There are currently over 600 million blogs (Byers, 2019) on the internet right now. The sheer number of words typed to create these is staggering, and you have to wonder how many bloggers suffer from a repetitive strain injury.
Blogging is a powerful tool for journaling your thoughts and feelings or imparting wisdom about a topic. There’s no official standard way of blogging so you can expect a huge variation in length, format, quality and credibility in those 600 million blogs.
Blogs can range in purpose from a personal blog for friends and family to keep up with your life to affiliate marketing or simply for the hell of it. The possibilities are endless and always evolving.
For those writing blogs, they can be an effective method of enhancing your reputation, demonstrating to your readers your impressive knowledge on a particular subject.
How Did Blogging Begin?
Blogging began as a personal project, and Justin Hall is often credited with creating the first blog. He realised he could publish his words on the internet for free. He created links.net in 1994 and is still running it today.
In 1997, John Barger, creator of the website Robot Wisdom first coined the term ‘weblog’ to describe the ‘log’ of his internet activities. Weblog was shortened to blog in 1999 by Peter Merholz, a then-programmer who saved us all from turning weblog into an awkward-sounding verb – weblogging anyone? Blogging rolls off the tongue much easier!
Thanks to platforms like Blogger, blogging has risen in popularity, probably no part in less, because they can be monetised. Yes, that’s right, you can make money blogging about cleaning your teeth every day if you can make it interesting and attract a big enough audience.
The Benefits of a Blog to Your Business
Do as I say and not as I do – it’s taken me three years to get this blog up and running despite my writing for a living! I could go into how client work takes priority over my stuff, yada yada; however, that’s not the point. The point is a blog can reap huge benefits for your business.
One obvious advantage is a blog can help increase traffic to your website. Your users will visit your blog for all sorts of reasons, such as they may have come across it when searching for the answer to a problem, they may be returning to read what’s new, or someone or another site may have referred them. Whatever the reason, your blog is a fantastic opportunity for generating more traffic and encouraging user engagement.
Your blog is also a chance to establish yourself as an authority on your specialism. If you sell gardening tools, a blog about gardening tips and tricks and seasonal posts is a great way to show you know what you’re talking about. Your audience will come to see your blog as a wealth of knowledge and build trust with your brand.
With the increased traffic and trust your blog provides, you can also use it wisely to help drive conversions from users to customers. I’m a freelance writer; I sell writing services, so I’ve added a section to this post about how my services can help you. The purpose of this post is to build my authority and impart some knowledge; however, adding opportunities to gain a few more clients is a definite bonus.
Your blog is also your chance to show why you’re the better option among your competitors. It helps you stand out from the crowd and gives your audience a deeper understanding of your business and industry.
Another often-overlooked advantage is that a blog will build credibility with search engines and provide frequently updated content to help keep your site relevant. The prudent use of search engine optimisation (SEO) keywords and phrases on your blogs can also help drive traffic to your site.
How to Get Started With a Blog
To start your blog, you need a platform to publish your content. If you use a content management system such as WordPress, you’ll find it already has the capabilities to publish a blog. If you don’t know how to make it work or are unsure if your site has blogs built in, your best bet is to contact your web design agency for help.
If you don’t have a site or want to create a blog site only, you can create a free account at https://wordpress.com/ or try one of the many other blogging platforms. Medium (affiliate link) is a handy blogging platform with a ready-made audience.
Make a plan for your content and how often you want to publish. Having a list of topics to write about makes life a lot easier! If you’re stuck for topics, it’s worth having a peek at the content on similar blogs or even embracing AI and using it to generate some ideas. I sign up for newsletters from my peers and have a wealth of knowledge in my inbox, which I can use for inspiration.
Planning your content can always help if you start running out of steam after the initial flush. It happens to the best of us. Try scheduling a consistent time each day, week or month to work on your blog.
Don’t be too disheartened if you feel as though you’re talking to yourself and aren’t getting much engagement or traffic. Attracting people to your blog takes time – you need persistence and patience to succeed. If you build it, they will come. Eventually.
How I Can Help You With Your Blog
As I can attest, it’s not always easy to get your own content written and published regularly. Outsourcing the work to a content writer – like me, of course – is a smart move, as I’ll provide you with the ongoing content you need.
I can also include SEO keywords and perform some SEO research though I leave the in-depth SEO stuff to the experts. I always write for your audience first and will fit keywords and phrases into your content in a natural way.
Work in a specialised industry? I can’t pretend to know everything, so I rely on researching each blog topic before I get started. One of the great things about what I do is how I always learn new things – whatever your industry, I’ll be keen to learn. Every day is a school day! That said, there are some specialisms that I might not be suitable for, so it’s always a good idea to get in touch and discuss them first.
If you have content you’d like to be repurposed for a blog, or if you have used AI to generate blog content, I can edit this into some great blog posts!
If you’re interested in chatting about how I can help you with your blog, please reach out to me at 07960 819823 or jo@caipaxdigital.co.uk.
References
Byers, K. (2019). How Many Blogs Are There? (And 141 Other Blogging Stats). [online] GrowthBadger. Available at: https://growthbadger.com/blog-stats/ [Accessed 13 Mar. 2023].