How Small Businesses are Using Blogs to Generate More Sales

There are millions of small businesses all over the world and millions more mushrooming every day. According to the World Bank, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) account for 90% of the world’s businesses and 50% of the world’s employment. 

The question is, how are these many small businesses able to make sales despite their overwhelming numbers. One of the biggest ways small businesses are drumming up sales is through their blogs.

And how exactly are they doing this, you ask?

Here are 6 ways small businesses are using blogs to generate more sales

1. Using high-quality content

High-quality content is one of the major weapons in the blog arsenal. Very few things increase the traffic to sites more than quality content. 

High-quality content must satisfy three major criteria. Is it useful? Is it entertaining? Is it unique? Businesses that have blogs with these criteria will very often build a bigger audience for their websites than businesses that do not.

Blogs with useful, entertaining, and unique content generally have a constant increase in their traffic. This traffic can easily be channeled to the product pages on the website and thus provide more chances of making sales. Also, more traffic typically translates to more leads and subsequently more conversions to sales.

2. Being consistent with posting

Consistency in posting is another way small businesses have managed to keep their visitors coming back to their website. Posting consistently assures the visitors that every so often, they expect something new coming up. And as human beings are naturally curious beings, with the right consistency, they just cannot wait to see the next post.

Posting consistently doesn’t necessarily mean making the biggest volume of posts. It means maintaining the frequency with which you post. This builds an audience that is regularly expectant of something new.

A satisfied audience is very likely to recommend your website to others which will also increase your traffic.

Small businesses that post regularly on their business have a more consistently growing audience and, as a result, more sales.

3. SEO and Keywords

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a proven way to get more traffic on your site or blog. Small businesses that know how to take advantage of SEO have much better chances of growing their brand and visibility. 

Good SEO gives you a better ranking on search engines. Everybody knows that if your site does not feature on the first page in the search results, it is more likely than not that it will never get looked at.

SEO makes sure that Google favors you in the people’s search results. This goes a long way to make your blog more visible and discoverable by new visitors.

Small businesses that have successfully optimized their business blogs for SEO have been able to increase their incoming traffic drastically. This eventually translates to generating an incredible increase in their sales.

4. Talk about your product(s) in your blog

Small businesses don’t have the luxury of running big-budget ads and commercials for their products. Therefore, they resort to cheaper options.

Blogging is definitely one of the most effective cheaper options for marketing products.

Keeping in mind that your blog content has to be unique, interesting, and useful, it never hurts to mention your new product in your posts.

The  biggest business ideal is to find a problem to solve in the community and solve it.

It is therefore very helpful to address a problem in your business blog post and show how your product solves the problem.

This draws both your new and regular readers to your product and ultimately results in more sales.

Most small businesses that have managed to incorporate product mentions in their business blog posts have seen significant increases in their sales as a result.

5. Adding a CTA

Small businesses do not have a lot of options when it comes to getting people to try out their new stuff. Business blogs provide a quick solution to this problem. It’s called Call To Action (CTA).

CTA is yet another way that small businesses have managed to use their blogs to increase their sales. 

CTA is an attempt to invoke a particular response from your blog readers. This is especially helpful after introducing a new product or during a promotional campaign. 

Your blog readers may not always automatically check out the rest of your website after reading your blog post. More often than not, they could use a little nudging in the right direction. CTAs provide just that. 

They point the customer in the right direction and let them take it from there. Small businesses have managed to drum up incredible sales using this CTA technique.

6. Adding an interactive comments section and give regular responses

This is another great way through which small businesses engage their customers using their business blogs.

Adding an interactive comments section allows the audience to respond to business blog posts and share their thoughts. 

Customers being able to share their opinions is not where it ends. It is followed up by quick and regular responses. This makes the customers feel a sense of belonging and ownership to your brand. 

A customer that genuinely feels like they have a stake in the business is one that is not only never going to leave but also is going to bring more people. This also lets them share their experience with the products, their likes, dislikes and all other kinds of feedback.

Small businesses then use this feedback to improve on their products and thus boost their sales.

Conclusion

Business blogs play a very big role in generating sales, especially for small businesses. Research by Hubspot shows that businesses that use their business blogs well have 13 times the chance to get a good return-on-investment compared to businesses that do not. 

Please do let us know if this was helpful.

FAQs

1. What is the biggest advantage of business blogs?

The biggest advantage of business blogs is that they provide an avenue for the business and the customer to interact in a mutually beneficial way.

2. What does it take to start a business blog?

It takes three steps. 1. Choose a platform to post your blog on. 2. Choose and register a domain name for your blog URL. 3. Pay for web hosting services. After that, you’re ready to start writing.

3. How long does it take to build a successful business blog?

This depends entirely on how many views make a successful blog to you, but generally if you are consistent with quality content, one year is good enough to get your blog going.