Should Every Business Own A Blog?

There is no doubt we are in the digital marketing era. So you get to hear a lot of things like content marketing and why every business should blog. The digital marketing drive is seeing more businesses jump into the blogging trend. If you haven’t yet, you may have already been thinking bad about yourself. But is it every business that should own a blog?

Let us face the truth: Owning a blog may not be a good marketing strategy for every business.

Firstly, let us have a brief overview of the blogging concept. You create a blog and publish content on it. These content must be valuable and you would have to keep creating and posting fresh blog posts constantly if you hope to achieve your aims.

For a business, what are these aims? They could either be to build a community for your brand or to increase conversion rates. So which one are you after? Blogging is usually a good tool for all of that. But before you go on, you’d have to consider:

• What market/niche is your business operating in? Is it one that has people going online to seek information about (and volumes of it)?
• Does your business have any geographical restrictions? What is the scope of your target audience (potential customers)?
• What strategy and resources do you have to employ for blogging (considering creating valuable content and frequency of publishing)? Based on your niche and the competition that already exists, would it bring enough ROI?
• Does your business really need an online social community? Is it a niche that people are comfortable to be publicly associated with their service providers?
• Are there other alternatives?

Remember, the point here is OWNERSHIP of a blog, not whether content marketing can be valuable to your business. Oftentimes most people limit content marketing to just owning your own blog. There is more to content marketing than that. So, could there be other alternatives or other ways to gain attention online?

Make The Most Of Your Website

You should have a website. And when/if you do, you should have enough information on the products/services you offer. Make the most of your website by giving detailed information about your business and what you do. You can break down the services and expatiate on them. Take care of the FAQs about what your business is into. And when you are done, leave it at that (except for updating the information when need be).

Guest Blogging Is Cool, Too

The thing with owning your own blog is that you have to take responsibility for building the audience, attracting traffic, filling it up with contents, staying relevant, etc. That’s just a lot of work. And if you operate in a niche that is crowded with so much information, you can just be struggling to get attention. On the other hand, guest blogging can be a great option. Look for sites/blogs that have already established authority in that niche. Seek for guest blogging opportunities. Contribute to news sites.

In guest blogging, you are not under any obligation to produce numerous posts. You can periodically write on your niche. And when you do, add stories about your accomplishments, weave in interesting things about your services/products that link back to your site’s product/service pages.

Forums Help

There are so many opportunities out there to establish yourself as an authority in your niche, get attention, and link people back to your site. Forums help. Try out different forums and platforms like Quora, Nairaland, GurusLodge Forum, etc. Find ones that cover your niche, answer questions from other users, or make your own posts and stir up conversations.

Don’t Neglect Business Listing Sites

Most (if not all) are free. Take advantage of them and register your business’ presence on as many as possible. Add your contact details (including your website), profile, and adequate information about your products/services (depending on what is allowed on the site). There are many of them, like Nigeria Business Directory, Business List, Vconnect. There could be more local ones targeted at particular cities.

I’ll leave social media out. You probably know a lot on that side.