Importance of Blogging as a Small Business by Karen Johnson

Blogging regularly is a necessity when establishing your social media presence and has several benefits for growing your business. If you haven’t been inspired to blog on your own, perhaps these benefits can convince you to get started.
Sharable Expertise - As a small business owner, you are the expert in the product or service that you are providing. If you sell haircare products, writing regular blogs on haircare tips that include your product can only increase your credibility as an industry expert. This could also lead to better opportunities where you are able to share your expertise through even bigger established platforms and speaking engagements.  

Social Media Exposure; Blogging can serve as a great supplement to your existing social media content. Blogs are also easily shareable on social media, providing you the opportunity to have a reach beyond your audience. People are constant sharing posts Facebook and re-tweeting stories that they find interesting. Having fresh, shareable content is a key part of establishing your social media presence. Customer engagement is always a good thing and blogging provides another platform for you to engage with your following.

SEO; Search Engine Optimization- Even if you may not be familiar with the term, SEO, you see how it works every time you use Google or any other search engine to find content. As an overview, SEO is how you rank on Google when someone searches for a certain subject matter. For example, if you search, “how to do your own taxes” the items that show up on the first page have the current highest SEO rankings on Google.  Blogging is one of many elements that can help with this ranking. The more searchable words and content you have, the more likely you are to appear in a Google search!
Want to Get Started? Here is how!

If you already have a website, you likely have ability to start a blog right away. Most popular website platforms such as WordPress already have this function built in. All you have to do is talk to your webmaster about enabling this function, pick a subject matter and get going!

Set a realistic goal and stay consistent. There is no magic number that determines how often you should be blogging. This would be determined by your goals as a small business owner, your time, and resources. However, a good starting point would be one blog a month and to eventually increase that to at least two over time. This will ensure that your audience is getting fresh new content from you on a consistent basis.
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Evaluate your resources and outsource if needed. If writing a blog isn’t your biggest strength or you do not have the time or resources to focus on creating consistent content, consider outsourcing this function. This can vary from having an editor to review your content or delegating it completely to someone you trust to maintain the integrity of your content. Either way, you should ensure that the content is reflective of the message you would like to send.
Hopefully you found these tips helpful and you are ready to add blogging as essential piece of your functions as a small business owner!

Written by: Karen Johnson
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