How to Use Your Blog for Business

January 31, 2025 By Ashley Orndorff, aka Marketing Geek

What is your website doing for your business? A website should be more than a digital billboard for your business. It should be a resource for potential customers to find the information they’re searching for and a place where customers can connect with your business. This means that your website cannot sit untouched. It needs to be updated regularly with fresh content and functionality in order to keep up with technology and with your customers’ needs. Having an active blog on your website is a great way to regularly update your website with fresh content that is relevant to your target audience. Here’s how to use your blog for business:

1. A Business Blog Can Build Authority

Writing blog posts about topics in your industry helps position your business as an authority in it. It also has the positive side effects of boosting brand awareness and your brand’s reputation. The more helpful and informative insights you can share the more your business will become a resource for customers and others in your industry.

On top of building authority and brand awareness, writing valuable articles shows potential customers who are not familiar with you yet that you know what you’re talking about. For some potential customers, this can be one of the factors that makes them choose your business over a competitor. This is one of the things businesses should know about blogging.

2. Blog Posts Can Answer Customer Questions Pre-Purchase

In addition to building your brand’s authority, a blog is a great way to answer questions from your customers. Straightforward questions with short and simple answers can be addressed with an FAQ section or within blog posts about larger topics. Purchasing questions often require more information, which you can dig into and provide in blog posts.

Customers who are just starting their research and those who are ready to buy have questions about your industry and the services you offer. They’ll be searching for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.

If you’re the one who can provide that answer or that solution, then you are more relevant and are more likely to gain that customer’s trust. This starts the relationship with a potential customer off on the right foot with a positive experience that can lead to them becoming a customer. In this way, blogging can be a resource that can help you build strong customer relationships.

3. Blog Posts Can Help Customers Make Purchasing Decisions

Using blog posts to answer common questions your customers have is a great way to target potential customers who are at the top or in the middle of the funnel. But, you’re not limited to topics in those areas either.

Blog posts can also be targeted toward potential customers at the bottom of the funnel who are ready to buy and are finalizing purchasing decisions. Creating highly relevant content for your target audience and targeting it to the right step of the buying process can help you increase blog post conversions and leads for your business overall.

Dig into your website analytics, do customer research, do keyword research, and explore tools that can help you use data to generate content ideas. This can help you identify what topics matter most to your customers during the purchasing process and can help you map out content to support the buyer’s journey from beginning to end.

4. A Blog Can Assist With Customer Onboarding Post-Purchase

Whether your business focuses more on creating products or delivering services, your customers will have questions post-purchase. Blog posts and other online resources can be published on your website to assist customers post-purchase. Not only does providing this help empower your customer, but it can also help provide a better user experience and improve customer retention.

These resources could be guides, instructions, troubleshooting, etc. for products. For food products, recipes can be a fun and useful supplemental resource. Articles and tips related to interior design can be great for decor and home products. Walkthroughs, common questions, etc. tend to be a good fit for both products and services.

5. An Active Blog Can Increase Website Traffic

Regularly adding to your blog is another way to expand your website with relevant content. It’s also one of the ways to drive traffic to your website. Larger websites tend to get more traffic from search engines simply because there is usually more relevant content associated with that website and a more established brand.

The more relevant, authoritative content you can associate with your website, the more likely people will visit your site and use it as a resource. The more people who view your site as a resource and visit it, the more search engines will view your site as relevant. Over time, blogging increases the authority of your site and the traffic to it.

6. A Blog Can Help You Grow an Email List

A strong and engaged in-house email list is a powerful resource for your business and is a great way to stay connected with potential and current customers. These are some of the biggest benefits of email marketing.

People usually need a reason to sign up for something and receiving blog updates is a great way to do it, as long as you are providing worthwhile, valuable content. You can also incorporate lead magnet ideas to offer other valuable resources in addition to information on your blog to encourage signups.

Normally, growing an email list this way is a slow process. However, it also tends to grow a stronger and more engaged group of email subscribers than buying a list or gaining subscribers through other methods. An in-house email list gives you another channel of traffic to your website and another potential revenue stream for your business.

A Good Blog Can Help Your Business Grow

Regular blogging on your website may not make a big splash at first, but it can help you grow your business over time. If your website has been a digital billboard for too long, it’s time for some website design, development, and marketing. Contact us for a meeting of the MINDs to talk about giving your website a fresh look, improved functionality, and a content strategy!