Are you a reluctant small business blogger?

Blogging has become an integral part of most business marketing campaigns but many small business owners are still reluctant to embrace what is, time commitment aside, free marketing.

I hear lots of reasons why:

• I haven’t got time

• I don’t know what to write

• Our customers aren’t interested and no one would read it

• All valid reasons, but lets compare a blog post with traditional means of promoting your small business. You may decide its worth spending a bit of time researching what to write and getting your content out there.

  Local Advertising

  Many small businesses still use small adverts in local newspapers and community magazines.

  • How much time does it take to prepare those ads?
  • How much are the printing costs?
  • What happens after that publication has reached its lifespan of a month or maybe as little as a week?

  Compare that with a blog post.

  • There is a small time investment researching what you’re going to write about and getting it written and you do have to commit to doing it regularly. A blog whose last post was six months ago can be counterproductive.
  • The costs associated with publishing a post on your blog or website are relatively low. Once the platform is up and running you can add to it as often as you like with the only cost being your time.
  • Once that blog post is published it will remain there ... it won't end up in recycling. Adding fresh content to your website is always a good thing and the more valuable well written copy you have the better for your website’s SEO … it’s a win, win.  You’re getting your word out there and you’re boosting your website’s Google ranking.

  If you need convincing on the value of great content have a read of this from the Google Webmaster Central Blog (it's quite old but there's a great checklist for generating good content that will work for you).

  Leaflet Drops

  Again there are costs associated with preparing the printed material, not to mention the thankless task of distribution. Either you have to pay someone to do it or get out and do it yourself, which is probably a lot more time consuming than writing a blog post which potentially has a much greater reach in a far shorter space of time.

  Business Networking

  Face to face networking is undoubtedly very important when it comes to promoting your small business. After all people do business with people. But by having a blog on your website, you can show more of your personality to all those useful contacts that you have made networking and you are also providing them with content that they may well share with their own contacts that you have yet to meet.

  Social Media

  OK so this one’s relatively new. But if you’ve decided to embrace social media already to promote your business, then a blog post gives you valuable content to share on those channels. It can be hard work initially creating those tweets and posts and finding content to share. A blog post will probably give you at least 5 potential posts which you can then also direct back to your blog and ultimately your website.

  Given all of the above, it’s hard to justify not having a blog on your small business website. So if you think you’d like to get started or already have a blog on your website which you’re not utilising, why not get in touch 01494 537612 and see how we can help.

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