Why you should start blogging now

Why you should start blogging now – and not later

After many years of experience as a blogger, and based on studies from leading players in the marketing industry, my conclusion is clear: Blogging is a critical success factor for most businesses that have lead generation (i.e. creating inbound inquiries from prospective customers) as their main aims for marketing communications.

Even I started to experiment with blogging back in 2004, and four years later I began to plan the launch of my own marketing blog. The blog currently has in excess of 2,500 readers each month, around 900 subscribers by email and are an important source of generating leads. Either through downloading e-books or through specific requests from companies wanting help with marketing, on a strategic or a tactical level.

Blogging is arguably among the most cost-effective instruments in what we call content marketing, which is actually a set of best practice initiatives in marketing for lead-generating enterprises. In this post, I share 4 strong arguments for why you should consider adopting blogging as a tool.

Disclaimer: Many people think of bloggers as writers of mundane stuff, but basically blogging is about writing articles that potential customers will benefit from in their buying process.

1. Blogging creates more traffic from Google

The more you blog, the more traffic you get – regardless of whether you are B2B or B2C. Studies made by HubSpot shows that small businesses actually have more to gain from the increase in traffic when they increase the frequency of its content production. Google want to present fresh, relevant content to its users. Can you deliver it, Google will reward you with visibility and more traffic.

The effect of a monthly blog on incoming traffic for B2B and B2C companies.

As you can see the traffic is increasing in line with the number of blog posts you publish per month.

2. Enterprises that combine e-mail with a blog doubles traffic

Studies show that companies that blogs gets 2x more traffic from their email marketing than those without blogs. E-mail is used by these companies for traditional advertising messages, nurturing of leads and alerting people who subscribe to your blog.

3. Businesses that blogs generate more leads

It is only when you start to create inquiries from potential customers that you begin to feel the effects of the blog in the form of increased sales. Just to blog 1-2 times a month generates 70% more leads than if you do not blog at all!

The effect of monthly blog on incoming leads

4. The blog gives your business a ‘soapbox and a crowd’

You never know when you might need a soapbox or a voice. Maybe you are involved in a crisis and need a channel where you can communicate directly with the outside world, without a journalistic filter? Maybe you want to reach your target audience quickly with some important news? A blog gives you not just a soapbox, but also an audience that over time will gain confidence in you and your messages and they will trust your opinions.

As you blog with high quality – i.e. with content that your prospects really see value in – more and more will choose to subscribe to notifications about new blog posts. Over time, this will give you a channel that puts you able to spread a new message to the many hundreds (perhaps thousands) readers, instantly!

Blogging is just one of the several digital tools I use in inbound marketing, which is a marketing philosophy that is ideal for businesses that have lead generating as the main marketing objective. Another important tool is to give your visitors a great experience when they are visiting your web site. Download my free e-book “Winning User Experience (UX)” to learn more about how your business can benefit from having a great website.