Approximately 7.5 million blog posts and articles are published every day. Now that is a lot of content. When you’re faced with a number like that, it can seem almost fruitless to start blogging when there is just so much noise to breakthrough. Your time is valuable, and no one likes to invest money or time for little-to-no ROI.

So… do you still need to blog?

The answer is a resounding yes, though with a couple of caveats. Any business can benefit from blogging, but you need to do it right if you’re going to see a return on your investment. The only reasons why you may choose not to blog are:

• You prefer to share your informational content via podcast or video. If this is you, then it is still worth doing an accompanying blog post where you share the episode and add your show notes or a summary of what’s going on in your content. Remember that there are customers out there who are hard of hearing, deaf, or have sight loss. If you only have a podcast or video, you will be excluding people. When you have a blog post, even people with sight loss will be able to hear your content read to them.
• You sell products and you are sure that spending money on ads and influencers will be a better ROI for your brand. That may take some testing on your part.

Everyone else can benefit from blogging on their site at least once a month. Here’s why:

9 Reasons Why Your Website Needs a Blog

#1 It’s Essential for SEO

There are two main goals of blogging, the first is for SEO, and the second we’ll cover below. SEO stands for search engine optimisation, and it aims to help your site become more easily found on search engines. There is a lot you can do for your site on-page, but if you want to capture traffic early in the customer journey, you need to be blogging.

For example, imagine you’re an interior designer working in Brighton. You can optimise your website so it stands out to people searching for “interior designer Brighton,” but what about the people who are only just starting to think about hiring an interior designer, or are still trying to DIY?

You can capture this audience early with your blog posts and show them you are an authority. Blog posts like, “What does an interior designer do?” “How much does an interior designer costs?” and “5 fast and easy tricks to renovate your living room” will get those potential clients clicking.

#2    You Can Connect with Your Ideal Customer

People won’t buy from you if they don’t feel like they know, like, and trust you, unless you’re selling low-cost products people are willing to take a risk on. The best way to form a connection with your customer, and start building that all-important trust, is through blogging.

Your blogs can educate your customer, give them quick wins, entertain, and offer your top tricks and tips that set you apart from the competition. The best blog posts do this while also communicating your brand voice and personality, so they’ll know through tone whether your services or products will be a good fit for them, or not.

This connection can last a lifetime and make you their go-to brand or expert when they need your product or services.

#3 Gives Visitors a Reason to Stick Around

The longer a visitor spends on your site, the better the benefits are for SEO. Search engines only want to show results that useful and valuable to searchers, so if people come to your site and spend minutes reading blog posts instead of just seconds scanning your pages, you’ll improve your SEO.

Of course, the longer someone spends on your site, the greater the likelihood that they’ll click on one of your CTAs (calls-to-action). Did you know that, on average, people consume 11.4 pieces of content before they commit to purchasing something? That goes for all products and services, regardless of price, so if you have a blog you’re much more likely to win a client over a competitor.

#4 Blog Readers Turn Into Leads

Your blog can gain you leads, encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter, contact you for more information, or buy your product or service. You may not be conscious of it, but you have more than likely bought a product or service after first discovering that person or brand through a blog post.

#5 Content is Available 24/7 Forever

Your blog posts are there 24/7 365-days a year to help potential customers, whether that’s the day the post is published or 10 years from now if the topic is evergreen. Once you’ve written a blog post, an update once every 6-12 months will help keep it relevant at the top of search pages. However, even if you don’t, they’ll still be there catching traffic while you continue to work on your next post. 

#6 You Establish Yourself as an Authority

Your blog posts will establish you or your brand as a reputable and trustworthy source of information, and you can gain a following for your expertise in your industry. This not only helps you land more clients but can open you to a huge number of opportunities to create partnerships, informational products, passive income, and more.

#7 It Ensures You Always Have a Resource to Point To

While your blog posts are always there to work for you, they also ensure you always have a new or old resource to point to when you communicate with your audience and clients. When you update your blog you can share it on social media and in your newsletter to get customers to return to your site. It also gives you plenty of resources to point people to when you receive emails, comments, or messages so you don’t feel obligated to personally answer or field every question you get, but still provide your audience with plenty of value.

#8 You Can Open a Dialogue With Your Audience

Your blog gives you the opportunity to start a conversation within your readership. Did you know that a vast 77 million new blog comments are made every month? While some of those are those spam comments, a simple plugin will prevent them, leaving you with plenty of opportunities to have productive conversations with your audience in the comments of your blog posts, if you choose to leave them open. If you want to see this done well, check out Neil Patel’s blog posts.

If you choose not to allow comments on your posts, you can still use your blog posts to spark conversations on your chosen social media platforms.

#9 Gives You Access to Valuable Audience Insights

Your blog posts should appeal to your customers at various stages of the customer journey, and if you get into your analytics you can find valuable insights and statistics into what they want to see from you. Often, your most popular posts will surprise you, and you can then write further posts on that topic to capitalise on the higher traffic numbers.

You can also use these insights to refine the topics your blog covers. To return to our interior design example, if one of your most popular posts is “how to DIY a hanging plant basket,” you may actually want to delete that post. Why? Because people who are looking to DIY a product that costs typically less than £15 are probably not going to be interested in interior design services. Alternatively, if you’re interested in teaching what you know in addition to your services, you could lean into these topics to attract a different market.  

So, Should I Have a Blog?

Some people debate whether blogging is still relevant in 2021, but the truth is that it is, without a doubt. While there are millions of blogs available to read on every topic imaginable, people still read them every single day. There are 3.5 billion searches on Google alone every single day, and many of those will return a blog post. If you want to capture traffic on search engines and offer your audience value for free, you should have a blog.

Well-written and well-thought-out blog posts can make a huge difference. The idea of starting a blog can be intimidating, but it’s worth the time and effort. Blogging is key if you want to build an audience and capture potential clients early in the customer journey so you can focus on making sales and serving your clients.