Someone recently told me that blogging is “so last year” . Well, not so according to the Social Media Examiner’s 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry report.  It reports that 70% of small businesses and 58% of large businesses intend to increase their blogging activity in 2013. Why? Because of the tremendous value and power of blogging. 

Here are three of my personal reasons for getting your blog on:

Build Your Brand – Having a great brand doesn’t do anything for you if no one sees or understands it. Blogging gives you a free platform to showcase and promote your brand and what you’re all about. You can share your blog on all of the social media platforms, through email campaigns and newsletters.

SEO Visibility – Ah yes, that popular little word acronym for Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Google loves and rewards websites that continuously offer new and relevant content. It’s no longer just enough to stuff keywords into your website. You need to change your content regularly to get to and remain at the top of the page on Google searches. Blogging is the perfect way to do that AND to please your visitors. Additionally, if you link your blog to your social media accounts, you get links back to your site AND it is all searchable!

Industry Thought leadership – when you provide thought provoking, quality, information to your target audience you begin building yourself as an industry thought leader. If a potential client is considering you or your company this could put them over the top to actually reach out to YOU. It’s an easy and cost effective way to gain loyalty and build your business. 

If you think about it, you could write a book. You could travel about speaking and sharing your knowledge about your industry. You could make videos showing who you are and what your company offers. You could offer free advice once you get a potential customer interested. Or you could do all of these for FREE and on demand. Blogging, in my book, is a terrific use of resources and gives back way more than you put in.

For additional, more detailed information about blogging, pick up my book “How to Become a Social Media Content Machine – Wordflirt’s Guide to Cranking out Killer Content”.