You’re working twelve hours a day, you’re not sure you still have a partner as you haven’t seen them since Christmas and sleep are something you can only ever dream about. So, why in God’s name would you start a blog? We hear you. It is indeed another thing that will pull at your time and add to your to-do list. And yet, don’t dismiss it out of hand. There are a huge number of benefits in starting a blog. Some will even end up saving your time (and money) in the long run. Now that’s not something to be sneezed at for you or your startup.
8 Ways Blogging Will Kickstart Your Startup
Blog needs plenty of time to get visibility and get organic traffic from search engines. However, the benefits you will get can change your life forever. Here are the important things how blogging can help your business starting from the beginning.
1. Branding
First of all, a blog will allow you to brand yourself and your company. It will allow you to speak to your audience with your voice. In this way, you can showcase why you’re doing what you’re doing, why it matters and why they should care.
Doing something like that without a blog can be incredibly expensive, as you’ll need to find a marketing firm, they have to distil what your startup is about and then they’ll have to find some way to broadcast that identity in ads and more.
On a blog? It’s free.
2. Honing
In fact, it does more than just create a brand. It also allows you to hone your message. You see, since you’ll be putting out content, ideas, and posts over months and years and you’ll be getting feedback through social media and other ways, you’ll be able to figure out what your audience appreciates, what gets them excited and what doesn’t really do much of anything.
In that way, you’ll do two things
- You’ll start to understand your target audience better and better.
- Your brand will slowly shift to incorporate and exhibit their needs and wants.
In that way, you’ll be able to position yourself, without it seeming forced or imposed from outside. Instead, it will seem a natural progression over time.
3. Inform Your Thought Process
In fact, the blog can serve to actually inform your thought process about your startup. You see, it’s a natural platform where people will give you plenty of feedback about what you’re doing and what they agree with. This back and forth can serve as an incubator for your ideas.
Similarly, being forced to think and write about what you’re going through can serve to actually focus your thoughts and inform your thought process. That’s nothing to be sneezed at, as most startups fail because they end up behind the curve and are too slow to adapt to the situation on the ground. That’s going to be a less likely for you and your brand if you’re blogging regularly.
4. Content Marketing
You’ve no doubt heard of content marketing. It’s far more effective than many other forms of marketing, largely because it can be effective without you spending an arm and a leg on it. For that reason, you no doubt want to engage in it as a startup. The thing is, you can’t do that without having a constant stream of new information and content that you can showcase (or for your writing service to showcase for you). And a blog is the natural place to put all of that.
Now, don’t take that to mean that should only ever do content marketing. That isn’t very effective. But it does work well as part of a multi-pronged approach. You can even outsource content marketing efforts using platforms like Semrush or Upwork.
5. SEO
Blog posts don’t only allow you to spread out your website over a far greater number of keywords, but it also means that Google will rank you more highly overall. How does that work? Well, Google cares about a great many things when it decides where you rank, but one thing that is really important is that your website is constantly updated, as that shows them that your website is active and that the information is still current.
A good way to do exactly that is by having a blog and steadily posting new articles. That will push you up the rankings and give you access to far more organic search terms.
6. You Can Use it to Recruit as Well as Market
Today millennials want to work for companies that won’t just pay them but will also give them meaning and purpose. They want to work for a company that stands for the right things and that makes them feel like they’re adding to society.
That’s a lot to ask for. How do you decide if a company can do that for you? Well, one way you can do that is by checking out their blog. There you can see a whole range of articles and opinions that expound the position and ideas of the startup. In that way, the blog can let millennials (and other potential employees as well, of course) decide if you’re the right company for them. This self-selection will make it far more likely that you’ll end up with people that share your values, creating a far more familiar feeling.
7. It Allows You to Demonstrate Expertise
If you can put up a whole range of articles that demonstrate you’re actually an expert in your field. In this way, you can position your blog and by extension your firm, as a thought leader. If you can pull that off then you won’t just be getting a whole host of unique visitors, but you’ll end up attracting influencers as well.
And if these people start to talk about you and your brand, well then bob is your uncle. You’ve pretty much got it made and traffic will start to pour in without you having to do very much at all. Even if you don’t manage to set yourself up at a thought leader, just being able to demonstrate expertise is incredibly valuable as it means that your readers will come to trust you, which means that it’s much easier to sell them on the value of your content.
8. It Can Create Rapport with Your Audience
If your brand just sells a product that’s nice. If it’s a good product, no doubt your customer will be happy. But they won’t necessarily feel connected to what you’re doing. After all, we don’t feel connected to a product. Instead, what we connect with is another person.
Now, your startup isn’t exactly another person, but you’ll be far more likely to create that kind of a connection with your audience if you can give it personality. How do you do that? Yup, you guessed it, through a blog. A blog is a direct way to reach out to your audience and show them that you care, that you’re listening to them and that if they respond you listen. And those are the very things that form the foundation of rapport and a relationship.
Last Words
So there you go. That’s a list of reasons why a blog will help your startup and get you ahead. So don’t hold off. Get one started. You don’t even have to publish every day, or so many times a week. Just do so regularly and it will be more than enough.
You’ll have something to push on social media, you’ll create a reason for people to talk about what you’re doing and you’ll even have a recruitment tool. The best part? Nowadays you don’t even really need to do everything yourself. There is an ocean of freelancers out there who can help you create your content if writing is not your thing. In that way, you’ll get to have your cake and eat it too. Now how can you disagree with that?
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