Have you ever asked “Why blogging is important?”, or tried to figure out if it’s valuable for the business or idea you have? If so, you’re in the right place because in this article, we’ll be discussing the importance of blogging in effort to help you decide if it’s a good option to help you increase the sales in your business.

The term “blogging” is becoming more and more popular. It’s possible, you’ve heard people talk about “blogging”, and you may have had someone tell you that blogging is a good thing for you to do.

Since you’re hearing the term more, you might be wondering what it is and what does it have to do with you. Besides, you could have a trade (like bookkeeping, accounting, legal), you could be a product creator (like a designer, online educator, or manufacturer), or you could be selling products or services some other way, so it’s odd for someone to tell you to do something like “blog”, right?

Besides, what does “blogging” have to do with your business?

In this post, I plan to answer several questions that can help you to see the benefits of blogging for business. We’ll be talking about:

• When it’s a good idea
• When it’s not a good idea
• The advantages and disadvantages
• and, help you decide if blogging is a good option for you.

What is a Blog?

First, if you aren’t familiar with what a blog is, let me first answer the question, what is a blog?”.

Right now, you’re on a blog. It’s basically a website with functionality that enables me to create articles, embed videos, embed graphics, and engage with an audience internationally. As the internet is growing, more and more people are using it for day-to-day decision-making. They ask all kinds of questions into Google, Bing, Yahoo, or on social media.

Unfortunately, search engines are software robots without the ability to answer the questions unless the content is programmed into it. Bloggers create the content that is served to internet users all over the world. As the internet continues to grow, this demand for online content will continue to grow, and those who are satisfying the demand will benefit from supplying what’s in demand to the world economy.

What does it mean to “Blog”?

When you “blog”, you are basically creating content for people online. You could be making articles, graphics, adding images, doing research, or engaging with your readers–all of these tasks tend to be bulked into the term “blogging”.

What is the Purpose of Blogging for Business?

When you start a business, you have to have a way to let people know about the products and services you offer–this is how you get sales which is how you make income. Most businesses tend to choose from options like:

• Word of mouth
• Handing out flyers
• Going to events
• Renting out billboards
• Going to trade shows
• Telling people by going door to door
• Handing out business cards
• Or other variations

The goal is to inform alot of people about what you’re offering, so you can get more potential customers and sales–this is crucial to growing a business.

A blog serves as an alternative or compliment to other marketing efforts. Blogging can serve as either an alternative to other marketing and sales methods, or it can serve as something you do to amplify the reach your business has.

The internet is currently used by over 4 billion people and over half of the world population. When you write an article online, the reach is so much broader than if you hand out flyers in your local area.

Added to that, your blog is like your own robot. Once you program it with content, it can spew out the answers to people using the internet to find information that’s relevant to your expertise. When people find satisfying answers on your website, they build trust with you, they become aware of your brand, and they’re more likely to do business with you going forward.

The Benefits of a Blog for a Startup Entrepreneur

As a startup entrepreneur, you might only know that you want to start a business and experience the benefits of entrepreneurship. Many startup entrepreneurs I work with might not have a solid business idea. You might be able to relate.

You might know you want:

• To earn extra money
• To fix a problem that’s bothering you or others
• To make a bigger impact
• To have something to hand down to future generations
• To get out of having a job
• To have more creativity and self-fulfillment with the work you do
• Or, to leave the corporate setup

But, sometimes, the details of “how” aren’t all ironed out. If you start a business another route, you might having much higher overhead costs (paying for things like rental space, patents, manufacturing, product development, product testing, visiting people and testing the service you want to provide, etc.). Instead of the “traditional route” of starting a business, starting a blog enables you to get started with very low overhead, and to build an audience first, so when you have clarified the products and services you want to offer, you’ll have an audience to launch them to–this usually translates into better results for startup entrepreneurs in most instances.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Blogging

Blogging definitely has it’s advantages and disadvantages in comparison to other methods of prospecting for clients or getting more people to know about your products and services. I’ve compiled a list of advantages and disadvantages for you to consider.

Advantages of Blogging

• Broad reach
• Not contingent on location
• It’s leveraging intellectual property
• Your blog can be working even when your sales and marketing team is not
• It’s a 24/7 sales and marketing operation
• It’s inexpensive in comparison to alternative marketing methods
• You can have millions of visitors to your blog (if you master lead generation online)
• You can have very detailed analytics that help you with properly targeting the right prospects going forward
• If you choose to spend on ads, you pay for results
• You can work with online salespeople (or affiliates) to sell your products or services
• You can grow a virtual sales team of affiliates who help you sell your products on a commission-based contract
• A blog can be built into an asset (like real estate) that improves the net worth of a business or individual

Disadvantages of Blogging

• It takes time to build a reputation online
• It’s a learning curve to see how it works
• It may not be enjoyable for people who don’t like to write, create video, create audio, or create graphics
• It may have higher costs associated if you want to outsource the digital marketing plan entirely
• It may be a challenge to balance (if you have clashing priorities like a product or service that you spend a large amount of time delivering)

Who Should not Consider Blogging?

Business Blog Examples

There are several companies (big and small) that have decided to make blogging work, and it’s driven billions of dollars in sales since the inception of blogging. For sure, blogging works when business owners decide to take it seriously. Here are some examples…

Service-based Business Blog Examples

• Care.com – This site uses their blog to sell nanny services and childcare
• Wealthy Affiliate – This site uses their blog to sell web hosting, technical support, business networking, and affiliate marketing training
• Incfile – This site uses their blog to sell incorporation services

Handmade Product Examples

• Etsy (and many of the sellers) – Etsy and many of the Etsy sellers use a blog to sell their handmade products

Affiliate Product Examples

• Smart Passive Income – Pat Flynn uses his blog to sell online courses, advertising, and affiliate products

Other Product-Based Business Examples

• EOFire.com – EOFire uses his blog to get guests on his podcast, to get sponsors, sell his courses, and sell advertising

How does a blog Directly Impact Sales of a Company?

In a traditional “sales plan”, you might attend events, cold call, send emails to people you don’t know, try to connect with people on social media, and do a plethora of other things to meet potential customers, and make sales. Most salespeople deal with lots of rejection because they have to approach people that aren’t all relevant to what they’re offering.

Blogging as a way to Prospect

With blogging (or inbound sales), you can write content that segments the audience down even more–this way you can attract many “ideal customers” to your business. You don’t have to worry about people hanging up the phone on you or slamming their doors because the people visiting your website have entered into search engines a keyword or phrase they want information about, and landed on your page.

They’re coming to you rather than you coming to them.

Even if they come to your website from social media, they’ve still chosen to click on a post or ad because they saw something that interested them. When you have people coming to you, then it’s a different conversation. Rather than explaining why you’re interrupting other activities they were doing, you can educate thru a blog post on how to do something with a call to action that pushes them closer to a sale.

Blogging as a way to Handle Objections

As an entrepreneur, it’s very likely that when you’re selling your products and services, you’ll have people who have fears, reservations, questions, or they might not understand how the product or service can be most helpful for their use-case–these are called “objections”. Even if a person intends to buy a product, they may have objections that get in the way of the sale.

For example, I went to Walmart to buy a charger for my phone. There were many to choose from, and I wanted to make sure I got the best one. When I compared many of them, I couldn’t tell if they had the features I was looking for, and I was torn between two. Without speaking to someone who was more knowledgeable about the chargers who would help to “handle the objections”, I probably would have walked away without buying anything, and went home to do more research online. Luckily, there was a person I was able to ask about my “objections”. They answered my questions and I walked away with a good charger.

Situations like mine happen online and offline. Depending on what you sell, you may have people who can help handle objections on site, but when you don’t, it can be nice to have a blog post you can send that addresses those objections. When they can go and engage with your content (video, article, graphic, ebook, etc.), it can help to answer the questions they might be having that prevent the buyer from taking action and making a purchase.

Once you have content on your website, you can link from post to post to take a person from the phase where they’re just realizing they have a problem and closer to a sale.

Blogging as a way to Make Sales

Once the prospecting and objection handling is done, you can set up complete checkout systems online; regardless of whether you sell a product or a service. There are e-commerce platforms and payment processors that make it extremely easy for customers to check out with your product or service entirely online. With good content that explains things well, your blog can educate, prospect, handle objections, and even make the sale!

Blogging as a way to Diversify Business Income

Not only can blogging be beneficial to build streams of income from validating product and service ideas, and selling your own products and services, it can also present many opportunities for you to partner with complimentary brands, promote their products and services, and get paid for advertising thru agreements like affiliate marketing.

What are the Benefits of Having a Blog?

Blogging has several benefits including:

• Blogging helps with prospecting, handling objections, and processing sales online
• Blogging serves as a portfolio that demonstrates your expertise
• A blog can turn into a high value asset that impacts the net worth of your business (by writing on high-demand and high-value topics in an authoritative and helpful way)
• A blog can be monetized and help with diversifying a business’s revenue streams
• Blogging helps to build an audience, strengthen the recognition of a brand, and create a culture for a business
• Blogging can help to validate business ideas before investing lots of time and effort into them

Can blogging be a business?

Yes. Some people may decide that instead of focusing majority of their time on creating products or services, they want to focus a large portion of their time on delivering information: similar to a magazine, television show, or other type of media company.

It’s not required to dedicate the same focus on blogging if you have a primary product or service you deliver. Instead, you can partner with marketing agencies that would help you promote your business with content marketing by creating affiliate agreements, sponsorship agreements, and working with blogging business owners.

Blogging can either be a complimentary marketing activity or it can be the main service offered in the business.

Blogging can be the primary function of a business, but still, the monetization would have to be planned carefully. The actual typing duties or content creation functions of starting a blog aren’t exactly what makes the money. Instead, the blog makes money when it helps to bring a sale to your company or to someone else’s company–this means that in order for blogging to work as a standalone business, the focus has to be on creating valuable content, and using it to sell products and services for you or others.

Monetizing a blog can take the form of:

• Affiliate marketing (my #1 recommended way to make money blogging)
• Sponsorship
• Selling digital products
• Selling online courses
• Selling advertising space
• Hosting premium events
• Offering a membership of some sort
• Or, selling physical products

How do you get Started Blogging?

Getting started with a blog is very simple. You build a website, choose an audience you want to serve, and begin creating content. If you’d like to see what it’s like to start a blog for free, you can get free training and a free website here to give it a try, or use this website builder below…

Conclusion

Overall, blogging is a new way of marketing a business and getting sales, and it’s massively changing the way we do business. Since the internet is growing, more and more people are buying things online, and looking to discover products and services that can solve their problems. Blogging is a great way to introduce products and services to the massive audience that’s using the internet.

Considering that it’s a way to leverage your time and diversify your business income (in addition to many other advantages), many entrepreneurs are starting blogs. In fact, some of the largest businesses of our time attribute their growth to blogging and content marketing (including industry leaders like Amazon). If you’re interested in trying this marketing option and seeing if it can work for your brand, check out the blog starter bundle.