Yes! The competition has a blog on their websites and just this one reason alone makes it necessary for everyone to do it.
The only reason why people would not want to do this is if they are going to have an ineffective, useless blog.
Since no one wants to create such a blog, they will be doing a good service for their customers by adding a blog.
So Many People Are Online
Other than to compete with people who are selling similar products and services, business owners are going to want to communicate with their customers in the manner in which they most desire. According to Internet World Stats, in 2010 there were over 230million US internet users. This number is very close to the total population of the United States for that year of 310,232,863. With so many people online, business owners would miss a great opportunity to connect on a deeper level with their customers if they do not have a blog.
Blogs Bring the Customer into the Discussion
The purpose of the blog can be many, but the most important is to keep the customers returning to the website. If business owners are blogging on a regular basis about topics that their customers care about, they will need to come back periodically to learn what else the business owners have to tell them. Without this element, the website may only be dedicated to the needs of the business owners. With a blog, business owners demonstrate that they care about their customers and their needs as well.
Blogs Help to Increase Inbound Links
As business owners add a blog to their websites, they may notice that their sites will begin to receive a better ranking in the search engines. If owners of other high quality websites like the content that business owners publish, they will be able to link to that content from their own websites. The search engines reward the website with a higher rank, and the website can reach higher and higher in the search results. It may even have a chance to reach the number one spot.
Blogs Increase the Numbers of Pages the Spiders Can Index
Adding a blog to a business website also has the effect of increasing the numbers of pages that the search engines’ spiders can index. Business owners want the spiders coming to their blogs because this is how the search engines can let others know there is valuable and new information on the site.
As people add new content to their blogs, the spiders crawl the site and the search engines can assign the pages their page rank. A higher page rank means that the search engine considers the content very important and the site can become an authority site. This will only have positive consequences for the website’s owner.
Blogs Promote Damage Control
Everything does not always go smoothly when people are running a business. Although business owners work very hard to make everyone happy, they do not always succeed. When people are unhappy, they have a forum on the Internet where they can air their grievances. Business owners who have a blog give their customers a place to communicate with them in their comments section rather than going to the social media.
A blog is more effective in this area than social media websites because the business owners have more control of how the conversations will go. When executives have a chance to address their customers’ grievances, a blog makes it much more personal than the social media websites can. Customers will not be limited in the number of characters they can write and they will have the benefit of a full conversation with someone from the company.
So yes, business owners do need to add a blog to their sites in order to remain competitive in their industries. Blogs offer them a way to continuously add new and relevant content to their websites and increase the rankings they receive from the search engines. They also give their customers a chance to discuss any problems they have before any damage is done to the company’s reputation. Blogs are a necessary part of doing business on the Internet.
I agree that all businesses should have a blog, it’s essential nowadays. For certain types of businesses, there’s no need for the blog to have articles published frequently. Some smaller businesses could just publish once a month, or perhaps they could post a small article every now and again, asking their customers to give them feedback. I can’t think of any type of business that has a website, which shouldn’t have a blog as well.
People like it fresh, and so do search engines. That’s one of the main reasons why blogging is a good way of getting more people visit your site, and give the site a bigger chance of being found on the search results. Google tends to give a better rank to those sites that really deserve to be at the top of the search results. When you’re going white label SEO on your site, what you have to do is to make sure that the factors which make a site visible on the search results are present in the content you’re about to post on your site’s blog.
I agree too. In fact I once worked for a small company and was involved in the launch of their blog, it was a very exciting project. 3 years later the blog is still there and it is very active with comments.
I also started a blog at my new job too, but it’s slightly different since we offer services only to the companies of our group, so the blog is on our intranet. It’s a shame because there are less opportunities to use the blog for networking and social media, but it’s really interesting to learn about social intranets.