Does my service business need a blog?
I get this question from business owners often. The short answer is: Yes!
No matter what business you’re in, whether you sell widgets or you’re a home service provider, whether you cater to businesses or consumers, I always recommend that you have a blog on your website. Here are four reasons why you need a blog:
1. Keep people coming back!
It gives people a reason to come back to your website. When you don’t have a blog section, your website is usually pretty static. You have an “About Us” page, your services page, a “Contact Us” section—just like every other website. A blog can separate you from your competitors, and it also gives your audience a “selfish” reason to come back and visit your website every week, or month, however often you blog. The more often you blog, the more often your customers have a reason to come back! And even better—if they subscribe to your blog, the content will automatically come to them!
2. SEO
There is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefit to having a blog. This means that having a blog will help people to find you more easily in search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Google loves it whenever you update your website. They can’t stand it when your page is static and hasn’t been updated in forever. When you’re putting new information on your website each and every month, it gives Google something new to index and helps you rank better in the search engines. Now, just like I say in all my blogs and videos—just because you write a blog tomorrow doesn’t mean you’re going to be ranked #1 for the competitive keywords that you need. But it helps you move in that direction!
3. Write once, share many times
You can repurpose that content and share it just about anywhere. You can share a link to your blog on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and all kinds of other websites and community forums. This allows you to get your information to several different places by writing one blog and then repurposing it. Now, you can set your blog up on platforms that automatically push it out to different places, but I don’t like that. I like to do that manually so that I can put it out at the optimum time, and have control over where and when. But however you do it, remember that you can repurpose your content for greater reach and exposure.
4. Be useful before they need you!
Finally, and most importantly, you can get people’s attention before they need you. This is huge! A lot of business owners make the mistake of going after the people who may be interested in their services right now, right this minute. Call me today! That doesn’t really work in the marketing world. What you want to do is get people’s attention way before they’re ever thinking about you. You may be a plumber and you write a blog post about how to save money on your water bill. A person may not be interested in hiring a plumber at this time, but that’s a very interesting, useful and timely piece on your blog. I may take a minute or two out of my day to skim through that blog post because sure, I want to save a little money on my water bill! Now, if they come back to your blog, or subscribe to your website because it is helpful, then you can keep touching them throughout the year. When they do break down and need a plumber, who are they going to remember? The person who was helping them all along the way.
A lot of the clients we bring on board are not business owners who found us immediately. They’d come in contact with our blog and our posts; I’ve networked with them, etc. And then in, say, six months to a year of seeing our helpful information they start to think, “Okay, I’m ready to move in a social media direction.” And who do they go to? They come to us, the people who have been helping them all along the way with tips and information of value.
So I highly recommend a blog for your business website! If you need help getting that setup, call me! We can definitely make that happen.
For tips on what to topics to blog about, check out this blog: What should my business blog about?