3 Questions To Answer To Determine If A Blog Would Be Helpful For Your Local Small Business
Published by Daniel Dahlen on
In a previous post about small business content ideas I highlighted some topics that could be used to generate different kinds of blog posts and today I wanted to step back and take a look at the utility of creating & maintaining a blog for your local business.
Before jumping into some of the questions to ask yourself whether a blog would be useful for your business, let’s do a quick rundown of what a blog is.
What Is A Blog?
A “blog” – short for “weblog” is essentially a running online diary that can be used to share thoughts, ideas, tips, news, commentary and more about a particular topic or topics.
Each entry or “post” in this online diary combines a combination of text (like what you’re reading now) with images, videos, links to other blogs, and is usually updated daily, weekly or monthly depending on the blog creators.
Blog creators can be individual authors, a group of individual authors and even businesses – including small businesses.
Small business blogs are typically written by the owner or its employees (or ghost writers), with topics driven by the work they perform or the products they sell.
Now that we know what a blog is, lets take a look at some key questions to ask whether or not a blog could be useful for your local business and your customers.
Do Your Customers Have Questions About Your Business, Products & Services?
One of the best uses of a small business blog is the ability to provide answers and insights for questions your customers have about your business.
Many of these questions could be answered via a Frequently Asked Questions section, which provide quick answers for your customer’s questions, but for some questions a deeper, more elaborate answer may be more useful for them.
Questions that require longer form answers are perfect topics for a potential blog for your small business website.
Do You Have Company News & Announcements You’d Like To Share?
Because of its “diary” style format, a blog is a great place to keep a running log of your company’s story.
Posting company news about local outreach & charity event participation, new product launches & availability, employee announcements and more would be useful for your customers (and staff) via your blog.
Do You Have Unique Local Insights About Your Industry?
Narrowing down topics even further, leveraging your blog to provide local insights related to your industry is a great way to establish trust and convey your business as the local “go-to” company.
Even though you may be selling products or services that could be available through larger companies, your local expertise in your market can give you a leg up and using your blog is a great way to provide that information.
Pros & Cons Of Small Business Blogging
Blogs may not work for every small business, depending on the industry, but here’s a quick rundown of the pros and cons that could help you determine further if it makes sense for your company:
Pros:
- Provide more thorough answers to business related questions
- Tell a running story about your business
- Establish trust, build authenticity and show off local expertise
Cons:
- Can be time consuming to create content
- Difficult to maintain without proper publishing schedule
- Depending on your industry, may not be worth the time
After reading this post, I hope you have a better understanding of what a blog is, some of the way to understand if you could benefit from starting one and some of the pros & cons of doing so for your small business.
