Read this Before You Invest In a Blog

You have probably heard about a thousand times right now that you need to invest into a blog if you want your website to matter? Are you now thinking about investing into a blog for your business? I have compiled a useful checklist for you to go through before you embark on this journey. I hope you will find it useful somehow.

What is a blog?

This might seem like a stupid question to some, but a genuine place of curiosity to some. In simple terms a blog is a section on your website were you constantly update with articles on different subjects. What you are reading here is part of our blog.

Blog is short for weblog and they have been around for long times now as part of what has become to be known as web 2.0 that allows websites to be more dynamic and less static.

The main use of a blog on a business website is to update customers on what your business is up to, but if you want to tap into the biggest benefit of having a blog on your website, which is to rank higher on Google, you are going to incorporate some useful how to articles on your blog. I will not dwell into what how to blogs are in this article, but in short your blog has to answer questions users of your products and services might be searching.

Do you really need a blog?

The first thing on your checklist should probably be answering the most basic of the questions. Does your business need a blog? The answer for most people is going to be, why not!

A blog is one of those insignificant costs that will hardly show up at the end of the year on your monthly costs. It cost less than five dollars a month to maintain a blog online if you already have a business website running, this cost should be zero.

However, that’s not entirely true to some. If you don’t maintain your blog in house some developers will charge you monthly fees to maintain it for you, if you don’t write articles you might need to look for writers online, whom you will need to pay. At the end of the day though, it might be slightly higher than I stated above.

What are some of the benefits of having a blog?

The internet is awash with articles about just about anything. Do you really need to invest the time and resources it takes to maintain this thing?

You need to check some of the benefits a blog offers to your business.

If you have a business card near you, it is most likely there is a company website on that thing. When was the last time you checked that website? Why don’t you visit it more often, if you don’t? The answer is simple; more websites have fallen into the trap of becoming simple portfolios for business.

Once you visit a website and check their services tab, about section and a couple more pages, there is no reason to check it again, because you will most likely see the same things. This is when a blog becomes a little bit necessary.

A blog will help you keep your customers coming as you are constantly updating your content. Sharing your articles on your social media pages helps you retain some customers who might have forgotten about your website. You will likely get new once who will see your articles and click through.

The biggest benefit of a blog as usually advertised however, is to rank higher on Google and other search engines. It’s part of a program we help small businesses with called Search Engine Optimization. Google ranks websites with useful and constantly updated information higher than others.

You will also catch new customers who might not know your brand, but are facing some of the challenges that you write about in your blog. We know that most people with questions will turn to Google for answers, but a few times will someone search for a specific brand and your website will fail to take advantage of this if you don’t have an updated blog.

A blog is also useful when you need to update customers about changes to your products, policies, supplies or if you are facing any issues customers might need to know.

You can also monetize your blog and earn some extra revenue using advertising platforms like Google Adsense.

Do you have the time to write articles?

Content creation is the most important task when it comes to a blog. Do you have the time and resources to write at least one article every week?

Before you think of starting a blog for your business, you will need to assess how much equipped are you to keep that blog running. You don’t necessarily need to be writing the posts yourself. You can hire other people to write these posts for your business.

You need to make sure you hire trustworthy people who will not reap off these articles from other website, plagiarism will not help you, it might actually cost you if they end up using copyrighted materials. Luckily for you, there are services that will help you hire content creators such as freelancer.com and fiverr.com. If you are looking for those articles specific to your industry and are in Zimbabwe, you can check our content creation services too.

Where are most of your customers?

In this day and age, its highly unlikely that most of your customers are not opening pages online, but if you have one of those rare cases where there are less likely to be people looking for your services online, there might be no reason for you to create a blog for your business.

If you still have any questions after reading this article, I would like to hear them in the comments section or hit me up on [email protected], I will try to help you as much as I can.