It has been debated, many times, as to whether writing a business blog is a relevant and worthwhile task for a business to undertake. The topic has been said to generate much tedium and if you are not a keen writer can be a rather dull and time-consuming process.

However, there is increasing evidence to show that by writing a regular blog for your website, it increases the scale and opportunity of your business being seen and standing out amongst others.

We have identified several main reasons why you should write a blog for your business and what benefits it will have:

1.Drives new traffic to your website.

There is only so much traffic that you will attract by having a home page and an about us page on your company website. Of course you will attract visitors by this means, but only those who already know what they want and need. By writing a blog it will help attract and influence new audiences that are potentially interested in your company and the products or services that you provide. Therefore in time (and once you have generated enough interest via the content written in your blog) they are likely to begin to convert your leads into sales.

2. Increases your websites ranking for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

You can employ several methods such as refreshing SEO titles and terms or using paid ads to feature on page one of Google, but a more effective and long-term idea is writing a regular blog.

Blogs are very effective at increasing your SEO by adding fresh, interesting content and by using specific and relevant keywords in your blog articles.

This tactic is still noted as being key to ensuring that your website stands out from amongst your competitors in the search engine results page.

3. A blog increases the opportunity for sharing on social media.

You will know by now that Social Media is the ultimate catalyst to share interesting and relevant content to others.

Writing a blog is not only a way of communicating your message to your organic audience, but it provides a means of others sharing your content on your behalf via social media channels.

Let us first think about the content you view on the newsfeeds of your preferred social media platforms. If you know of other people, places, business associates and companies for example, who might find certain blog content interesting, useful, or just simply would love knowing about, then it is quite likely that you will share this on your mutually shared social media accounts.

By having up to date and informative blog articles regularly added to your company website, it will be an easy way for your company to reach more of the same audience or other new audiences with minimal effort.

4. Gives a voice to your brand.

Writing a blog gives your company the chance to generate more of a conversation with your audience. It gives your company a way of personalising your message to your audience and gives a voice to your brand.

It is a great way to make your company more human and not so impersonal and where you can inject a little personality and essentially build a brand that your audience will enjoy following. It is a great way to show how genuine and authentic your company is and therefore enables you to connect with your customers more easily.

5. Establish yourself as an expert in your industry.

Being known as an expert in your industry can really help to increase your online profile and improve your reputation. Writing a blog is a great way to show that you have that experience and knowledge.

By writing and publishing a regular blog with interesting, informative, and helpful content based on what you know and what you have experienced will soon become the ‘go-to’ location where audiences refer for advice and support.

This in turn creates a reliable way of converting leads into sales and to further give credibility, authority and trustworthiness to your business and your industry experience.

6. Enables you to be able to collect invaluable data for future marketing.

Once you are regularly writing your blog you will be able to extract relevant data so that you can analyse and pinpoint how users navigate your blog. This in turn can then help provide valuable data about how your audiences interact with your company and what they find interesting and not so interesting.

For example, if you notice that a particular blog post is receiving a larger amount of traffic than others, then it would be prudent to then focus your marketing efforts on   this topic and create more content based on this area.

Similarly, you can ask your audiences to subscribe to your email marketing list and this will not only ensure that your audience will be notified of when you release a new topic, but this will also mean that you can send them added content that you feel they would be interested in so that they return to your website.

So, we can say that, yes, although it can take some time and considerable effort to create a blog for your business it will very likely be the best decision you ever made.