This article may be interesting for business owners who have just started their business, whose online trading is not yet running smoothly or whose website looks like a mere business card. We will explain to you why it is important to have a website-based blog and how powerful the effect of attracting visitors through natural search traffic may be. You will also find several tips that will help you develop your blog effectively.

So, let's look at the main reasons why a website needs a blog?

Increased traffic. It's hardly possible to imagine a successful marketing strategy without a content promotion. But, as you write a couple of articles, do not expect the rise of your blog and website as a whole. This obviously requires time and resources. However, if you post texts regularly, you will notice a statistics growth on your website in half a year. Yet, the main reason to have a blog is a website SEO optimization (for details, please read our previous article Website Search Engine Optimization

Increased status. All companies that have their own website do need to create a blog, since customer and search engines' loyalty will partially depend on the frequency of articles posted on your website.

Increased audience's return. You are welcome to give your recommendations, post overviews and other things that will be interesting for the audience and provoke user interest. Hence, they will visit your website more often and follow your updates.

Raises customer awareness of your company. When touching on various topics, do mention your company: describe company's advantages and priorities, as well as services provided. Do not forget to make footnotes and links to Contacts or Portfolio section. This way you raise visitors' awareness of your company or product.

Brings new customers. Why else does a website need a blog if not for a search for and attracting new customers? Appropriate navigation, customer retention scripts will help you turn your readers into your customers.

Builds a community. First and foremost, blog is a two-sided audience outreach. It is important to view all audience's feedbacks and questions every day and to interact with the audience at the best possible level. Besides, you will be able to track feedbacks at all stages of shaping a new product and make quick changes.

Advertising platform. As we mentioned above, it is a great opportunity to attract more traffic, target audience and customers. The blog that's regularly visited and read is able to perfectly sell and promote the brand as a whole.

Social media integration. How to attract readers via social media? Through blog posts! Put links to social media on your website, and put links to your website on social media.

Brand enforcement. The blog will help you communicate ideas and concepts your brand follows. Create a trustworthy brand.

If you have no experience in content-marketing or you consider your current strategy insufficiently effective, here are some tips to enhance your blog development.

  • First of all, make sure you regularly add articles to your blog. Readers don’t like playing guessing games, they want to know when to expect a new portion of the interesting content. For this purpose, post at least one, or better two articles a week.
  • Plan the time for writing an article. This will help you organize the publication of your articles and raise your effectiveness. It’s noteworthy that, according to the statistics, most people read through the information in the morning. Hence, it’s best to post articles early in the morning.
  • At the same time, remember that your blog has to be topical. It’s not a good idea to write articles that are far from your field or have nothing to do with your expertise. Following the topic of your blog, start to experiment with the types of content. It may include awareness-raising articles, interviews, overviews of the latest trends and interesting events in your field, news digests. Track user response to this or that post, monitor the impact and prioritize your activities.
  • Before you start writing, think twice about the topic you’ve chosen and avoid posting ambiguous topics. Such articles may provoke arguments, and as a result, you can lose users even before they become your customers. How much sense does it make to lose users even before they become your customers? You’re right – no sense at all.
  • Follow new trends related to your field and dwell only on relevant topics. Highlight them with an intriguing, eye-catching heading, as the heading is the first thing that makes readers interested in your article. Add some colors to your article; a couple of cool pictures will be fine and more attractive for readers.
  • Use short sentences and quite small paragraphs, as it’s much easier to read a simple text than the one containing a lot of figures of speech. Don’t forget to use lists and to highlight your text so that readers are not tired of the information you share.
  • If you want your article to get maximum feedbacks, add social nets buttons for sharing. It’s commonly known that the more it is shared, the more views and customers you get. Make sure you reply to commentaries – it makes you trustworthy and approachable.
  • Make sure you share information about your blog. The more you make it known via various social nets, letters, the more potential customers you will attract.
  • Be careful with ads. Don’t get too involved with such content as news and ads. This will lead to users’ loss of interest.
  • Follow your competitors. Identify the leaders in your field. Analyze the topics they touch on in their blogs. Based on this material, you will be able to build your own content-plan. At the same time, pay attention to posts that get the most feedbacks. Such articles have the potential to provoke the highest audience’s interest.
  • Analyse the statistics. With the help of statistical data, you’ll be able to see what topics represent the most interest to users, which words are included into a search traffic as well as to determine a conversion level from this or that page.

Just imagine that search engines daily process thousands of queries; a part of the traffic goes to authoritative resources, a part goes to paid links, and another part goes to regular websites that get their potential customers. In order to blend in, it is necessary to not just make oneself known, but to regularly add information to the website, post new articles that will be useful to your audience, actively  run your blog, and post relevant company news. Only then, you will have a constant flow of visitors and customers.