Dismissing the idea of starting a blog whether it’s a small company or a big one might be hurting your business. We are in a digital world right now and it’s very crucial that you have a strong online presence.

Big companies might make an excuse like, “Our company’s already prominent. We don’t need to waste time just to write blogs every week. It’s very time consuming. And it’s hard generating new content every week.” That’s a good excuse if you’re a bad entrepreneur. But if you’re a good entrepreneur, you see the value of blogging.

Small companies might say, “We’re a start-up. We don’t even have a logo yet. And you want us to prioritize blogging? Forget it. Additionally, we’re not good writers. We don’t have the talent to write.” Well that’s a good excuse too. But you don’t need to be a best selling author like James Patterson to write a blog. As long as your blog provides value, then it’s good to go.

Don’t put all your eggs in only one basket. What I mean by this is, don’t just rely on Facebook to promote all your services and products. Additionally, don’t rely on your company website without utilizing the blog section. You gotta use that. Blogging has a lot of benefits and it won’t hurt to generate content at least once or twice a week. If you’re committed, then you might actually want to produce more than two.

So here are five reasons why you should start writing a blog today: (Read along for two bonus tips at the end. Enjoy!)

1. IT GENERATES LEADS.

Blogging is a digital marketing tactic. The goal of marketing is to attract. So the more quality content you put out there, the higher the chances of attracting customers and clients. They start getting interested on what you have to offer. The more attracted customers, the more it leads to closed deals and sales. I don’t know about you, but when I read an article online and it helped me answer the questions I had initially before I read the blog. I share it on my Facebook account and I start promoting it, as If I wrote the article myself.

Can you see what I’m pertaining to? You gotta write blogs that are so good that customers can’t help it but to share it to everyone they know and to their social media platforms because of the value that it provided. It helps spread awareness to your business.

2. YOU GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO SHARE WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED FROM YOUR EXPERIENCE.

Ever heard of the saying “Giving is Selfish.”? Denzel Washington said from one of his speaking events, “The most selfish thing that you can do in this world is help someone else.” Giving doesn’t have to be through money. It can be in a form of story telling. Everyone has a story to tell whether you’re a teenager or a college student. And behind these stories, we can extract valuable lessons from it.

Blogging allows you to share what you learned not based on the books but based on what you’ve experienced. Blogging is like teaching but in a different kind of way. Your way of teaching is through writing. As Kathy Sierra says, “The most important skill for marketers today is . . . teaching. While in the past, those who outspent (on ads and big promotions) would often win, that’s becoming less and less true today for a lot of things.”

3. IT BUILDS BRAND AWARENESS.

What’s the first thing that you think of when I say fast food? McDonalds or Jollibee right? If I once again say computer tech companies. You think of Apple, Asus, Lenovo, Dell, and the like. The goal of branding is to be remembered for something that you do, to make a mark on people’s minds when they say one specific word. Let’s say the name of your company is CollarFinder, the core is recruiting. And then one of your clients need an executive position to fill, the first company that they should think of must be CollarFinder, your company. Not the competitor. How can you do this?

Well, If you don’t have a lot of money to spend on advertising your business then blogging is the most cost-effective strategy to do. It’s a free way to promote your business. Blogging takes a lot of work to do, long hours of research, brushing up the grammar part on your content, thinking about the next blog topic and more. But it’s worth it.

You might not see the effects right now. But who knows? Six months from now, a CEO of a company might search a topic on google and the one that popped up is an article that you wrote months ago. And then the prospect clicked it. Congratulations! You now have an SEO boost and a potential future client at the same time. What a good deal to have!

4. IT GIVES YOU AN EDGE OVER YOUR COMPETITORS WHO ARE NOT BLOGGING.

I skim through loads of company websites out there from time to time; they have a beautiful design and wonderful effects on their theme. But when I click the blog section, I see that their blogs are not up to date. I feel bad for them. Their business is missing out on a lot of the benefits that blogging produces. If you see that these companies are not doing it, then do it more! It’ll make you rank up higher on Google’s search engine and it would help you boost your SEO.

5. MAKES YOU BETTER AT CONTENT MARKETING.

At the heart of digital marketing, content is king. Being good at content writing takes practice. You might even have a future when it comes to publishing your own book in the future. It opens up opportunities for you personally if you start with blogging.

Bonus Tips on How to Start Blogging

TIP # 1

Always have this question in mind when you’re about to publish a blog “Is this providing value to my customers?” If you’re a start-up and you badly want to start that blog, you have to start from this goal in mind. Always put the customer first.

TIP # 2

If you don’t know where to start. Think of a bad experience that you had long ago. Of course, it should be related to the type of business that you have. List down the lessons that you’ve learned from that bad experience and then write that as your first blog post. Why is this my second tip? Because we all had a bad experience. And I’m very sure that you have your own. Take away this quote that CollarFinder has for you, “A bad experience is never a waste for a writer. It actually fuels the story that we’re going to write in the future.”

Happy writing!