There are numerous options when it comes to marketing your small business and understandably, it can be difficult to choose which activities you should put your efforts towards as a small business owner. For any business with a website presence, one of the more important activities you can do for your online presence is blogging. Unfortunately, many business owners still do not blog, but there are so many reasons why blogging is good for small business websites, it’s hard to argue against the activity. So why should you blog if you’re a small business owner? Below are some great illustrations why small business owners should blog.

Blogging Helps Your Website’s Search Engine Optimization

Search engines love fresh content. The more often you can add new content to your site, the more often that the search engines, such as Google, will come back and crawl your site. One of the worst thinks you can do for your website is allow it to go stale, not adding any new content once the site is built. Websites are not a “set it and forget it” endeavor. To be effective, your website needs to be a living, breathing presence. Adding new content though regular blogging is a great way to keep your website content fresh and new.

Blogging Drives Traffic to Your Site

It’s a fairly simple concept really. If you provide information that people are searching for, when your content comes up in the search results addressing that question, people are going to click on it and land on your site. Your blog gives you the opportunity to create relevant content that people are looking for. They go online, type in a question, and your content potentially can answer that question. And if you add the additional step of sharing your blog on your social channels, you now have multiple audiences that can potentially see your content and will visit your site.

Blogging Positions You as a Subject Matter Expert

The days of pushing out information about your company that no one cares about are gone. As a small business owner, you’re going to come out ahead of the game if you instead provide information people are looking for. Why? People are interested in doing business with people (and companies) they trust, the ones they perceive know what they’re talking about and have the expertise to provide a solution to their problem. If you’re a small business owner writing “how to” blogs that address people’s pain points and provide solutions, you’re positioning yourself as a subject matter expert. That’s powerful for a small business and allows them to compete online with much larger companies.

Blogging Helps Your Presence on Social Media

Every time you write a blog post and share it on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus, etc., you’re creating content that people can share on their social networks, which helps expose your business to a new audience. Imagine how your content can be shared exponentially through each one of your followers as they like and share your content on their networks. That’s a potentially influential reach.

Blogging Keeps You Top of Mind to Your Current Clients

Most people create a small business marketing strategy with the idea of attracting new clients. However, keeping and growing your existing client base is equally important. If your small business blog includes information that’s exceptionally helpful to your current clients, you are keeping them engaged and your business top of mind. If you sell a product, it could be a blog post on maintenance or new ways to use the product. If it’s a service, you can blog about new service enhancements you’re rolling out.

Blogging Drives More Qualified Traffic to Your Site

Small businesses say they want more traffic to their site, but really what they want is better traffic to their site, the kind of traffic that is aligned with what the business has to offer. If your blog is providing information that is relevant to the product or service solution you offer, and the traffic coming to your site is drawn in because of that solution, you’ll potentially be attracting more qualified leads. It’s about quality over quantity.

Blogging Doesn’t Cost Anything But Your Time

Most small business owners likely start out with a limited marketing budget, if they have a budget at all. One of the fabulous things about blogging is that it’s FREE (except for your time). And then getting that great marketing out to your potential audience? Also free (social media). How many other marketing avenues can you name where the cost is nothing more than your time, and the return is so great? Not many.

Blogging is one of the most important marketing activities a small business can do. The time to start? Now!