The Importance of Having a Blog for the Longevity of Your Business
I’m sharing the importance of having a blog for the overall growth and development of your business. We’ll talk today about the benefits of blogging and why having a blog can help you reach your audience and your goals online even faster. But we’ll also discuss why blogs help your business outlive other startups, small businesses, and influencers.
Here at City Living Network, we help you create a city-specific, niche blog that caters to your hometown or city. We’ve created tourism hubs from California to Colorado to Kentucky! But we often get asked the question… “Isn’t blogging dead?”
Blogging is far from dead. In fact, blogs are still one of the only platforms online that you own. And blogs are still so important for the growth of your business in helping you reach new people online.
The benefits of having a blog are endless. And we’re going to get into all of that.
But first, be warned. You can’t be lazy, and blogging isn’t easy. There are a lot of steps that go into running a successful blog but if you’re willing to put the time into creating a space for yourself on the internet, the benefits, as I mentioned, will be endless!
The beauty of having a blog is that you don’t need to be an expert journalist, photographer, or salesperson. A few years ago you definitely had to be all of these things and more, but in 2022, there are so many talented experts out there that can help you grow online.
Having a blog for your business helps:
Grow your organic traffic online
Nurture and serve your audience
Keep your audience engaged and coming back for more
Stand out from the crowd
Grow interest and demand for your blog and business
The beautiful thing about a blog?
It will provide benefits to you long after you’ve hit publish.
Blogs are forever
A post on social media (especially Instagram) lives for about 24 hours. Yup, that means after 24 hours, the post is not likely to be seen by anyone. Sure, you have the chance to go viral and have that post take off… but that’s not a guarantee and for most people I’ve spoken to lately, it happens less and less.
But with blogging…
After you publish a blog post, you’ll continue to show up on Google and Pinterest search results forever.
When blogs are written well and maintained, they’ll continue to provide for your business forever.
So let’s talk about the benefits of blogging for your business and hopefully inspire you to start a blog for yourself today!
1. Increase traffic to your website
Raise your hand if you want more visitors to your website.
Yup, me to!
No matter what industry or business you are in, having a blog can help you increase traffic to your website.
Think of your blog as another marketing tool for your business. It’s another marketing channel that you’ll be able to use to grow your business.
So how are people going to find you online?
They could type your name into their browser. But that’s going to be an audience that you already have - since they know your name. These people already know who you are so that’s not going to help you get more traffic, on top of the traffic that you are already getting.
You could pay for traffic by buying an email list, blasting them, and hoping some people open and click through the email. But that’s expensive and you know, illegal. Plus it’s not a method that’s going to help you find people who are actually interested in you.
Or you can pay for traffic through ads. This obviously isn’t illegal… but it is expensive. And for someone just starting their business or maybe anyone who runs a small business, paying for ads will get expensive and competitive quickly. And the second that you run out of money… your traffic stops coming too.
So now you’re probably wondering what you’re doing here… and how you can attract new traffic or readers to your website without spending loads of money, breaking the law, or shouting your name from the rooftops and hoping that someone Googles you…
Well, that’s through blogging and optimizing your website for search engines.
Here's how it works.
When someone is looking for something, say, the best place to eat Thai food in Laguna Beach.
They’re going to go to their preferred search engine, like Google or Pinterest, and type in: the best Thai restaurants in Laguna Beach.
Now… if you own a Thai restaurant in Laguna Beach, this would be a time that you want to show up in their search results so that they click on your website but chances are, you’re not updating your website all the time to reflect the message that people are searching for.
Blogging is a great way to solve that problem.
Every time that you create and publish a blog post, it’s one more indexed page on your website. This means it’s one more opportunity for you to show up on the search results page and drive traffic to your website with organic search.
Having blogs regularly posted and updated on your website also cues Google and other search engines that your website is active, and they should be checking it frequently to see what new content you’ve shared.
2. Blogging helps you make more money when working with brands
Going back to our example above about the best Thai food in Laguna Beach, I want to talk to you about how you can use city-specific blogs to work with businesses in your area to monetize your own business.
Now say for example that you live in Laguna Beach and you have a favorite Thai restaurant that you want to work with. If you have a city-specific blog about Laguna Beach (perhaps called: Laguna Beach Living 😉) and you’re constantly posting new information about Laguna Beach restaurants, bars, and things to do, then this would be a great opportunity for the Thai restaurant to leverage your blog, for their own foot traffic.
You can essentially do the blogging for them! You can promote their restaurant on your blog and help drive traffic to your own website to build your expertise on Laguna Beach, while also driving foot traffic to their business by promoting them to your audience and within organic Google search results.
It’s a win-win for the restaurant and for you.
When I talk with clients who want to stay a City-Specific blog in their town, I always make a point of this. It’s one thing to post on Instagram for a Thai restaurant… but that post will last around 24-48 hours (as I mentioned before) while a blog post, well that’s forever. So what’s going to make them more money in the long run? A blog post. Which means you can charge a lot more for that work.
A blog post is going to last forever, and it’s going to be driving traffic to their business forever because you’ll be constantly updating your blog with new posts building that trust with Google and a community of readers.
By the way, this is EXACTLY what I teach you through City Living Network. We cover how to get ad placements and work with brands in your city for your city-specific blog. If this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about - check this out!
3. Blogging drives long-term results
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could take a vacation on the beach, go snorkeling, and sleep as long as you want, while still being able to drive traffic to your site?
I know, you’re thinking that’s exactly what I’m here for! That’s the dream!
Well good news, that’s what blogging does. Through search engines (i.e. Google, Pinterest, Yahoo, Bing).
Here's what I mean:
Imagine that every Sunday you sit down, write and publish a blog post. Once you hit publish on that post, you’ll get maybe 100 views and ten leads on the following Monday. Then maybe another 50 views and five leads come on Tuesday as you share the post on social media and send it out to your email list.
But after a couple of days, the views stop coming in and you’ve landed around 150 views and maybe 15 leads.
Trust me, it’s not over yet.
That post is now ranking on your website and search engines will now be crawling and indexing that page for their search results. That means for days, weeks, months, and even years to come, you will continue to get traffic from that blog post. So while you might be feeling like that day of work was a bust, in reality, you’ll continue to get traffic and leads from that post forever.
So, while you hit that snooze alarm, go to the beach and spend more time with your loved ones, you’re also driving traffic and leads back to your website. (And when you’re working with your favorite local Thai restaurants, you’re sending them foot traffic, while you’re not even in the country!!)
The effort that you put into your blog today, can turn into hundreds and thousands of views and leads in the lifetime of your post.
What’s more, you’ll be able to monetize that content in many creative ways. A blog centered around affiliate marketing can work with brands to promote their products for just about any topic. Or if you’re working with your favorite Thai restaurant or specific ad placements, being able to show the compounding traffic and leads from one blog post, just means that you’ll be able to make and charge more money, the more that you grow.
And keep in mind that using this example from above, most of your sales will likely come from your older articles that have been generating more and more traffic over time.
I call these posts your “foundational” blog posts. They’re the most important blog that you’ll publish on your website because they’re the posts that are going to continue to drive traffic to your site for years and years to come.
They’ll answer the most asked questions by your audience or simply serve your audience in the best way possible.
Not every blog post that you write will be a foundational piece of content. But the more blog posts that you share, the more likely your audience will land on one of your foundational pieces as well.
Aim for 1 in every 10 blog posts to be a foundational piece of content.
You might not see immediate results, but over time, you’ll be able to predict the amount of traffic and leads for your business and your partnerships. And when it comes to pitching new partnerships, you’ll be able to use this information to make more money and work with brands on a more consistent and long-term basis.
In this way, blogging helps you drive long-term results for your business (and for your business partnerships as mentioned in point 2).
When you blog with purpose and use your blog to answer the top asked questions by your ideal audience, you establish yourself as an industry leader. And being an Industry Leader is also going to show platforms like Google, that you have their audience’s best interest in mind too.
Google wants people to keep using its platform. At the end of the day, it wants to give its users exactly what they’re searching for, the first time around.
So, Google is going to love you a lot more if you help them do that.
If you’d like to learn more about how starting a location/city-specific blog can help you work with brands, make more money and build a business that lasts, look into what we offer and do here at City Living Network, here.
4. Blogging helps with link building
Blogging also helps with inbound links or backlinks. If you’re completely new to blogging, backlinks are among the 200 factors that the Google algorithm considers when ranking a website for its search engine results page. A lot of people in this space say that backlinks can be in the top 3 most crucial factors for search engine optimization (SEO).
So what are backlinks?
Backlinking is when someone else links to your website. So if you wanted to quote something from this blog post, in a post on your own website, you would link back to this article within your blog. And that would count as a backlink for me.
That will essentially tell Google that the information shared in this blog post is beneficial to you and to your audience, further establishing me as an industry leader. Backlinks count as a vote of confidence from other websites. They signal to Google that you’re trustworthy.
Backlinks also help you build your domain authority. And this helps improve how quickly people will discover you on search engines.
Without a blog, you’re likely to get fewer backlinks for your website and it’ll take you longer to build your trustability with Google and your domain authority.
5. Repurpose blog content for social media
Blogging for your business can also help you get discovered on social media. Anytime you create a new article, you’re creating content that people can share on social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest - which will help expose your business to new audiences that might not know you yet.
Blog content can also help YOU create content for social media.
Instead of creating brand new content for social media, you can use your blog as a bank of content. You can take the points in a blog post and turn them into a carousel or Facebook post. You can choose one element of a blog post and turn that into a short-form video for TikTok or Instagram.
Going forward, you won’t need to come up with entirely new content ideas, you’ll be able to pull one point out of a blog post and repurpose it for every channel.
6. Build a network
This last point I want to share with you goes back to how blogging can help you make more money when working with brands.
We’ve established in this post that blogging helps you become an industry leader and charge more for brand collaborations and ad placements, but having a successful blog can also help you build a network and community.
I want to end this post by circling us back one more time to Laguna Beach Living. I started Laguna Beach Living as a way to help people planning their trip to Laguna Beach get the most up-to-date and local information about my hometown. After falling in love with the dynamic and beauty of Laguna Beach, I knew that I had the potential to create a real community here.
Laguna Beach Living has helped me connect with photographers, journalists, business owners, and artisans in Laguna Beach. Having an online business can be lonely. You’re often sitting at home on your computer. But by building a city-specific blog like Laguna Beach Living, I’ve been able to get out from behind my computer and go interact with my city.
I’ve been invited to restaurants, concerts, and store openings. I’ve been able to interview local Laguna Beach residents to learn more about their artwork, surf shops, and photography businesses. And I’ve been able to connect local Laguna Beach businesses to local photographers, florists, event planners and so much more.
Simply by creating Laguna Beach living, I’ve been able to build a trusted community within Laguna Beach for myself, travelers, and locals alike.
This is one of the benefits of blogging for my business that I never saw coming, and it’s the one element of my business that I never want to lose. Imagine how connected you can become to your community when you blog about your city.
Network, build trust and build community with a city-specific blog today.
Start Blogging Effectively Today
As you can see in this post, the power of blogging is endless.
The benefits of blogging include building a community, becoming an Industry Leader, and making more money. But my favorite part about running a blog is the freedom that it allows me. So many people are looking for ways to start their own businesses and work on their terms. That’s a hidden benefit of blogging that comes out on top for me.
If you’d like to learn more about starting a blog for your business, look no further. You can get started with your own City Living Network today. Simply book a free call with us today.
