Small business blogs are subject to lots of myths and misinformation. Despite being the most powerful tool at your business’s disposal, many small businesses miss out on the benefits of a blog. To help your business increase its traffic, leads and sales, we’ve spent some time myth-busting the 5 most common small business blog myths.
5. Blog Traffic is a Measure of Success
…and traffic cones are even less important.
Measuring the success of your blogging campaign is crucial. Otherwise, how can you tell if it’s helping your business? How will you know which aspects of your blog need improving, and which are working perfectly?
Metrics represent the obvious way to track and analyze your small business blog. There are a wealth of measurable stats that you could turn to – Facebook has Likes and Shares, Twitter has Retweets and Followers and G+ has its Plus 1’s. Unfortunately though, using these metrics as your sole indicator of success is a seriously bad idea.
These stats are known as vanity metrics – figures that look great, but don’t mean a lot to your business. A Twitter following of 20,000 may sound amazing, but it’s completely useless to your business if 0% of those 20,000 engage with you, or buy your product. High traffic to your small business blog will only improve business success if you’re able to convert it properly.
Focus on statistics like Engagement, Bounce Rate and CTA success instead of traffic and Likes. Make sure that you’re getting good traffic, but spend even more time making sure that you know what to do with your existing traffic!
4. Keyword Stuffing is a Great Idea
Keywords are one aspect of helping your small business blog achieve success. By including relevant, search engine friendly words, you attract more visitors to your blog. Great! But with keywords, less is definitely more.
Ditch the keyword density analysis and stick to general keyword concepts. In the wake of recent Google algorithm changes, you’re more likely to improve your rank by including synonyms and long-tail keywords. These are the less specific, but more relevant, keywords that attract visitors at a later stage of the buying cycle. In other words, they’re more likely to buy your products.
Start each post with a general keyword topic in mind, and focus on creating an engaging and helpful post. There’s no need to include 30 keywords in your small business blog – and doing so will ruin your blog!
3. Blogging is Separate from Social Media Marketing
Blogging and SMM go together like a glass of cold, crisp beer, and another glass of cold, crisp beer – really really well. Your small business blog provides you with the perfect content to share across your social media networks, and you can easily encourage discussion and engagement on each topic.
Social media can also provide incredible fuel for your blog posts. Try reading popular posts that your followers share, or even find out what questions they’d like answering. These questions can then become the topic for your next blog posts.
2. Blogging is a Short-Term Strategy
‘It’s been 8 minutes, WHY ISN’T IT WORKING?’
If you’re hoping to spend a month on your business blog, posting once a week, and see huge increases in traffic and sales – I’m sorry, I have bad news. Creating a successful small business blog is a long-term project, one that requires dedication, innovation, research and commitment.
Some people try and take shortcuts, using unscrupulous and often illegal ‘Black Hat’ techniques to rank their small business blog – but these practices only damage long-term prospects. After all, its only a matter of time until you receive a Google Webspam notice and drop down the rankings, and as we mentioned before – traffic is everything. Are visitors really going to buy from your spammy, low-grade blog?
The good news is that long-term blogs create long-term benefits for your business.
1. Businesses Shouldn’t Blog
Without doubt, small business blogging is the most powerful marketing tool for marketing your business. There’s no need to take our word for it though – these statistics will do the talking for us:
- 46% of people read blogs more than once a day. (HubSpot Science of Blogging 2010)
- Most people read 5-10 blogs. (HubSpot Science of Blogging, 2010)
- Nearly 40% of US companies use blogs for marketing purposes. (eMarketer, August 2010)
- B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who don’t. (Social Media B2B)
- Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages. (Content+)
- Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010)
- 92% of companies who blogged multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)
Sources: HubSpot and ExactTarget
In other words, if you want to increase your traffic, leads and sales, improve your brand reputation and customer retention, and make your business a world-renowned trusted resource – you need a small business blog. For tips, advice and resources to help set up your small business blog, check out our 4 part series, ‘Business Blogging 101‘ – starting with ‘How to Start a Killer Business Blog’.
If you’re interested in outsourcing your business blog, check out our blog management packages – and you could start benefiting from an expert business blog for only $49.
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