Many business owners find marketing and making sales difficult.  It just doesn’t feel right to blow your own trumpet. If you love your business, but hate sales and marketing, blogging can be a godsend.

This is because blogging allows you to be yourself. You can write about your service or product in detail, showing your in-depth knowledge and your passion for what you do, but without coming across as salesy or overhyped.  A blog allows the authentic, real you to come across.

Writing a regular blog you build up an archive of fantastic material which is ready and waiting for anyone who visits your website and wants to find out more about you and what you do. It makes it easy to develop a relationship with the casual visitor to your website. By the time they have flicked through a few of your blog posts they will feel that they know you, they may well trust you, and pretty soon they will probably reach out to make contact with you.

The hard work has been done and making a sale to this person is easy. You don’t have to prove yourself to them because they already know all about you and the great service or product you provide.

And there’s more!

A regular blog will boost your search engine ranking because:

• Google likes websites that are updated regularly and will give them a higher ranking
• A blog gives you the opportunity to use your keywords and keyphrases, in an appropriate way, so that you will rank more highly for those keywords and keyphrases
• If you share your blog post on social media, and it gets some Likes, Shares and Retweets, the blog post’s search engine ranking may well improve as a result

A blog sets you apart on social media

If you use social media to promote your business a blog gives you the edge over your competition. If you post original content on your Facebook page or LinkedIn profile it is worth far more than a bunch of Likes and Shares. On Twitter, a snippet of your blog post and a link to the full post will raise your profile and drive traffic to your website.

Hopefully this has convinced you to start blogging! If you need help or don’t know where to start get in touch.

Next month I will share some advice on how to write your blog posts for maximum impact.