It’s truly astounding why so many website owners still perceive blogging as a waste of time. While there are over 600 million active blogs on the internet, they correspond to only 31.6% of all websites currently functioning on the web. However, with more than 77% of online users regularly reading blog posts, nearly 70% of businesses seem to miss out on one extremely good communication channel to potential customers. Furthermore, although only 31.6% of website owners use a blog to their advantage, more than 76% of marketers trust on blogs to create traffic and convert the audience into leads. This should be a big enough sign that blogs are a goldmine that should be exploited, especially with the lack of interest from such a big chunk of the competition.

If you are still unsure whether you need to invest the time to create a blog section for your website, let us highlight the immense benefits it will bring to your business.

Blogs help you establish your brand voice and persona

It’s within human nature to follow strong, charismatic leaders who know what they are saying and always use facts instead of beliefs. Consequently, those types of people are most often used as brand ambassadors in offline marketing. This becomes much easier with the internet, as your online persona doesn’t need a face. All it needs is a voice, and you can easily establish one through your blog posts.

Your blog posts will usually be the first contact with new audience members, so you must keep your brand voice consistent without much deviation. A good choice would be to mix some casual lingo in your brand voice, which will humanize your brand and make it much more relatable. Users will stop thinking of you as a brand and instead regard you as a person, as someone with whom they can communicate. Naturally, this means you will have to reply to their questions and, in general, try to keep the conversation alive.

The hard part of creating your brand persona is by no means the communication channel. It’s the research you need to ensure your target audience will find a trusted partner and even a friend in your online persona. You must create a personality that understands the struggles and queries of your targeted audience. So, instead of lecturing them on how they should change, you must show empathy for their problems and offer them solutions.

Blogs bring traffic

If you create an attractive brand persona, your blog posts will deliver much more traffic. Of course, this has much to do with your entire marketing strategy, but basically, your blog posts will be the backbone of your organic traffic. That’s hardly a surprise, as 53% of website traffic is entirely organic on average. Moreover, about 93% of all internet experiences start with a search engine query. This clearly shows that having a blog will drive your visits higher, and naturally, your visibility will spread much further.

Furthermore, HubSpot research shows that websites with active blogs receive 55% more visitors than those who prefer to ignore their blog sections. On top of that, websites with blogs will receive 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages. Essentially that’s a massive boost to your overall traffic. But even better, blog posts do more than just invite people to your website. They also convert them.

Blogs convert traffic into leads

With more visitors, it’s only natural that the number of conversions will increase. However, blogs are not only bringing you more traffic but actively working on bettering every meaningful stat like the number of leads, conversion rate, and others. In fact, websites that maintain a regular flow of blog posts enjoy 126% more leads than those that don’t have a blog or post irregularly. So naturally, doubling your leads will instantly lead to more conversions, sales, and better revenue. Unfortunately, though, don’t expect these results to simply appear the minute you start blogging regularly.

Like most SEO-oriented tasks, this one also takes between 3 and 6 months to show its potential. Though it takes time to start working, the benefits are definitely worth the effort and time. In fact, more than 55% of marketers claim that blogging is highly effective, and 10% are adamant that blogging is the cornerstone of their marketing strategy.

But how does the blog do that? Well, blogging gives you a platform to showcase your product strengths.

Blogs can showcase the benefits of your product in length

Regardless of whether you are offering a product or a service, your landing page can’t highlight all its benefits and features. A good landing page is not cluttered with too many words, especially if it’s your home page. The best web marketing practices show that your home page should not exceed 200-300 words of static text. That doesn’t include images, of course.

Inner pages, or dedicated product landing pages, can go as far as 500 words. They, however, can’t compete with blog posts that average above 1500 words and can go as high as 3000 words (if you have valuable information to share). That leaves little space on your homepage or landing page for showcasing the true potential of your product or service.

In your blog posts, however, you can go all-in showing off everything your product or service can do. You can show studies that prove your product is the best. You can unfold different cases and case studies and explain how your product can help in different niche situations. In other words, the information you present with your landing page is generalized. At the same time, the one in your blog is much more personalized and is dedicated to a much tighter niche audience.

Naturally, this is much more persuasive to people with niche interests than a general representation of your product. In marketing terms, blog posts target a much hotter and narrower audience with a specific need, while landing pages usually target a warm or lukewarm audience that is far broader.

Blogs build credibility

Naturally, with more information, both your product and brand will become much more credible. But, of course, for that to happen, you must maintain the credibility of the information you share in the highest regard. In other words, you can’t claim that your smartphone case can withstand and protect your phone even if a tram runs over it without any proof. Otherwise, the effect of your blogs will be entirely the opposite.

To be able to produce immaculate blog posts, you need to follow some strict rules in conveying information. First and foremost, you need to be confident that what you are saying is true. Therefore, refrain from words and phrases that show doubt and uncertainty. For example, use phrases like “it will lead to” instead of “this must lead to.” That indicates you are confident in the outcome and fully believe in your expertise. Naturally, this will transfer to the reader, who will have much more confidence in your words.

Of course, creating one high-quality blog post needs time, as you need to do your research, check if what you are trying to convey is relevant to your audience, and write it in a way that will be both professionally explained and easily understandable by non-professionals. In our experience, the latter is usually the most challenging part. However, it’s also the most important, as people won’t believe what they don’t understand. So explaining complicated concepts with strictly technological terms to a non-professional audience will simply increase the bounce rate.

Blogs establish you as an authority

Sharing credible information will transform you from an expert into an authority figure. That is a massive boost to your brand awareness as your opinion will matter in the industry, and you will no longer just follow the trends, but you will set them. Naturally, this will lead to some tremendous benefits. The biggest one is that you won’t have to prove yourself to every new customer. Instead, you can rely entirely on your reputation, significantly increasing customer trust.

For example, if you are well-known in the industry, people will be far more willing to give their sensitive information, as they will assume that if you are an authority figure, you will treat their sensitive data properly. Naturally, this will bring far more leads.

A good example would be the french brand Decathlon. They usually follow a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, allowing Decathlon cardholders to return items without hassle. This drives sales up significantly, as people are not obstructed by doubt or the concern that they will get buyer’s remorse, as they can simply return the item if they don’t want it within 30 days. That works, as Decathlon is an authority in the sportswear and equipment industry, and people have trust that there will be no complications if they decide to take on their offer. Such trust is impossible with brands with no authority in the industry, as they won’t get the same confidence from customers. As a result, their sales will be affected on a much smaller scale than those of Decathlon despite offering the same benefit.

Of course, building up your authority will also take time and effort. Still, the benefits afterward will allow you to not only participate in the important conversations in your industry but start and moderate them.

Blogs start conversations

In the old times, when a door-to-door salesperson wanted to land a deal, he first needed to start a conversation. Back then, this was not that easy, as people would often just shut the door without ever listening to what they had to say. That’s because their targeting was way off. They didn’t have the tools to narrow down their targeted audience besides the neighborhood they were operating in.

Today, with the internet, we have much better means to target our audience, but one thing remains the same. We need to start a conversation to be able to sell our product. Blog posts are precisely that. They start the conversation, and a good blogger knows exactly how to moderate it so it won’t get way out of focus. The focus, of course, is how your product or service can help the targeted audience with their problem.

Before anything else, however, blog posts will help your readers define their problems. Just like a person goes to the doctor with symptoms hoping to find out his problem and how he can resolve it, people entering your blog posts are the same. They have some discomfort that needs to be fixed. Your job is to start the conversation about the reasons, determine the problem, define it, and offer the solution. This is how your blog posts drive your readers through the marketing funnel stages. The more effective, credible, and well-written the blog post, the faster the user will go down the funnel.

Blogs work wonders for your marketing channels

You need to remember, however, that blogs alone are just a part of the equation. Still, they can be extremely helpful in your entire marketing strategy, as they perfectly complement all your marketing channels. For example, a blog post is a perfect way to draw attention to yourself on social media. In fact, having a blog can help you a lot in establishing and populating your social media fan pages. For example, companies with regular blog posts have 79% more followers on Twitter than those without.

Moreover, an informative blog post with crucial information is a gold mine for your PR and offline marketing, as you can easily enter offline news outlets and even the news. This is a great way to boost your brand awareness and further your goals to establish your brand as an authoritative figure in your industry.

Blogs are an essential SEO element

Despite its positive effect on other traffic channels, your blog will always be an SEO tool before everything else. Blogs are essential in creating a proper SEO strategy, as they are the only place where you can target long-tail keywords properly. With 91.8% of all search engine queries being precisely long-tail keywords, it’s not hard to determine how instrumental blog posts are in attracting the massive audience that starts their user journey with a search engine. Moreover, blogs are irreplaceable in creating a backlink portfolio, as other websites will rarely agree to publish a link to a landing page or a home page. However, an interesting article will not only allow you to find an authoritative website that will link it easily, but more often than not, they will do it on their own.

Last but not least, you will get much more indexed pages, which will not only increase your reach but will bring your overall SEO score higher.

Blogs can be a great FAQ section support

Before anything else, however, blog posts have a supporting role in your sales process. The biggest help is the ability to give a lengthy explanation to a specific question without clogging your landing page or home page. Usually, this is where the FAQ page comes into play. However, even their answers must be straightforward and to the point, without a lengthy explanation of why. Thus, by offering a place where you can describe any aspect of your product in detail and answer any burning question, you can help users get all the needed information on your website without having to check anywhere else. Keeping users on your website is the first step to converting them into loyal customers.

How to start a blog?

With all these benefits, you are probably already wondering how to start your own blog. For starters, you will need a website with fast, reliable, and secure hosting. We can help you with that. HostArmada offers a variety of hosting plans that can accommodate any need. Moreover, as we partner with WordPress, we can provide a quick and easy solution for creating one astounding website with an immaculate blog. As WordPress was created as a blog CMS platform, making a blog on it is child’s play. Moreover, with HostArmada behind your back, you will never have to worry about a blog post getting too popular, as our cloud-based server technology can never be overloaded.

So, don’t miss out on the amazing benefits blogging offers. Just buy a domain, get a hosting plan, and create your WordPress website. After that, all you need to do is retain a regular flow of blog posts, and the benefits will come.