Why do I bother? (The value of blogging)

I’ll be honest, writing blog posts is not my favourite thing to do. I bet nobody reads them (please comment to prove me wrong) and I would much rather be getting on with building websites. So why do I bother, and why should you bother too?

1. Blogging will generate extra visitors to your site. My philosophy is: the more content you have on your site, the more chance there is of someone finding you on Google. I like the analogy of content being like fishing hooks, the more hooks you have in the water the more chance you have of catching something. If you manage to find a niche subject to write about and it contains the right keywords you may find it drives a lot of visitors to your site. Also because of how WordPress works, some pages are generated automatically e.g. from tags that are assigned to blog posts. This is great for SEO and takes almost no effort.
2. It’s content that can be reused for social media posts and email marketing.
3. It helps to make your website seem current and alive. How many times have you seen a blog that hasn’t been updated for months? It makes it look like the owner has lost interest and the site has been abandoned. Potential customers may wonder if a business is still going in this situation.
4. Blog posts offer a chance to engage with your audience and find out what they think about a given topic through their comments.
5. Writing a blog post gives you a chance to write something that other people will link to – the phrase link-worthy content is often used to describe this. Content that has lots of links going to it will rank well in Google.
6. It gives you a chance to position yourself as an expert on a particular subject.
7. For me, it demonstrates how a blog works in case a customer is interested in having their own blog.

Ultimately the point of blogging for me, is to try and generate more visitors to my website and as a result, get more customers. This month 25% of my visitors have arrived at this site through the blog. That is a significant proportion of visitors who would not have found my site otherwise.