You might have noticed recently that many of your favorite websites have blogs, even ones you didn’t think could host an interesting or informative blog. Business blogs aren’t a brand-new trend, but they have gained a lot of popularity recently, and there are several reasons why. Blogging can make your website more visible, more useful, and more prepared to host other kinds of content in the future, among other things.

Maybe you’ve never seen yourself as a blogger, or any kind of writer. But in 2024, having a blog is one of the best ways to bring traffic to your website and make your business known to new people. So let's look at everything you need to know about blogging in 2024, including how it can help your website, how to promote the blog, and importantly, how to write good blog posts.

Benefits of Blogging

Launching and regularly updating a business blog can be challenging, but we promise the work is worth the rewards. There are a lot of benefits to attaching a blog to your website - let’s look at a few:

SEO Benefits

Maybe the biggest reason your website should have a blog is for the benefit it has on your search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of making your website and pages more visible to search engines so that they’re more likely to rank higher on search results. There’s a lot you can do in the backend of your website with SEO benefits, but as far as front-end changes go, there aren’t many changes more transformative than a regularly updated blog.

A blog with posts focused on relevant topics around your area of expertise can rank highly on search engines if there’s a high enough demand for that topic and if you’re sharp enough to build it around the right key phrases. That means pages from your website ranking highly on the issues your audience wants to know about and if those rankings lead to people visiting your website it won’t just boost the blog’s SEO - it will improve your website’s SEO overall.

Even if your blogs don’t rank at the top of most Google searches, just publishing posts consistently can have an overall SEO benefit. Consistently adding fresh, relevant content to your website can improve your SEO, even if that new content isn’t performing as well as you would like.

Makes Your Website More Useful

A business website functions as a glorified contact page when designed at its absolute most basic. Depending on your business, that might be all you need. However, many people go to websites hoping to take action and learn something about your work and services. And if your website’s basic pages don’t fulfill that need, a nice blog can fill in the gaps. 

We focus a lot of our blog content on topics we’re knowledgeable about that we know a lot of our audience has questions about. For example, we know that many of our clients have questions about the different popular website builders on the internet, so we ran a blog series comparing the strengths and weaknesses of a few of them. This answered many of the valuable, important questions people in our target audience were having about a relevant issue - and they got them from our website.

Creates Social Media Content…

Staying consistent on social media is crucial for marketing a business in 2024. But let’s be honest, many people don’t have the time, or even the interest, to stay up-to-date on all their business’s social media channels. But blog posts are the perfect way to keep your socials consistent without too much extra effort. 

Sharing your blogs wherever you post is a great way to give your audience fresh, informative content that people will want to engage with. And since you’re writing blog posts anyway, 

…And Opportunities For Other Content

Blog posts are a great way to reach a new section of your audience interested in reading about your industry and expertise, but sharp business owners know that this is only the beginning. For example, you can repurpose some of your blog topics to turn into YouTube videos, talking points for podcasts, and more to reach further corners of your target audience.

Showcases Your Knowledge & Brand Voice

You’re bound to have competitors no matter what kind of business you run. And you might know the reasons why your business stands apart from the crowd, but there are very few ways to showcase your unique selling points to your audience before they commit to working with you. 

However, starting and maintaining a blog is one of the most effective ways to give your audience insight into your qualifications and brand voice. And if you approach it properly, you might be able to convince some skeptical members of your target audience that you’re qualified in your field.

Think about it like this, if you and your biggest competitor offer the same services at similar prices, people debating between you and the other business won’t be able to make an informed decision. But if they find your blog and see examples of you showcasing how much you know about your work, and doing so in an approachable, professional tone of voice, they can get a better sense of who they’re working with.

How to Get The Most Out of Your Blog

Of course, starting a blog without a vision or dedication won’t get you far. If you approach blogging properly, you will bring in more traffic and create an informative, useful website that your audience will love to visit. But if you approach it without the right effort or guidance on what to do, you might spend months writing blog after blog without seeing any benefits at all.

So here are some tips on how you can get the most out of your blog and reap the rewards of your blogging efforts:  

Stay Consistent

The key to creating a blog that benefits your business and your website is to upload consistently. We know that researching, writing, editing, and publishing blogs regularly is easier said than done, but it's crucial if you want to get the most out of it.

As we mentioned, search engines favor websites that continually add new content, especially relevant content optimized with keywords and topics people search for. Blogs are one of the best ways to achieve that, and consistent blog posts are how you get those benefits consistently.

Stay Relevant

You want your blogs to be about the topics you know about and that are relevant to your business, but with that said, there is some room for flexibility here.

Just make sure that your blogs provide some value to your readers. Whether that’s educating them on a particular topic or skill, giving them some insight into the personalities behind your business, or providing entertainment, make sure they walk away with something relevant to who you are.

Be cautious of advertising

People don’t like advertisements, especially when they’re not expecting them. 

We’ve discussed the benefits of creating a blog, but it can go the other way if you’re not careful. If your blogs aren’t helpful (for example, if they’re just thinly veiled advertisements that aren’t informative or fun), people won’t take the time to read them and will click away as soon as they realize it's not what they’re looking for. This can harm SEO because if your blogs generate organic traffic but everyone who views them leaves the page immediately, it will tell Google that it shouldn’t recommend your blog to those who found it.

This doesn’t mean you can’t use your blogs to promote your services. Just make sure to approach the advertising carefully and passively. Consider adding a call to action to the end of all your posts and referring to your services only when relevant and natural to the blog’s topic.

How to Promote Your Blog

So you’ve decided to start your blog and know what it takes to make it good. Now how do you get people to read your posts? There are plenty of channels to promote your blog, but we feel that two are particularly effective; social media and newsletters.

Social Media

We talked about how starting a blog can help your social media channels, but the inverse is true too, your social media can also help grow your blog. You can use social media to get the word out about your posts and your blog in general, pointing people both inside and outside of your audience toward your website. 

Newsletters

If you have an email newsletter campaign, it can be a great way to spread the word about your recent posts. The chances are that, if you have people so connected to your business and brand that they want to read your newsletters, they will also want to read your blogs. So catering to that audience can bring a lot of new eyes to your blog, even if you don’t have a ton of newsletter subscribers.

Are you looking for help launching a blog for your website? Book a consultation with NAV to find out how our team can help.