you wish and earn money from them. You could earn several hundred dollars a week this way if you want to, and it's effectively money for nothing. When you look at it this way, not having a blog is essentially leaving money on the table.
Blogging Allows You To Demonstrate Expertise
Through your blog, you can become an authoritative voice within your industry. One of the things you should have in the back of your mind when you’re writing a blog is that you want your content to be shared. The more your writing is shared and seen, the more people will pay attention to who’s writing it. Potential customers will see either your name or the name of your company repeatedly, and it will become familiar to them.
The more intelligence, insight, and advice you offer about your industry, the more people will believe that you’re an industry leader. That means they’ll want to come to you when the need arises. In essence, all good marketing is about psychology. This is just another aspect of that.
While we could go on, the key point here is that there’s no good reason not to have a blog. They take up virtually no storage space on your server, and they won’t chew up your bandwidth. It doesn’t take much time to write one or two blog posts a week, and you even have the option of outsourcing your blog if you don’t have the time to maintain it yourself.
On the other hand, the consequences of not having a blog are unknowable. You’ll never know which high-paying customer you missed out on because they never found your website or product. You don’t know how many people were put off because they couldn’t get a taste of your personality or business tone from the sales pages of your website.
Whether we’re talking about one lost customer or ten thousand lost customers, it’s money you’ve lost by not running a blog.
Don’t let it happen to you. Start a blog today, and generate great content!
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