To Increase Client and Prospect Engagement, Businesses Need a Blog

Your website is your traffic hub. It houses all of the key information you want your market to have about your business and your offering - your profile, your contact information, your process, and your services. It is your main branding platform that serves to differentiate you from others in your industry. However, if your website consists only of static content with little opportunity for user engagement, it could also be a traffic dead end, which is why it needs a blog.

It is the dynamic nature of blogs that makes them so appealing to your visitors and so important for driving traffic to your website. By updating your blog regularly with useful and timely information, interesting aspects about your business, and entertaining anecdotes, you provide a reason for your visitors to come back. Content creates repeat visitors, increases their stay, encourages word-of-mouth-type promotion, and assists in improving a blog's standing with the search engines.

A recent study by Hub Spot found that small companies with a blog get 55% more traffic to their website. They also get 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages. This means your site will have more authority with search engines and is more likely to be found. So blogging is as much about driving potential business to your website as it is to differentiate you as an online authority.

If You Build It (a Blog), They Will Come

Today, an increasing number of businesses point to blogging as their most important inbound marketing initiative. Many report that their blogs have led to increased visibility, notoriety, and engagement with their target market, establishing them as a high-profile authority.

There are two key elements in blogging that are responsible for this phenomenon: search engines and social media engagement.

Search Engines will find you

Google likes sites with fresh content. Every time you publish new content on your blog, the search engines send their bots to crawl through your website. If your content is SEO friendly, with new keywords contained in your title, body copy, and corresponding tags, the search bots will come back for more, ranking your page higher and increasing your visibility.

Blogs are social media mechanisms

Your blog can be equipped with an automatic social media publisher that sends your post link to all your social media sites. This starts the sharing process among your networks, which will increase traffic to your blog and your website.

Here are some tips on how to maintain a dynamic blog.

• Delegate blog maintenance to a staff person who has an interest in social media or web publishing. Blog maintenance may only require about one hour per week.
• If you don't want to or can't write your own content, outsource it to a freelance writer. You can post a blog writing job on sites such as Upwork.com. The typical fee charged for writing blog posts ranges from $25 to $40 per 500-word post.
• Collect interesting and relevant articles and posts from other blogs that you can "re-post" on your blog. Be sure to include proper attribution.
• Have each of your staff members contribute one blog post a month.
• Animal care tips are always popular. Devote at least one blog post a month to animal care.
• Use timely news reports on your industry. Just clip the relevant portion of the article and add a personal comment as to why it should be of interest to your visitors.
• Use funny or interesting YouTube videos. Simply embed the video on your blog page and add a comment.
• Post your own video on a particular product or service.
• Announce any events or programs with which you are involved.

The fact is that not everyone is cut out for blogging. It does require some discipline, a commitment of time, and a modicum of creativity. It's easier to start a blog than it is to keep it up with fresh and engaging content. And it doesn't send a good message if people check into your blog only to find that it hasn't been updated for a long while. But since the financial rewards of a well-maintained blog can be substantial, you should make every effort to make it a core component of your online presence.