Growing a Business is a Project Now

And that’s OKAY.

Okay I’m not necessarily saying that it was EASIER to build a business in times past – however… but it was definitely different. Many more businesses could use offline strategies to get clients, you didn’t have to think about every social media platform on the planet every day… and no one was waiting for their viral moment, because viral moments didn’t exist.

Again, not saying that means things were easier. But they were absolutely, super different. Local businesses could get by without even having a website – let alone one they could blog on.

There are Lots of Tasks to Juggle

And now we live in a very different world – one where Instagram reels and TikTok videos drive engagement, and if you don’t show up on Google searches in your area, you’re basically invisible to your potential clientele. If you have a brick and mortar location and you don’t have a listing on the map, you’re not going to be seen – and your competitors who do? They ARE going to be seen.

It’s entirely fair to say that juggling all of these things is too much, because well… it’s a lot of things. Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, Threads? Plus in person events, promotions, ads… getting in front of your people has never been more complex. But there have also never been so many opportunities to be seen by a larger audience. Always a silver lining, right?

Blogging for Small Business Growth is a Solid Strategy

If you’re overwhelmed by the sheer number of places you “need” to be present to promote your business, first of all, you’re not alone. I regularly feel what one could consider an upsetting level of overwhelm when it comes to the number of platforms I feel I should be posting on. But, overwhelm isn’t the point. What I come back to time and time again, is what we’re actually talking about today. Blogging.

In the face of a million platforms to post on – your own blog? It’s the most powerful one. Your blog is a tool you should absolutely be leveraging, and there are a ton of reasons why!

1 – You Own Your Blog

We’re going to start with the most obvious reason that your blog is somewhere you need to be putting content in this day and age. Those social platforms? You don’t actually own the things you put on them. And this has only gotten worse as time has gone on. People regularly lose access to Instagram accounts, Facebook accounts – and more. And on top of that, if you’re an artist who’s posting their art on those platforms, be prepared for platforms like Facebook to run your work through their AI without your explicit consent. (I say “explicit” consent, because you did technically agree to it… just not necessarily in full knowledge of what it meant).

But on your own blog? Your content can’t be taken down, or reach-throttled by a social media conglomerate because they didn’t like it. Obviously that can happen with the posts you make on social media ABOUT those blog posts – but… at least you’re not losing the original content.

2 – It Builds Authority (and not just with your customers)

The next reason blogging is a huge win for small business owners, is it builds authority – and I don’t just mean with your customers. Of course it does that – it helps to make it super clear that you know what you’re doing. It’s an opportunity to highlight deeper layers of your expertise that just don’t make sense to put on your primary pages.

But it also helps to build authority with search platforms, aka SEO! That is, as long as you’re blogging productively, and creating connections between your content and your primary pages. The more Google (and other search platforms, including those that involve AI) knows about what you do and how you do it – AND that you’re absolutely an expert… the more you’re going to rise in the search ranks, and show up in AI generated search results as well (despite my vague distaste for that concept as a whole).

3 – It Prequalifies Your Customers

Another major bonus of blogging to promote your small business, beyond that authority building, is the process of prequalification. Now this looks different for different types of business, but whether you’re a product seller or a service provider, it’s still important! Prequalification means the people purchasing your product are certain it’s going to solve their problem, or enhance their life. And that means fewer returns, fewer frustrating reviews, and overall less stress. For service providers, it means that you’ll have a clearer path to your ideal clients, because they’ll know that your service is right for them.

Blogging about topics that speak to their needs, where they are, where they want to be – the problem that you solve… it lets them see themselves at the end of the process you work through together. And at the end of the day? That’s what you should be doing in ALL of your online content! But going through this on your blog means it’s doing extra work for you, since it’s got all of those SEO implications, and is already somewhere you own!

4 – Blog topics make a brilliant Content Starting Points

This wouldn’t be a complete listing (and to be fair it’s not anyway, there are even more reasons I’m not covering here!!) if I didn’t mention that creating a topic list for blogging is an amazing starting point for the content you DO share on all of those other platforms! I mean think about it – even in this one blog post, I’ve got… a minimum of seven things I can create social posts about for Instagram, Facebook, and the like. The post itself will end up on Pinterest with pins that bring people here to read it, and I could even create reel-style videos that talk about each of the points I’ve made.

And you can do exactly the same thing with your content! So it’s not just about being able to quickly post a link to the blog post itself on social platforms. It’s about being able to expand upon the content you’ve written, and talk about the same topics in different formats, too.

If you start with long-form content – AKA blog posts – it’s a lot easier to create smaller bits of content from that starting point, than it is to create a bunch of different smaller pieces of content from scratch. Blogging gives you a ton to work with in your own presence, and can make the rest of content creation less stressful and overwhelming!

So… do you blog for your business? Are you going to?

Given all of this – and possibly more reasons you’ve read about elsewhere – are you going to take up blogging for the new year? How does it feel as a strategy to grow your business? I won’t lie to you – it’s not a quick win strategy, it’s a long term commitment. But man oh man, it pays dividends if you stick to it!