Why does a company need a blog? How does it affect the sale of products and services? What conditions must be met for a company blog to be beneficial? Answers to these and other questions you will find in my today’s post. πŸ™‚

Company blog – what is it and what is it for?

A company blog is the hub of your content marketing efforts. The purpose of a blog is to answer questions that potential customers or people interested in the company’s area of business might ask.

Company blog - what is it and what is it for?However, a company blog should not just be about the offer, but should also go beyond the company. It is not about β€œintrusively” encouraging people to buy products, it is about providing people with the knowledge they are looking for. Articles should therefore explore the subject matter in as much depth as possible to build trust in the brand.

For example, a fashion retailer’s corporate blog, in addition to articles about its offering, might include informative and educational posts about fashion, such as:

  • How to choose a skirt for a pear-shaped figure
  • How to camouflage broad shoulders
  • How to match a handbag with shoes
  • How to create an outfit with white trousers

Although on the surface it may seem that these types of articles have no value (they do not directly contribute to sales), in fact, it is quite the opposite. A company blog influences sales both directly and indirectly.

Advantages of a company blog. How does a blog affect sales and what does it give?

The benefits of a blog can vary depending on the type of business, offer or position in the market. Virtually any company with an online presence can gain significant benefits by launching a blog. Benefits include:

1. Impact on the positioning of the online shop/website in search engines

company blog advantage - better positioningOne of the main reasons why online shops include a blog in their marketing efforts is that it has a positive impact on product positioning in Google. By regularly publishing posts and adding links leading to product categories, they rank higher in search results. This allows potential customers to come across them. This significantly results in higher sales.

2. Increase traffic to the site

company blog advantage - increased trafficEach blog article is another page within the main domain that attracts users interested in the site’s subject matter. Blogging builds a base of long-tail keyword phrases that customers enter into a search engine, which diverge from the main phrases on the site. For example, if a company specialises in the sale of security cameras, one of the main phrases for its shop will be ‘security camera’. However, potential customers may also search for this type of product by typing in other phrases into Google, such as ‘how to choose a security camera for your home’. Regularly publishing articles brings more and more users to the site who are potentially interested in the offer.

3. Building brand awareness and trust

One of the most effective sales techniques is inbound marketing. Inbound marketing activities consist of creating multiple points of contact between the customer and the brand. The more often a user comes into contact with a website, sees a logo or hears a brand name, the more likely they are to become a customer over time. A company blog is great for building brand recognition and increasing brand trust, which translates into sales in the long term.

4. Increase the mailing base

If valuable and substantive content is published on the blog, internet users will want to keep up to date with it. A company blog encourages visitors to leave their contact details and sign up for a newsletter. A distribution list from a blog is one of the most powerful sales tools.

5. Ready-made content for social media channels and a newsletter

company blog advantage - ready social media contentOnline marketing involves numerous time-consuming activities, such as publishing content on the website, on social media or sending it out in the form of a newsletter. A company blog helps to organise and consolidate these activities and is a time-saver.

When you publish a blog post, you can share it on social media or send a short teaser of the article and a link to it in a newsletter. There is no need to come up with separate content each time for all the channels the brand has. In addition, by publishing links to articles on social media or sending them via email, you can increase your reach and traffic to your website.

What to do to make a blog profitable? How to run a company blog properly?

Several conditions must be met for a company blog to bring the benefits mentioned in the previous paragraph. Here are the most important ones:

1. Regularity

To generate traffic to a website or increase brand awareness, it is not enough to publish one article once every six months. Ideally, there should be at least several substantive posts each month.

2. Responding to queries from internet users

Articles on a company blog must genuinely address what users and potential customers are interested in. Unfortunately, business owners or employees often publish posts based on their guesswork. Meanwhile, there are tools that allow you to see what internet users are typing into Google and which phrases have the greatest potential.

3. Optimising blog posts for SEO

In order for a blog and website to rank well, blog posts need to be structured properly – including an H1 title tag, header tags (H2, H3, H4, etc.), paragraphs, links, keywords and metadata.

Where do I set up a company blog?

You can set up a company blog on a subdomain (in which case it will have the following address: blog.nameofyourwebsite.uk) or in the main domain directory (e.g. nameofyourwebsite.uk/blog). Both solutions have advantages and disadvantages. In my opinion, a blog in a directory will work better in most cases.

A blog placed in a directory is treated by Google as an integral part of the website. Thanks to its constantly expanded content, it significantly supports the positioning of the main domain and the entire website. Another advantage of a blog placed in a directory is that initially, it receives the power of the main domain. So there is no need to start the positioning process from scratch.

A blog placed on a subdomain, on the other hand, is treated by Google as a separate, independent domain. This means that blog articles published on such a site have little impact on the positioning of the main domain. To a certain extent, they will contribute to its better positioning thanks to external links, but to a much lesser extent than articles within a directory.

In order not to waste the potential of a company blog, the best solution is therefore to place it in a directory.

Running a blog on a subdomain may work well if you have a multi-topic site. Google favours sites with specific topics in its search results, rather than sites with “everything”. So if you want to blog about issues other than the subject matter of your home page and shop, you might consider putting it on a subdomain. However, this applies to really large sites.

I hope I have managed to convince you to set up and systematically run a company blog. It will certainly have a significant impact on your company’s sales in the long run. πŸ™‚

Author

Hi, my name is Marta. I am a content marketing specialist and copywriter with over 10 years of experience. On my blog I cover topics related to marketing, copywriting and blogging.

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