You need to do a lot for your business. From creating the initial business plan and formulating a budget to building an experienced staff who you can trust, businesses take serious work. One aspect of running a business that takes a tremendous amount of work is the creation and upkeep of your business’s website. Your website is the main form of your business’s online presence, representing your services and products, company history, and how to get in contact with you.

One important feature of a business’s website is its blog. Not only can a business’s blog be a useful informational tool for your customers and others in the industry, but it is essential for successful digital marketing. While every business should have a blog, certain types lose out on potential customers and revenue when they neglect to create one. Let’s take a look at which types of businesses can most acutely experience the benefits of having a blog.

Health and Beauty

Any businesses in the health and beauty industry can experience the benefits of having a blog. Whether you specialize in remedying hair loss or you are focused on selling all-natural skincare products, a blog can be great for your business. This is partially because one of the best benefits of having a blog is that you build trust with your audience.

By blogging regularly, you can share knowledge with your customers about whatever health and beauty topic your business specializes in. If you provide hair loss solutions, you can blog on a wide range of topics, including why it occurs, how to prevent it, and how to remedy it. Consistent blogging on topics like these will help your company assert its authority on everything related to hair growth and loss. When a potential client visits your website and sees these informative blogs, they’ll immediately see that you know what you’re talking about and that your business has the practical knowledge to help them get a full head of hair again.

Consistent blogging on topics that relate to your industry and that you know a lot about will also help your digital marketing efforts. Companies that publish more than 16 blog posts each month receive about 3.5 times more traffic than companies that publish zero to four posts every month. As long as your posts are optimized with the right keywords and contain truly useful information, they have the potential to appear at the top of the results page when people search for related topics. This prime spot on the search engine results page will help bring more people to your website. Once they’re on your website, these visitors have the potential to turn into real-life customers.

Hospitality

Successful marketing in the hospitality industry can be a challenge, as this is an industry highly influenced by when people travel and need to book accommodations. Since busy seasons are different for hotels in one town to the next, every company in the hospitality industry needs to identify when they get the most business and how they can capitalize on those times. They also need to find an affordable marketing strategy that they can utilize year-round that won’t break the bank. That’s where blogging comes in.

One of the most significant benefits of having a blog is that it doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg to maintain. Anyone who runs a hotel knows that they need to find ways to save money during off-seasons, meaning that many marketing efforts will go to the wayside. Yet, you also need to keep driving potential guests to your company’s website so that they book stays and you can keep making as much money as possible. Maintaining an informative blog on your website will help boost your SEO, or search engine optimization. As a long-term tactic that makes your business more visible than your competition in search engine results, SEO is as important in off-seasons as it is in busy ones. With a well-maintained blog, you can keep your SEO tactics alive and well during any part of the year.

To keep your blog up to date, all you have to do is write posts that are at least 500 words long and post them about once every week or every two weeks. You can, of course, write longer blogs or post more frequently if you like, but the guidelines above are the minimum for ensuring that your SEO stays effective. If writing isn’t your specialty or that of anyone on your current staff, you can look into working with an SEO company that has a team of experienced writers to do it for you.

The benefits of having a blog aren’t just limited to hotels; any business in the hospitality industry faces the same seasonal swings that hotels do. Whether you run a small bed-and-breakfast or you are a hotel door supplier, you need an affordable way to market your business throughout the entire year. By blogging on topics relevant to your industry, you can effectively drive traffic to your website and turn interested searchers into paying customers.

Educational Institutions and Programs

Although every school might not be considered a business that needs to drum up customers, there are many types of educational institutions and programs that can use a blog to their advantage. Private schools, charter schools, colleges, and academic summer camps all need to keep up enrollment so that their institutions can continue operating. Blogging is a great way to do that.

The main goal of any of these institutions is to promote education. Blogs are the perfect educational tool. Each blog post is a nugget of useful information, whether it is highlighting the importance of Spanish classes or it shows how a robust academic life can set students up for career success. Just as informative blogs can position health and beauty brands as authorities in their industry, high-quality blogs can show that your school or college is an expert in teaching students and preparing them for the next chapters of their lives. That kind of promise is effective in increasing enrollment, making it one of the biggest benefits of having a blog.

Any type of program or conference that depends on high enrollment rates for success can benefit from a blog for similar reasons. A business coaching conference, for instance, should have a blog on its website that has informative posts for entrepreneurs and business owners to help them run their business successfully. These posts will build trust in the readers, allowing them to trust the conference as the ultimate source for business advice and help.

Another one of the great benefits of having a blog is that it is an easy way to collect emails of interested prospects. You can encourage website visitors to subscribe to your blog posts. Now that you have their email addresses, you can send them direct emails about your conference or program as well as notifications about the latest blog posts. With this constant communication, you’ll have a greater chance of convincing them to enroll. This simple tactic can benefit you for years to come, as your regular emails may remind subscribers to sign up for next year’s conference or encourage them to get their friends or coworkers to subscribe to your emails.

Home Maintenance and Repair

Businesses that specialize in home remodeling, construction, and maintenance need a blog on their website as much as they need pages to explain their services and pricing. Not only will these businesses experience the benefits of having a blog that we’ve mentioned so far, but it will help them build brand awareness without breaking the bank.

Blogging is a key tactic in local SEO, a specific form of SEO that helps businesses attract customers looking for products and services in their geographic area. Businesses that are restricted by location, such as companies that service a home’s heating and cooling system or offer kitchen remodeling services, need local SEO to succeed.

Part of local SEO is using geo-targeted keywords in the content on your website. For instance, a kitchen remodeling company in Boston would use the keyword “kitchen remodeling in Boston” rather than “kitchen remodeling” in their local SEO strategy. The geo-targeted keyword is preferable because searchers will often use the name of their city when searching for a service in order to find services they don’t have to travel far for. A keyword like “kitchen remodeling” is also more general, meaning that more companies will be trying to rank on it. If your business doesn’t have the budget to compete on the more popular, general keywords, you can optimize your site for geo-targeted keywords that have less competition and much better chances of bringing you customers in the areas you service.

Businesses trying to take advantage of local SEO have the flexibility to target as many or as few geographic areas as they need. If an HVAC company services any of the towns in the tri-state area, it can utilize geotargeted keywords for each town. This would likely be a more costly endeavor, but it would ensure the HVAC company gets business from the many towns it services, not just New York City. If a remodeling company wants to focus its efforts on just one residential community because homeowners there have been going through a renovating phase, it can use geo-targeted keywords for that community in its blog posts. Then, anyone in that community looking for home remodeling services will be more likely to find the company’s website. They can then view the company’s past blogs that position them as an expert in the remodeling industry and subscribe to the company’s email. All of the benefits of having a blog can come together from the efforts of building brand awareness.

Delivery Services

Even businesses that primarily see revenue by delivering products rather than selling them can experience the benefits of having a blog. Today’s consumers are used to getting what they want at lightning speed. They order a product with a click, receive a confirmation, and within just a few days it is sitting at their door. If your website doesn’t convince a consumer that they can trust you to get them their goods with the speed they love, they’ll turn to your competitors for faster service.

This makes having a blog that denotes expertise and authority essential for companies that provide delivery services. A cannabis dispensary, for instance, will likely have blog posts about the quality of its products and news in the industry. While these blogs are important for the sale of the dispensary’s products, it should also have blogs on any delivery services it offers. When a customer sees that one dispensary knows the importance and strategies behind efficient delivery, they’re more likely to choose that dispensary over another because they know they’ll be able to get their order more quickly.

Another one of the important benefits of having a blog is that it gives customers the opportunity to leave feedback about your business. Readers can leave comments on blog pages or share your posts on social media. Customers will let you know exactly what they think in their comments and shares, whether it’s about your specific service or the topic of the blog. Either way, you can use this feedback to adjust your services or marketing strategies accordingly. And, of course, positive feedback will help encourage anyone who sees it to also turn to your business for their needs. This can especially benefit delivery services, which depend on reviews from real-life customers to prove they are reliable and efficient.

Blogging is more than just splashing words on a webpage. By using effective SEO strategies and putting thought into the type of content you’re writing, your business’s blog can attract readers who turn into paying customers.