If you have a small business website, you may be wondering about whether or not you need a small business blog. After all, marketing is important and if you have a website already, a blog can help increase your online reputation and the search engine optimization for your website. However, a blog for your small business takes a lot of work! Here are the benefits and downsides to adding a blog to your website.

Benefits to a Small Business Blog

When setting up a website for a small business, you usually have certain pages detailing what your business does and how to contact your business. This means you have a limited amount of content that doesn’t get updated very often. A good blog should have new content posted regularly, which signals to search engines and your customers that you are taking care to keep your website updated with new information. If you write your blog articles with information and expertise in your field, this also sets you up as an authority, which Google favors.

Blogging Downsides

Content is KingA blog is a lot of work! For a quality blog, you need to invest a good deal of time to create your blog posts. Each blog post should be extensive, just like an essay! Pick your “headline” – the title for your blog post – and make sure it’s one that’s captivating to your audience. You also want a few keywords that you want to include in your blog post, but don’t overdo it by stuffing your article with the keywords.

You also need images to go with your blog post. The best ones are images you make yourself. If you can’t make your own blog images, you can use free images from Pixabay or Creative Commons; otherwise you would likely need to spend some money on stock photos.

If you’re blogging, you should be consistent. Followers love consistent content, so try to make a schedule where you post 2 or 3 times a week if possible!

Yes or No?

Think you can have a successful small business blog? Try it out! Craft high quality content regularly, and see more visits to your website and hopefully you will get more customers!