If you have been reading our blog for a while, you are probably already aware of the multitude of benefits blogging can have on your small-to-medium-sized business. A business blog will boost your SEO, give your brand a voice, provide valuable customer service opportunities and establish your SMB as an authority in your industry.
Despite these benefits, starting a company blog can be easier said than done. Especially for a business owner, as your time and resources are most likely stretched thin.
So how often should you post new content on your blog? Where can you get content ideas? And what are some of the main reasons (and solutions) that many small and medium businesses fail to create regular blog content for their customers?
We will dig into these questions below, and (hopefully) give you some motivation and solutions for regularly posting new blog content to your SMB website.
So let’s dive in.
How often should you post on your blog?
Blogging is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to increase traffic flow to your website, so it goes without saying that the more often you post the better. If only time wasn’t a factor! By creating regular content on your website (via, the blog), you’re telling Google that “this website is actively maintained.” While many factors play into how Google views your website, just like with anything else, fresh is often better.
So to determine how often you should create new posts, we should first ask “why” are you creating content?
Are you managing a blog that is responsible for posting a quarterly newsletter? If that’s its only function, then you should only post four times per year. This is obvious so we’ll skip to the real reason we write blog content: to gain and satisfy readers.
Creating content to get more readers
There are billions of websites online and if YOUR website only has 5 pages, your odds of being found on the first page of search engines are 5:1,000,000,000. Pretty rough. It goes without saying (but I’ll say it) that the more pages you have, the more of the internet your website uses.
Still though, having 1,000 pages and increasing your odds to 1:1,000,000 is still a low ratio, it’s 200x better than before.
If your goal of creating new blog posts is to get more readers, you should be posting at least once per week. That’s not much but is certainly doable by most company standards. That is essentially 4-12 hours per month that is set aside for creating the future indexability of your website. It’s a low initial investment that can go a long, long way (as explained below).
Yes, blogging can be time-consuming, especially for a small-to-medium business owner. However, consider the below statistics when developing an editorial calendar for your SMB:
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- Businesses that published 16 or more posts per month saw a 3.5X increase in website traffic compared to their peers that blogged 0-4 times in the same timeframe.
- Similarly, brands that published 16 or more blog entries each month saw a 4.5X increase in business leads compared to other businesses posting 0-4 times per month.
- Companies posting 401+ blog posts during the study had over DOUBLE the amount of traffic to their website compared with similar brands posting 301-400 posts.
As time-consuming as it might be, regularly posting new content to your company blog will pay off with increased website traffic as well as an increased number of leads
How can your SMB find relevant content ideas?
Above all, your blog content should educate your readers. By providing valuable and useful information you will make your brand a trustworthy authority in your industry. This is not easy, obviously. Marketing is not easy. It’s a cutthroat business where everyone wants to win. So be prepared.
When creating this content, it is important to consider the different phases of the buying process and to create posts tailored to the audience in each of these phases. These phases include:
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- Awareness: During this phase of the buying process your content should show your potential customers that they have a need or a problem that needs to be fixed and that your SMB has the solution.
- Consideration: The consideration portion of the decision-making process is where you, as a business, have the opportunity to show your potential customers the possible solutions that exist to their problems. Now that the issue has been identified, you have the chance to show your target audience the variety of solutions that you can provide.
- Decision: Now it is your chance to close the deal. After showing your prospects that they have a problem, and the many solutions that you can offer, they are ready to choose. This is where your company needs to show them why you are the best choice. It is time to seal the deal!
Ideally, you would devote your time to creating at least 1-2 Awareness and Consideration posts per month. Decision content is a little more time consuming and detailed, so perhaps one piece every month is fine.
Main reasons small businesses fail to blog (and what to do about it)
There a variety of reasons SMBs fail to create regular content for their company blogs. And most of these revolve around either time or the sense of value that your brand places on creating blog content.
It’s time consuming
If time is the issue, there are many solutions. First of all, you may want to consider creating an editorial calendar. If you have no publishing schedule in place, it will be hard to stick to regularly posting. However, if you put a schedule in place you will get in the habit of posting, and soon you won’t even be thinking about whether or not you have time to roll out new content when your scheduled days to post come along.
Yes, quality content takes time but the long-term effects are worth the relatively small initial investment.
We’re out of ideas!
You’re not. Believe me, you’re not.
Another helpful habit to keep your SMB posting regularly is to keep an ongoing list of content ideas. We like to keep our ideas organized in Asana, but whatever your preferred platform for company project organization should work. You may want to break content ideas down into the previously mentioned categories: awareness, consideration, and decision.
A final tip for overcoming the adversary of time is to write ahead. Have some extra time one afternoon? Don’t put off the post until the day you a scheduled to post. Instead, draft it (and maybe a few more) while you have time and your creative juices are flowing. Having a few pre-written posts to fall back on during busy times will ensure you continue with your publishing schedule﹣even when time does become an issue.
Is it really worth the time?
If your issue is that you (or your brand) does not place a high value on creating new content, you may want to consider doing some further research on the importance of blogging. The previously mentioned study from Hubspot is a great place to start.
Great content may take a year or more to become a “hit.” There is no instant success in this game. Content marketing, or even inbound marketing as a whole, should not be your primary method of marketing. Inbound is, however, the most cost-effective in the long term and companies across the globe have seen great success in their efforts.
Finding relevant content ideas, figuring out a schedule and getting it done are key parts of a thriving SMB blog. We hope some of the above ideas and pointers will help you dive into the world of business blogging without looking back. Are there any resources or tips that we left out? Please let us know in the comments below!