Pick up any relatively recent marketing book and you’ll see a section on blogging for business. No bones about it — blogging is one of the most crucial parts of building and maintaining an online presence for your business.
And there’s no question that blogging is important for things like SEO and helping to drive people to your website. But blogging can serve an even bigger function for curating thought leadership content, which in turn drives sales.
The importance of blogging for thought leadership boils down to two words: Customer Trust. Thought leadership blogging, when done correctly (read: truly informative, not salesy or promotional in natureand done somewhat professionally in a well-designed website) helps your customer build a sense of trust that your business has their best interests in mind — and therefore, that your product or service is in their best interests, too.
Blogging shouldn’t only be seen as a method to find new leads and gain more customers. When your customers subscribe to your blog and receive regular updates, your business stays on their radar. So even if they’re not actively moving down the sales funnel, they are still thinking of your company in the back of their mind — making it easier for when you do decide to give them a nudge to up-sell, cross-sell, or anything else.
Just remember that when you are blogging for thought leadership, it’s an ongoing process. This isn’t the type of business activity that is “one and done”, you need to keep at it — and know that you might not see measurable results for quite some time. That’s okay, and it’s normal. The benefit of thought leadership through blogging comes with time. The longer you are known for providing customers with quality content and insights, the more credible your business becomes as a high quality brand.
After all, that’s everyone’s goal: to have their business seen as trustworthy and top of the line. And that’s the endgame of blogging for thought leadership.
