Small business owners can often see blogging as a waste of time. They reason there’s already so much involved in running an actual business – taking time out to write on a regular basis is just too much of a drain on their time. However, blogging has so many great benefits for you and your business.

Blogging builds relationships

Whether or not you get inundated with comments and/or social media shares on your blog, having a regular blog page will build relationships. Visitors to your site will have a chance to experience what you have to say and how you can help them, without having to commit to anything.

By posting regularly, you’ll be building on your reliability factor too, as visitors will begin to rely on you to post – along with when to come back to your site to check for new content!

Blogging helps your site rankings

Having regularly updated content on your site will help your website rank better – especially if it’s keyword specific. Look to use words that are specific to your niche and what your target market would use, when searching for answers to the problems.

Blogging builds your expertise

The biggest benefit of blogging is it actually helps position you as an expert in your field. It’s a chance to get your unique talents out there and share what you’re passionate about.

It allows you to build a virtual library of useful, relevant and helpful content for your chosen audience – content that can you can then repurpose into programs, webinars and books.

How to get started

If you’re on WordPress, it’s super-easy to get started – you simply need to create a new page and title it ‘blog’. You can then go into ‘general settings’ and ‘reading’, to change the ‘posts page’ settings to point to this new blog page. (If you’re not on WordPress, ask your website designer to install WordPress on a specific blog page for you).

Once you’ve done this, you can start creating blog posts. Every time you want to create a post (or individual article), you simply have to go to ‘posts’ and ‘add new’. Give your post a title and, once you’ve entered the content, click either ‘publish’ (to post it straight away) or the ‘edit’ button underneath (to select a date in the future).

Blogging is only as difficult as you make it. The only thing you must do is commit to a regular routine for posting – whether that’s once a week, each fortnight or every day!

How often do you post on your site? Do you have an existing blog, or is it something you’re struggling with? Why not share your thoughts and opinions on blogging in the comments box below.