The Benefits of Blogging and Answering: Should My Company Blog?

We often get asked: is it really beneficial for my company to have a blog? Or, we are so busy, do we actually have time to blog?

The answer to both of those questions is a resounding – shout it from the mountaintops – YES! I mean, after all, you’re reading a blog right now, so I’ve already gained your attention.

Let’s start with the former of the two questions: is it beneficial for your organization to develop/support a blog?

Should We Blog?

There are considerable and significant reasons that businesses, non-profit organizations, industry leaders, and business newcomers should all consider a blog a critical part of their overall marketing efforts. Here’s why:

• Owned Content. We believe in the three-legged approach to marketing initiatives: owned, earned, and paid efforts. Blogging falls solidly in the “owned” category, meaning you can own the content and delivery mechanism for your communications. This allows you to share your insight directly and in the way you’d like to communicate it– via the website, social media platforms, newsletters, etc.

• Improved Website SEO. Based on the blog’s content, you can drive more qualified and potential customers to your website when you tag specific words your organization wants to be known for/found by, increasing website traffic and credibility in the marketplace. Whether it’s your current services and/or any new services you launch, writing blogs with insight about these will enhance traction to your website and company overall.

• Content for/on Social Media. Blogs should be shared and referenced on your social media channels to garner attention for your areas of focus and expertise. It makes it easily shareable for others who might be connected in the same organization and/or business.

• Client/pipeline communications. We often use blog content in bi-weekly or monthly communications to current clients and those in the pipeline to continually stay in front of them. This has been an extremely useful tool in driving business opportunities.

Blogging with Limited Time

Now, let’s get the meat of what usually holds up most organizations from blogging: time. There’s never enough of it and blogging seems right at the bottom of your list, right? Consider this. What if you map out a blogging topic list and assign or have individuals closest to those topics volunteer to write them.

At Chartwell – as well as most of the clients we work with – blog writing is shared among the team members. For example, here at Chartwell, we rotate so that each team member takes a turn blogging every nine weeks (since there are nine of us). That’s not too much time nor inconvenience on your schedule if you can think ahead.

And don’t plan to write the next War & Peace. The optimal blog length is 500-800 words. Longer blogs are good, too, with subheads, bullet points, and graphics. Or consider breaking a longer blog into two posts.

Blogging ROI

Finally, if you’re not convinced yet, here are some fast facts about the ROI of blogging:

• B2B businesses that blog achieve 67% more monthly leads than those that do not.
• Websites with blogs have 97% more inbound links than those that don’t.
• Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13X more likely to enjoy positive blogging ROI.
• Eighty percent (80%) of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement. (Considering that 57% of the buyer journey is complete before prospects reach out to vendors, your blog can act as an important part of your funnel before you even begin a conversation.)
• According to B2B Content Marketing 2020: Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 89% of the B2B companies surveyed were blogging. Clearly, the investment in blogging is significant and the business value is worth investigating.

If you really would like to enhance your marketing visibility through blogs, Chartwell can help. In fact, for many of our clients, we draft about 80% of their blogs – and they review and approve. As long as we have the topics, and perhaps, sometimes about 15-20 minutes on the phone (if necessary) we can develop strong blogs that provide enhanced visibility and thought leadership.

We strongly believe in the benefits of blogging and recommend it as the next step in your marketing journey.