How A Virtual Assistant Can Help With Your Blog

If you run a business and your website does not have a blog, read on.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown of 2020, not having a website blog might not have been a significant detriment to your business. But the pandemic drastically reshaped the way consumers use the internet.  More and more, people are going online to make informed decisions about the products and services they use.

Specifically, buyers and consumers have dramatically increased their use of the internet and social media as tools for identifying products, researching and evaluating products, engaging with businesses, and making purchases. 

DO SMALL BUSINESSES EVEN NEED A BLOG?

Today, having a website blog – and a strategy to guide it – is one of the very best ways to drive traffic to your website. Regardless of the size of a business, having an active, frequently updated blog is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote the company organically. Today, a website blog is a critical part of any digital marketing plan because it can easily reach your target audience and bring them directly to your website. Additionally, a blog increases communication with current clients and can drive conversations that will convert leads into new clients or customers.

Even the smallest of businesses can benefit from having a blog. 

But who has time to blog?  Small business owners are already working incredibly hard.  One of the most common reasons for not having a blog is feeling like there is no time for one. With nearly 90% of entrepreneurs working on the weekends and a large percentage working more than 49 hours per week, adding hours to write and post valuable content feels, understandably, impossible. 

The purpose of THIS blog is to explain why a blog is critical and why bringing on a virtual assistant to help with it will ultimately be a wise, inexpensive step toward growing your business.

WHAT IS A BLOG, AND WHAT CAN IT DO?

A blog is a terrific way to communicate new service offerings to your clients or keep them abreast of what is happening with the company. A blog can be used to talk specifics about product developments, industry trends, personal insights, or whatever else may be of interest to a business’s audience. The blog space on a website can be used to promote any interviews, videos, or podcasts that the company has created or has been featured in. Blogs post offerings can be a continual stream of new content to be shared in newsletters or emails distributed to current and potential clients, reinforcing what the business is all about. 

Blogs can be a terrific way for a small business to distinguish itself from competitors and others within its market sphere.

A blog might spark a conversation with your readers, enriching their interaction with your website. Exchanging ideas with readers can foster greater intimacy with your clients, which can deepen loyalty. A blog can also create a feeling of connection with your prospective clients and buyers, encouraging them to choose to do business with you. Readers — both clients and potential clients – may feel compelled to share your blog with their connections, friends, and colleagues, which can help increase brand awareness.

Additionally, your blog can quickly become the gateway to your website for anyone who uses a search engine!

HOW BLOGS HELP DRIVE TRAFFIC FROM THE INTERNET

Every time a new blog posts on your website, it gets analyzed by major search engines like Google. The search engine’s crawler analyzes the blog and indexes its information and content. Indexing makes a blog searchable. Indexed pages show up in a search engine’s results page, which means if someone is looking for content, products, or services that you’ve written about, your blog, and your associated brand and website will show up as an option to click on by the searcher. 

A new blog post is a signal to Google and other search engines that the website is active and viable. 

Google and other search engines make it possible for people to find and then visit your site through your blog’s presence on the web. Those people might make a purchase or become a client, adding to the growth of your business.

So, blogs can become a great source of the traffic to your client’s website, and increased traffic means new clients or people interested in buying whatever services or products your client is selling.