In term of SEO and website traffic, having a blog does help you more than you can possibly think of. Blogging can increase your website's traffic, expand your reach towards your audience, improve your engagement, strengthen your brand, put you in a higher authority, and many more. Business websites should start blogging, and the sooner the better. But actually blog is not for everyone.
On the internet, people that like to share are what makes it grow. No one can deny the power of a good blog. But before you put a blog on your business website, you should ask yourself: is it necessary? Should you blog?
Blog can be one of the best way for content marketing, and can be a great way to define your brand. But there are circumstances that makes a blog is just a waste of time.
Below is a list of some of the most reasons that makes a blog more or less, useless:
You Already a Monopoly of the Market
Having the power of monopoly is good if term of financial gains. But if you have already capture the hearts and the minds of many people; buy your product no matter where you are; and your name is synonymous with a specific thing, a blog wouldn't do you much good.
If you already have a powerful brand that conquers a specific market, you wouldn't care much of traffic anymore. There is no need to waste your resources to make your website more visible with content marketing, if you already create something that is already undeniably famous.
Because you already have a massive number of audience offline, you probably have little to no competition to your business. You may as well put more effort in other types of marketing because creating authority with blogging is just a waste of resources.
You Have Better Proven Ways to Reach Customers
A blog is only one way to attract new customers. If you are targeting local customers that are in a radius of your own neighborhood, and not aiming further away or going worldwide, having a website for your business may be somewhat useless.
You may have a successful business, and the power to reach your audience with many means. This is a proven strategy that works for you well. If you need to expand your reach a little bit further at a time, you may as well enhance that strategy you already owned because your customers are responding to it well.
Different types of businesses require different types of tactics to get customers to notice them. But if you want to reach broader audience from the internet, you better start slowly.
Read: Increasing Local Search for Small Business
Your Business is a Secret
Secret things aren't meant to be unveiled. Blogs are all about sharing. The information in it represents thoughts, feelings, point-of-view, explanation about something, and of course, marketing. If your business is not into something that people want to subscribe, or your business moves in the industry that fame will just make it worse, a blog isn't at all for you.
If you need engagement on the internet, you better start with social media. Or if you do want to blog, you can write reasonably about something that people want.
You Have Little Amount of Resources
A blog can be a good chance to highlight your business, and your knowledge regarding your industry. But if you have little amount of resources, you may as well put those what you have to better places to ensure the stability of your business.
Blogging is to encourage people to find the best in themselves, but it takes time, thoughts and money to create.
To create a compelling blog, you need to gather all necessary information to make a great post. If you don't have the power to do that yet, then content marketing strategy is not a good suggestion. If you want an internet presence, a business website is enough for a start. If you want more, you can focus on internet marketing that is easier, faster thing that is a lot easier to maintain, like social media for example
You Have a News Website, or a Portal
News websites, or web portals, have their contents updated more or less, more quickly that most other types of websites. Web portal is designed to bring information taken from other sources into one place in a uniform way. News websites are updated with actual "news" that people want real time.
A blog can certainly help you business to convey your brand's message to the awaiting audience and to earn people's trust. But if your business is built entirely around actual contents, news and messaging, a blog wouldn't do much good. These types of websites don't need to rely on blogs because the audience is already expecting a great post in a timely manner in a voice that they already know.
Despite having a blog on these types of sites can do good, the effort of maintaining one can be waste. If you have more proven ways to drive traffic to your site, why build a new one that is not proven good to you yet? You can use the resources you have to build a better strategy above your already owned powerful contents.
Your Business is Offline and Undebatable
Blogging can drive traffic to your website. But if your business don't need a website in the first place, why bother having a blog? If your business moves in an industry that is totally offline, blogging might not fit your business model.
If you are successful at selling your products offline, or have a business that has an already powerful standpoint, being offline is already a safe bet.
Businesses on the internet compete with one another to reach more audience, and to keep the competition at the palm of their control. Businesses like these are usually mainstream, and most of all, very much dependent on trends of the era.
Being dependent to trends means that your business can both have an enormous chance of growing, and the power to fluctuate overtime. This produces the chance for the crowd to debate on it. These types of businesses need a blog to strengthen their grip on the market by giving them the knowledge and power to themselves.
But if you business isn't that type of business, and moves in the industry that is known to be great long before the internet came into existence, a blog is not good choice for you. If you do want an internet presence to reach more audience, social media is a better option.
The Reasons for You to Blog
Blogging has reasons that made it powerful. And those reasons are felt by many businesses on the internet. A blog may not be good choice if your business is as said in the above list. But if you still want to blog, you have to start prepared by first enhancing you website's credibility.
After seeing some of the examples that blogging is not necessary, below is a quick list that you may want to blog as a part of your content marketing strategy.
You Want Traffic to Your Website
The more pages you have on your website, the higher the chance for you to be ranked on search engines. The more articles you have on your website, your returning visitors will be pleased. The more great posts your have on your website, the more power you have to be on social media, email, and anywhere else on the web. All of these translate to better traffic.
You Want to Expand your Reach
On the internet, people are seeking for information. If that information is what you already provide, people will come see it sooner of later. Some of these incoming visits are those from potential customers who haven't heard of you yet. And keeping them up with great content will make them interested in you. The more they are interested in you, the higher chance you can convert them to your purchasing customers.
Read: Approaching and Increasing Your Blog Viewers
You Want to Share
A blog can be a great way to troubleshoot problems , play with new ideas, showing off your knowledge, and sharing your thoughts as well as feelings about something. These things can help people to get to know you better. And if your blog has the comment feature enabled, they can provide you with even more ideas. Those ideas can then be optimized for creating a revenue.
You Have Something to Add to the Discussion
As said, blogs is a great place to share. New perspectives and thoughts can be built by having conversations. With those on your possession, you can build authority for yourself and your business. With the knowledge you already have, you can create debatable posts that people like to engage.
You Want to Compete on the Internet
Many businesses around the world are already on the web. Many of them use blogs to initiate conversation and showcase their products and knowledge. On the internet, the audience is large, and this has made the internet a powerful medium where businesses can reach anyone, anywhere. However, this has a drawback. The competition is tight and not many businesses are successful on the internet. Content marketing by blogging is a long journey, and the payoff may be far from what you expect is a small time.
Conclusion
The internet is growing fast, and its growth isn't going to stop anywhere soon. A blog is one of the best way to pronounce your being to the internet, and with billions of people already connected on their desktop computers and mobile devices, there is always a chance for you to be found despite your business is a needle hiding in a haystack.
But blogging is something that consume resources. Your time, money, and minds are taken to make a compelling post. And beside consuming resources, blogging can be a kind of investment because it needs to be sustained. Don't start a blog because others are telling you to do so. A blog may work on someone but may not work for you.
Do thorough research on your market and your competitors to see how they're doing. Consider a blog when necessary. If you already think about the pros and the cons, and you still think that a blog can actually enhance your business, then blogging is the right choice for you, there is no saying that it isn't.