Of course it’s important… why would I say otherwise? Okay so it’s a given this would be my view… I’m a blogger. However, I’m not being glib about this because actually blogging is still a vital activity, whether you’re a business, freelancer or a plain old blogger like me. I’m going to explain why blogging is important and outline the material benefits it offers to anyone.
I’ll start off by looking at why blogging is important on a personal level and then move more towards the benefits for anyone trying to make money or grow their business.
1. Expressing Yourself
An obvious one to begin with, but blogging can be an important personal outlet for anyone wanting to express themselves. It’s your blog and you can write about whatever subject takes your fancy.
You want to be a creative writer? Write stories in your blog. You like movies? Become a blogging film critic. You’re fanatical about a sport? A blog can be the conduit through which you share your passion.
You can blog about anything you want and in the manner you want. You have the freedom to express yourself in any way you desire.
2. Pushing You Outside Your Comfort Zone
Blogging can be an uncomfortable activity, especially when you start out. Many bloggers start anonymous blogs because they’re concerned about what others might think. Some bloggers remain anonymous forever. The choice is yours.
But even as an anonymous blogger, putting your personal thoughts into the public space pushes you out of your comfort zone.
While there are benefits to being public about who you are, blogging forces you outside stretches you regardless. As we’re often told, working on things that challenge you is important… and blogging is no exception.
3. Teaching and Learning
The Internet is an amazing place to learn new things or solidify the things you know a little about already.
Blogging is the perfect platform to help people learn the things you know… and if you’re proficient in a subject, why shouldn’t you share your knowledge with others?
Teaching others about the things you know is gratifying. It’s a good feeling to know you’ve helped someone out, even better if they take the time out of their day to tell you so.
In this respect blogging is super important. Most blogs offer information and learning tools free. Of course, some of this might be gated (I have no problem with people selling their knowledge), but a good deal of information about whatever subject you can think of is freely available online.
Being a part of a community that teaches and learns is enriching… and that’s important for sure.
4. Show Your Expertise
Whether you’re looking for a job or trying to grow visitors to a website, running a blog is a great way to demonstrate expertise in your field.
Blogging benefits job seekers by showing potential employees the depth of your knowledge and experience as well as highlighting commitment to your field.
For businesses, including contractors and freelancers working for themselves, a blog presents you with opportunities to show current and potential customers and clients that you know your industry and have the content to back it up.
A blog can also provide a place to interview influential people in your industry and by doing so connect your brand to them.
5. Blogging Can Play an Important Role in Personalizing a Business
We’ve all seen hundreds of business portfolio sites. They serve an important function: to advertise what a business does and what it can do for you. However they can be a little cold and impersonal.
To a certain extent that’s not a problem because businesses need to appear professional. On another level though, it’s tough to engage with a business that’s… well… all business!
Blogs can be an important tool for businesses who want to develop closer relationships with people. They provide an environment where a business can demonstrate less of the business face and show more of their personality.
Content written from a more personal perspective, shows prospective customers the people behind a business, and makes it easier for them to engage with you.
6. Blogging Helps Your Other Online Channels
Writing any blog post, but especially more in-depth discursive types of post, can be used as an important part of content planning for your other online channels.
You can repurpose blog posts in a variety of ways to provide content that’s appropriate for:
- Instagram.
- Pinterest.
- YouTube.
If your blog post has professional value, why not repurpose it, or publish it in it’s entirety to your LinkedIn page?
You can convert a blog post into a podcast with relatively inexpensive but high-quality recording equipment. Or perhaps you have access to video production tools and can make a video… with your blog posts fuelling the content for it.
Snippets of your posts can be used for week’s worth of tweets on Twitter or microblogs on Instagram. And depending upon your business model, you might create a series of “pins” derived from any images you use in your post to increase your reach on Pinterest.
High-value blog posts can provide you with numerous ways to repurpose and extend what you’ve written into lots of different areas to help you grow your business…. and it’s a major reason why a blogging is so important.
7. Blogging is Important for SEO
Let’s not forget SEO benefits.
Putting a content plan in place ensures your blog is updated frequently. Now… Google says that you do not get an explicit SEO benefit for a having a high posting frequency, though you may see crawlers hitting your blog on a more frequent basis. In my opinion this is a benefit, since your posts will likely be indexed and available to search results more quickly.
Notwithstanding any SEO benefit for posting frequency, the more blog posts you publish the more opportunity you give yourself of appearing in search results.
Writing about different topics in your niche will give you potential to spread your keyword net more widely and it’s possible you’ll rank for more varied niche keyword searches.
If you appear more in search you increase your potential reach and you might see more visitors as a result… and blogging makes this important factor much more likely.
Not only this, but the more value your posts provide, the more likely it is that someone will link to something they’ve read and enjoyed… and links definitely provide an important SEO benefit.
More content means more possibilities for you to keep visitors on your site longer. The longer your visitors remain on your blog, the lower the overall bounce rate on your domain.
Find out why bounce rate is important.
8. Long Term Growth
Your blog posts are assets that continue to pay dividends over the mid to long-term.
I’ve already touched upon SEO and the benefit in terms of your blog are that they tend to improve over time. As a rule of thumb, and assuming your content is evergreen, your blog posts will become more powerful as they mature in age.
Mature blog posts tend to perform better in search results as your overall SEO improves, and this means that blogging has the potential to deliver growth in the future that outstrips the number of visitors you enjoy from them from any initial promotion you’ve done for them.
As time passes and you build up a bank of content, each blog post can contribute increasingly to the number of visitors finding you.
9. Making Money
I’ve left this until last! One of the most important reasons for blogging is it can make you money.
If you’re a freelancer, blogging regularly increases the likelihood that someone looking for the services you provide will find you. You might be able to turn blog visitors into paying clients.
Businesses too will benefit from increased reach to find new customers interested in your products and services.
Aside from the time it takes to write and prepare, it costs nothing to produce a blog post to support something you’re promoting. If you have any kind of following, you can promote an offer or product launch by blogging about it.
Publishing content around a sales launch enables you to talks directly with your customers and provide a more personalized way to deliver your sales messages.
Finally, and no less importantly, we come to the solo-blogger working tirelessly to write about the things that interest them. Solo-bloggers can earn a decent side income or even match their full-time pay if they can build a successful blog that enjoys lots of visitors.
Find out more about how bloggers earn money.
Summary
I’ve explained some of the reasons why I feel blogging is important… in my view, everyone should have a blog! A blog can:
- Help you to express yourself.
- Push you outside your comfort zone.
- Teach and learn.
- Show your expertise.
- Personalize your business.
- Support your other online channels.
- Help SEO.
- Long-term growth.
- Make you money!
Missive ends!
Paul
Why do you think blogging is important? Leave a comment below and let’s discuss it.
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