Thursday, November 24, 2016

Why All Malaysia SMEs Should Have a Company Blog

 

Does your company have a blog?

 

It remains a question that, even with so much being written about content marketing, still generates debates rather than a simple answer. SMEs, particularly those without a dedicated marketing department, might scoff at the idea, citing lack of time, or topics to write about, as reasons for neglecting their company blog. If they ever started one in the first place. In doing so, they are robbing themselves of the benefits a well-managed company blog creates.

Admittedly, many of these benefits are only realized after some time, but long-term benefits are much better than short-term gains. In this article we will explain six benefits of blogging, before presenting 10 quick blogging tips your SME should be following.

 

Here are the 6 Real Benefits of Blogging if you are Malaysia SME Business Company

 

1. Improved Search Engine Ranking

jacky web design lead generation

jacky web design lead generation

For many years it was the number of inbound links, and the use of keywords, that influenced how a website ranked in search results. With a better understanding of how people search, and how site owners manipulate links and keyword use, content value and freshness have been added to the list of influences search engines use when weighting results. Several variables apply in determining content value, but freshness is relatively simple – how frequently is the content on your website updated? And the easiest way to update your website regularly is through the introduction of a blog.

Introducing a blog to your company website, and posting to it regularly, will positively influence how visible your website is in search engine results. This is through a combination of factors, including:

  • Crawl Rate – the more frequently your website is updated, the more frequently the search engines will crawl and index it.
  • Index Size – the more frequently search engines crawl your website, the more pages they add to the index.
  • Keyword Use – posting regular blog entries allows you to use keywords relevant to your business or industry in a more natural way, which search engines prefer.
  • Inbound Links – a blog allows you to share useful and valuable content with your audience, and if they agree that it is useful and valuable, they are also more likely to link to it from their own website, or via Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

 

2. Builds Reputation and Trust

Blogs have a way of making businesses more personal. By sharing advice and information, you show that you are interested in building relationships, not just in closing a sale. It also gives you an opportunity to show your audience that you are an authority in your field, allowing you to build your reputation, and to establish trust. If the content you publish lends itself to being shared, this reputation and trust can then be amplified whenever your audience shares any of your content on their social networks.

 

3. Adds Value to Customer Experience

Adding value to your customer’s experience isn’t something that automatically follows the launch of your company blog. Instead it is something that builds over time, and is conditional to the amount of effort you put into your blogging strategy. One blogging principle that receives a lot of attention is the 80/20 rule, which is summarized by Beatriz Arantes as:

20% of the content should be for sales purposes, self-promotion, lead generation and advertisement. The other 80% should be about your customer: the problems they usually have, interesting data regarding your industry and other things that can be linked to your brand but not purely sales content.

It is only by following this rule that you can add value to your customer’s experience. You as a business owner also get to benefit, since this principle forces you to learn more about your customers; it challenges you to ask, “how can we help you?” Ruby Receptionists’ blog is full of informative articles that talk to their core audience, and even the posts that pitch the service are written in a similar style.

 

4. Increases Brand Awareness

Although not the only way to increase brand awareness, blogs are an effective, and low-cost tool for this. Unlike other marketing methods, blog posts continue to bring in traffic long after they were first published. As previously mentioned, regularly posting valuable information that is relevant to your audience has the potential to increase the number of websites linking to your content, while it definitely improves your visibility in search. Your brand awareness grows not only as a result of your company being more visible online, but also through having more people talking about it.

 

jacky web design business lead generation

jacky web design business lead generation

5. Generates Leads for Malaysia’s Local or Global Business

Each post you publish to your blog is seen as a separate page by search engines, and the more pages your website has, the more visible it is online. A large number of pages on your website not only increase visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs), it also increases the number of inbound links to your content and website. This, in turn, can result in a larger number of leads being generated – in the form of clicks on any call-to-action links, email subscriptions, and general customer enquiries. A study conducted by Hubspot found that companies with 51-100 page websites generate 48% more traffic than those with fewer than 50 pages, while companies with 101-200 pages of content on their website generate more than twice as many leads as companies with fewer than 50 pages of content.

 

6. Better Conversion Rates

Generating leads isn’t of any benefit unless you manage to convert them to sales, and an increase in the number of leads you generate does not automatically translate into additional sales. Part of the process still depends on you and your sales team, but blogging can help the process if your content manages to answer many common questions asked by your customers. A prime example of this in action comes from River Pools and Spas, as shared in the introduction to Jay Baer’s Youtility. Acting as a consumer instead of a sales person, co-owner Marcus Sheridan set about answering thousands of questions he had been asked by prospects and customers over the years. He did this in thoughtful and detailed blog posts on the River Pools and Spas website following the financial crisis of 2007-08, taking the company from the brink of bankruptcy to one of the largest pool sellers in the US, with 75% of their customers completing a purchase without ever talking to a sales person. Resources from: https://buildfire.com/smes-company-blog/

 

Here is a good short video explain about why you need a blog for your business or company.

 

Thanks for visiting our blog. We have put our best to serve our readers. We hope you are getting benefit from reading our blog. For any enquires about Penang Website Design & Online Social Media Marketing www.jackywebdesign.com.

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