This is as meta as it’s going to get, right? Presenting to you the purpose of a blog as explained in a blog.

In this blog, we’re going to walk you through the different aspects of blogging and how it will prove useful for your small business growth. 

In this blog, we’re going to walk you through the different aspects of blogging and how it will prove useful for your small business growth. 

The Purpose of a Blog

The Art and The Artist 

The idea of a blog has evolved with time. The initial blog was more of a digital journal for an individual to pen down their thoughts and opinions on a subject of their interest. 

At some point, people realised the potential of blogs being directed toward business growth. Maintaining a business blog helps us speak to our target audience and educate them on our product/service. This is where the meaning of blogging broadened its horizons to the professional world and there was no looking back. 

Today, blogging is a powerful tool in a digital marketer’s kit. The purpose of a blog for business is that it forms an important part of their content marketing strategy. A good blogging strategy will help improve the website’s search ranking and thereby gain much needed visibility for the business. 

For an individual, a personal blog can be a place on the internet for them to share whatever they wish to. Their everyday life, thought leadership in a particular industry, anything. This is done to 

• Provide them with a space to voice out their thoughts.
• Build their personal brand. 
• Advocate for what they believe in. 
• Monetize on their experience in the future. 
• Better their business’ content marketing strategy. 

These individuals are known as bloggers. 

In recent times, owning a blog has become a trend, a way of life and most definitely, a revenue stream. 

The Anatomy of a Blog

There are many permutations and combinations that speak of how to write a blog. Let alone the fact that blogs are no longer delivered to the final audience only in the written format. There are audio-visual blogs today as well. 

As for the written format, there’s a basic anatomy that most bloggers swear by. You can adopt this or use it as a template to start things off. 

• Title of the blog 
• Introduction 
• Table of Contents 
• Body of the Blog 
• Audio-visual aids 
• Inbound/Outbound links
• Conclusion 
• CTA 
• Links to social media profiles 

Isn’t a blog just a website? 

Believe it or not, this is a question we debated in the early stages of understanding the world of blogs too. And turns out, it’s not. 

A blog forms a part of your website, it’s a slice of the pie and not the whole pie itself. 

Besides, blogs need to be frequently updated on your website whereas your website isn’t as dynamic in nature. Blogging falls under the content marketing strategy of your overall digital marketing strategy for your website. 

What about Wikipedia? 

Wikipedia is an educational website and has a page on almost any topic. However, these web pages are open to edits by the public. They are a crowdsourced version of a blog. 

On the other hand, a blog typically is written by an individual or a group of people, either of which is pre decided. A blog is not open to edits from the public. As a general audience, one can read the blog and like, share or comment on it. 

If it’s a Popularity Contest, who’s winning? 

Of  course, all types of blogging serve their own purpose and audience. There are some types of blogs that are relatively popular today. They include: 

• Fitness Blogs 
• Fashion Blogs
• Lifestyle Blogs 
• Food Blogs

These types of blogs, when executed well, generate a lot of engagement on their website which in turn results in increased conversions. 

Statistically Speaking

Yes, we now know what a blog is, what a blogger does and what goes into a blog. Let’s talk about the numbers in real time so we can give you a good idea of the importance/purpose of a blog.

From a Growth Perspective

Every business wants and needs growth in order to succeed. And as a small business owner, you will require all avenues of growth to work for you in order to unlock maximum potential. 

Staying in business and growing are two different things. And we are looking to help you with growing your business. 

Content marketing is predicted to be an industry worth $412.88 billion. (MTA)

Content Marketing is a relatively new field in the world of digital marketing. It harnesses the power of content and uses it in the most relevant way possible, based on the nature of the business. Content Marketing is a type of inbound marketing. It’s a marathon and not a sprint. 

Blogging is an integral part of content marketing. These stats only go to show how much it’s going to matter in the future and how much it’ll help your business grow. 

From a Marketing Perspective

Blogging is so scalable and affordable that it’s the third most common content marketing strategy for businesses. (HubSpot)

This statistic adds more layers to the growth statistic. Blogging is a patient man’s game and it’s one worth playing. You’ll see measurable results in the long term. Just how measurable, you ask? 

Bloggers who utilize blogging for marketing purposes see 13 times the ROI of businesses that don’t. (HubSpot)

From an SEO Perspective

Blogging boils down to the search engine ranking you are able to achieve for your small business. It boils down to the possible CTRs (Click Through Rates) and conversions that you are able to generate. 

On average, companies who blog produce 67% more leads per month. ( Demand Metric) 

And this statistic is talking about blogging at its basic level. If you invest in a good blogging strategy, you are setting yourself up for success. 

Should You Blog? 

Ah, the golden question. 

After knowing what a blog can do for you, looking at the numbers to support it, you’re left with this question. 

Does it apply to me and my small business? What is the purpose of a blog as part of my content marketing efforts? 

We’ll tell you what the purpose of a blog for business is and then you can decide.

To Crawl Up Search Engine Rankings

Remember how we spoke about the difference between a website and a blog? 

Websites seldom require any updates. That means there’s no new activity happening on the website for the search engine bots to pick up. Whereas, blogging requires regular updates, adding a new index page every time a new blog goes up. This indicates activity to the search engine every single time you post a blog. 

In short, it increases your chances of showing up on the SERPs. 

Blogging is one of the most effective ways of improving your SEO. This helps with organic reach for your digital marketing efforts. The constant updation of blogs lets the search engine know that your website is up and active. 

Possible Lead Generation

Sure, blogs help with increased traffic to your website. What’s better is they also help with converting the traffic into potential leads. 

Blogs are primarily a way to educate your audience about your product/service, the industry you fall under. You help answer any possible questions they have and offer solutions to problems they face. This creates thought leadership. More importantly, it helps build trust and credibility. This is why we blog. 

But you know what doesn’t hurt? To soft sell your product/service through every blog post. It increases the chances of a blog engagement converting to a lead. 

There are different ways to go about this – 

• CTA – A blog without a Call To Action…shouldn’t even exist.
  
  You go through all that time and effort toward creating the blog post. Only to have your reader do just that and leave. It’s important to take all the chances you get. Likes, shares and comments are really good for your blogs but a click on a CTA is better. 
  
  You can place a CTA at the beginning, middle, end or the side of a blog. Test it out and find out what works best for your audience. 

• Remarketing – How many times have you started filling out a CTA form on a website and your doorbell rings and the Submit button on the CTA form never sees the light of day. 
  
  This happens quite often and it’s unfortunate to know of this as a small business owner. However, you do have one last shot with remarketing.
  
  This allows your ad to show up on their screen again, giving them a chance to come back and fill up that form.  

• Freebies – Everybody loves free stuff. 
  
  The blogging equivalent of that is access to quality content. 
  
  They gave your blog a read and liked it. They want to sign up but are a little hesitant. Now, what if you were to offer them access to some exclusive content in exchange for their contact details? It’s a win-win! 

Thought Leadership

Google rolled out their EAT algorithm in 2018 with regard to search engine rankings. 

E – Expertise 

A – Authority 

T – Trustworthiness 

This trifecta needs to be met for Google to consider ranking your pages better. 

Most of us type in questions in the Google search bar. While ‘How do I get home?’ poses serious cause for worry, it still has 49,500 monthly active searches. If you’re answering questions in your blog, it has a better chance of showing up in the search results. By directly answering someone’s query, you are building business credibility. 

The Long Term Game 

The ultimate purpose of a blog.

Ask yourself this – Are you running a marathon or a sprint? 

Did you start this business to make quick cash or reap long term benefits? 

Blogging and SEO take time with showing results. It might be a little irritable but you have to remember – good things take time and the better ones take just a little longer. 

The key is to strategize your blogging the right way. Provide your audience with consistent and value adding content. Over time, the ROI will be worth the wait. 

Backlink Generation 

A hyperlink in a blog post directing the audience to another website is a backlink. It’s connecting them to another website/link through yours. 

Backlinks are a sign of creditworthiness. By backlinking, you are vetting that source to hold valuable information for your audience. 

Some ways to increase backlinks to your content: 

• Write content that’s worthy of a backlink. 
• Do an original study that other bloggers can learn from. 
• Create an infographic because more often than not, people pick these up from another website. 

Besides, blogging brings an influx of 97% more backlinks to a website. 

Tricks of the Blogging Trade

• Focus on searched topics – Perform a keyword analysis and understand what your readers are searching for. Write about these topics and rank higher for the relevant audience. 

• Value adding content – It’s easy to write blogs upon blogs but if they’re not value adding, if they’re not worth talking about, you’re losing half the battle. 

• Improve readability – People have clicked on your blog looking for answers, not jargons and Shakespearan language. Aside from easy to read language, it’s important to space out our paragraphs and create an overall pleasing experience for the reader. 

• Niche topics – You can either write about a generic topic that thousands of others already write about. Or you can pick on a niche topic and establish your expertise with that.

• Headlines – They require some serious work and thought process considering they’re all the nudge your reader gets to continue reading the blog post. 

• Write Everyday – Practice makes perfect. As a blogger, you should write everyday in order to hone your skills and stay relevant. 

That ought to clarify the purpose of a blog for you. Blogging is a sure shot way to boost your rankings on SERPs and improve your SEO. Start now and enjoy the long term benefits for your business. 

If you require a third party to take care of your blog, we’re just a click away!