Blogging is good for your business. A new study from Hubspot shows that companies that are blogging get more visitors than businesses which do not write a regular blog. Indeed, the analysis of data from more than 1,500 businesses reveals that firms which have blogs get 55% more traffic than those which do not.
Of course, this is only to be expected. People want fresh, new information. They don’t want old stuff. Hence, blogging – by its very nature – is likely to deliver new material and is therefore more attractive to people.
However, you don’t have to do this with a blog. One of the problems for many businesses is that they have a blog separately run to their main website. For instance, they may have a website set up that provides information on their company, with a blog hosted at Blogger or Typepad or WordPress to publish the updates or news.
The reason is that adding a blog to an existing website is often difficult because of legacy software or design issues. Hence, many companies separate their blog from their business website – largely because they have been sold on the idea of blogging. But what they end up doing works against them.
For a start, it means that readers have to visit two places, maybe have two bookmarks, or need to remember two different domain names – all to get information from one business. Integrating a blog within a company website is much more efficient in terms of user-friendliness. It also means all the extra traffic goes where you want it – to your main website.
If you use Blogger, integration appears difficult – unless you follow my video instructions at Changing Blogger. With something like WordPress you can simply transfer your entire site to run on that system – it is a content management system, much more than blogging software alone.
But in reality, you don’t need to have blog software at all. Blogging programs merely provide you with a convenient and easy way to add content to your website. However, a blog post is simply a web page. If you have web design software, or a web designer working for you, all that you need to do is add pages to your website. Businesses often don’t get involved in blogging because of the need to choose a system, set it all up, maybe redesign templates and so on. In other words, it’s yet another hassle.
What the Hubspot study actually reveals is not that blogging is good, but adding fresh content is good. So, you don’t need to confuse your readers, or yourself, by setting up a separate blog. You merely need to add pages to your website. True, content management software such as WordPress or Joomla, will make that easier. However, if your site has design features that mean transferring things is difficult, then don’t bother. Simply add content to your website using your existing software or systems.
It’s not always blogging that you need, merely the principle of blogging – adding fresh, new content to your website on a regular basis. Do that and you will get significantly more traffic than if your website rarely changes. The Hubspot study is merely a reminder that your website visitors want something new and different each time they visit. Do that and they will keep coming back and tell their friends about you. Avoid adding new content to your site and they will stay away. If the whole notion of “blogging” is holding you back, don’t worry – just add fresh, new material to your website in any way you like. That’s what matters.
