NewsPaperYOUR GRAPHICS HUB FOR 2022

A primary goal of your business is to stand out among the many other services competing for your customer’s attention and convert that attention to patronage. You can use many tools for this – catchy designs, great copy, your logo, and other aspects of your brand identity. Of all these tools, the most conflicting opinions are about whether or not every business needs a logo, but there’s a straightforward answer.

You always need a logo for your business because it offers a memorable impression of your brand to potential customers. Your business logo is the foundation of your overall brand identity and is a visual example of your company’s values and quality.

In this article, I’ll share the reasons why a logo is so important for your business and how it will get you the attention and recognition you need to have a successful business. I’ll also debunk arguments that may discourage you from thinking you really need a business logo (and share some secrets to designing a logo fast and easy). So keep reading!

Why You Should Get a Logo for Your Business

Starting and running a business is a super stressful process. More often than not, it feels like there’s too much to do, too few hands, and too little time. In the hustle and bustle of setting up your business, registering it, and marketing it, a logo may be the last thing you want to worry about.

But there are several reasons you should get a logo immediately:

1. Your Logo Is Essential to Your Brand Identity

The brand identity of your small business is the visual element of its corporate image. Every business has an image it projects that will ultimately determine how the public identifies it. This brand recognition focuses on the artistic part of that image – your logo, color schemes, product design, and much more.  

While your brand identity encompasses a ton of other things beyond the perfect logo, your small business logo is its foundation. The logo plays a huge role in defining the finer details of your visuals. Seemingly tiny details like the signature font of your business, its color schemes, and the type of images you use all send subtle messages to your potential customers. 

Designing your perfect logo helps you decide what “feel” your business should have, and for consistency, every other part of your brand will mirror that “feel.” Because of this, the logo indirectly governs nearly every other visual you’ll create, serving as the foundation for how customers will know your business.

How does this translate to sales? According to research analyzed by Forbes contributor Gabriel Shaoolian, presenting a consistent image of your brand can increase your business’ revenue by up to 23%. 

Creating an overall aesthetic that communicates to potential customers, offering excellent service, and building their loyalty to your brand can give huge returns… and the process all starts with your logo design.

2. Your Logo Gives a Unique First Impression That Attracts Potential Customers

The buying behavior of your customers – the process of acquiring and retaining their purchases for your business – is a psychological journey. These purchasing decisions happen in the minds of your potential customers, but it’s up to you to kick-start it by putting out a visual representation of your products and services.

Marketing statistics estimate that your business has a maximum of about seven seconds to make that first impression. Seven seconds is not a lot of time, and it’s certainly not enough for the potential customer to read a full-on description of your business or the excellent customer reviews that would convince them to give your product a shot. 

Instead, the most effective way you can use that seven-second window is to make an impression that makes it possible for the customers to recognize your brand and remember it. That’s where your logo comes in! 

You can put your business’ logo in a ton of different places. Spots you can put your logo on include:

• Flyers and stickers for advertising your products and services
• Your business website, social media pages, and emails
• Packaging items – Boxes, Bags, Notecards, and Thank-you cards
• Business cards, letterheads, and envelopes for official correspondence
• Branded merchandise – Tees, Sweatshirts, Mugs, Hats, Bags, and other fun stuff

In all these places, your logo does the work of sparking curiosity in potential customers or bringing back memories of quality service in old ones. Remember, color and design elements communicate messages and tell stories. If made right, your company logo can be worth the proverbial thousand words to your business.

3. A Logo Builds the Customer’s Confidence in the Quality of Your Brand

In the minds of would-be customers, faceless equals suspicious. After color, the presence or absence of your logo is one of the first things a person notices before the text and other contents of your visuals. It’s difficult to trust the quality and reliability of a business when it seems like they couldn’t be bothered to put a symbol to the name.

A bland, unidentifiable business or product conveys negative messages. To a potential customer, unbranded could scream “low-quality!” or “knockoff!” The danger of this is that even if you have a fantastic product, the customer won’t have enough confidence in your brand to take a leap of faith and try you out.

With so many brands competing for attention, out of sight may very well be out of mind for an unbranded business. That’s not only because the first impression was unimpressive but also because the customer has no visual shortcut to remember it by.

4. A Logo Enhances Brand Loyalty To Retain Existing Customers

When a first-time customer finally gives your brand a shot, quality service is what makes them enjoy the experience. The psychological process doesn’t end there, though. They need to remember your business and make an emotional connection from the excellent service to truly have brand loyalty.

The customers also need to be able to differentiate your service from your competitors and remember it distinctly enough to come back. This is what defines brand recognition. They need a logo design to tell your product apart from the competitors, one that convinces them to choose it when faced with so many other options while shopping.

As your business grows, you may need to change different things about it. It’s not uncommon to have to change locations or, in recent times, to go fully virtual. Your logo is what calls out to your customers and says, “Hey! We’re in a different place now, but look at the sign! It’s still your favorite brand!” This is how your logo design fosters brand loyalty.

5. Your Logo Design Lays the Foundation for the Future of Your Business

Though your business may be small at first, as excellent delivery makes it grow, you’ll start new things with it. Business growth usually involves dropping some services, creating new ones, and redefining your business structure to cater to your ever-growing customer base.

The most common pathways businesses take as they expand include:

• Starting a new, more professional marketing strategy including business cards, billboards, or email newsletters
• Adding a new product to the catalog
• Providing a new service under the same business umbrella
• Opening new stores or business centers
• Accepting investors in your business

These are big dreams that may not seem immediately feasible for your new business at the outset. But if one of the goals of your business is to expand, it has to be primed for that growth. Getting a small business logo that identifies your business is an essential part of building the professional image of your brand and preparing it for the possibility of growth.

6. A Business Logo is Used More Often Than You Think

A logo isn’t just about one graphic. It can be broken into smaller images and added to larger images, giving you all of the professional logo variations you need to advertise your business.  

In other words, your primary logo design can be used repeatedly, with small modifications necessary to fit in a different space. For example, although your primary logo may be placed at the top of your website, a smaller secondary logo variation may be needed in order to fit it on business cards or letterhead.

Additionally, you may need a submark logo, which includes only a symbol or brand initials, for smaller social profile images or web page footers. Using the same font and brand colors, it can be easily re-created for its new purpose.

Finally, by designing an original logo with these possibilities in mind, the value of your brand logo just went up! Now you can add your logo to a variety of marketing materials!

Common Myths Against Getting a Logo for Your Business

Many novice entrepreneurs feel discouraged when thinking about getting a logo for their business. This is typically due to several myths and misconceptions about them.

A Logo Is Too Expensive for a Small Business

Logo designers can be expensive. And you’ll have to spend money each time you need them to recreate any additional logo variation. But, you don’t need a million-dollar budget to create a strong logo for your small business. A logo is, in essence, simply a stylish representation of what your business is and what you do. With visual shortcuts, less is more. You don’t need to break the bank to create a unique brand.

Hiring a professional logo designer is a good option if your business has the budget for it. But you can create your brand’s logo all by yourself too! With a tool like LaughingBird Software’s Graphics Creator, you can put together symbols that represent the form and function of your business on an existing template and create a brilliant logo design, even on the smallest of budgets.

As with the very best logos, you can choose your brand’s colors, fonts, images, and icons- or even import other images. And you can start with the Logo Creator templates built into the online Graphics Creator.

So, not only can you create a logo fast, easy, and inexpensively, you can save it and modify it later, anytime you want.

A New Business Needs Awareness More Than It Needs a Logo

The fundamental flaw in this common argument is that getting a logo design is a part of building awareness. A small business does need a lot of awareness, but that’s not mutually exclusive to having a great logo. As an integral part of the identity of your business, your logo helps you take advantage of even the slightest time windows to spark curiosity in a potential customer.

A brilliant logo will take advantage of that 7-second window to encourage a potential customer to stop just long enough to check out what your business is about. As your clientele grows, your logo also makes sure you can maximize customer retention. 

This will happen naturally because your customers can remember you, spread the word about your business, and easily refer you to others by identifying your logo. Building awareness for your brand is super important, and your logo, combined with other aspects of your brand marketing, will do an excellent job of putting you out there. Awareness, check!

Conclusion

The beauty of branding is in its fluidity. As your business grows, you can update your brand identity, switch up your logo, or even redefine the image you present to your customers.

You can hire a professional logo design company; however, you’ll need to pay them for every logo modification. Or you can create a logo design all by yourself, using a simple design program such as The Graphics Creator. This method will allow you to make changes to your designed logo as needed, without spending additional money.

Either way, a logo is important and should provide your target market with an emotional connection to your business. You need a logo, but you’re not stuck with whatever you create now, so don’t be scared to give it a shot.

Running a business, whether large or small, has a lot of factors to consider, not least of which is gaining a strong brand identity. A big part of establishing a brand message is having an image that fits the product and your business goals, and business graphics are a key part of that.

Business graphics are used to attract prospective clients by giving them a sense of what the company is about. Whether it’s a brand logo, marketing materials, background color, or image that breaks up block text, business graphics help prospective customers understand a business and lead them through the sales process.

In this article, I’ll talk about how a successful business owner can use graphics in various ways, what different facets of your business they can be used in, and how business graphics can impact a company’s success through digital marketing.

The Purpose of Business Graphics

I can’t overstate the importance of graphic designs to a small business, as a lot of things depend on it. These design elements may seem merely ornamental to the untrained eye, but the truth is that they give value to different areas of digital marketing.

The types of graphics you need for your business depend on their purpose but will include brand graphics (such as a business logo), advertising banners, e-covers, social media design, and more.

Business Graphics Are Used To Provide Customers With Important Information

People can get onto your website through numerous means—in fact, they might not always be intentionally looking for your business. Some of the ways that they might land on your website are:

• Word of mouth referrals 
• Links from other businesses
• Advertisements on various platforms
• Links on social media pages

Because there are different ways that users may land on your page, you must share your brand story and give them the assurance that they have landed on a page that they can trust. According to Forbes Magazine, having a professional brand that people feel is trustworthy is a critical factor any business must consider. 

Even though it may seem like a minor detail, the psychological ramifications of a good business graphic are critical. Businesses can use graphics to help solidify their overall brand identity and how it is portrayed to people when visiting their website.

Business Graphics Can Win You New Clients on Your Website

The business homepage is the first thing that potential clients see when they land on your page. Suppose you want to decrease your bounce rate. In that case, you can improve your web design by adding visual elements such as videos of customer testimonials, images using your brand message, a powerful logo design, product graphics, images of people using your product, or other graphic designs or photos that will increase the engagement of new visitors.

The first step to getting someone to buy something is getting their attention, and one of the best ways to get the attention of prospective clients is by incorporating images, videos, and other business graphics onto your website. Having these on your site can make it much more likely that your pages will get lasting views. 

Check out these tips to get more website traffic by using graphics (and a few other helpful tips):

Business Graphics Can Make Your Blog More User Friendly

A company can explain more about its business and keep its customers engaged by establishing a blog. Content is vital for creating organic traffic to your business website, and an easy way to boost your blog posts is by consistently contributing to your blog. 

However, there is another crucial ingredient for a successful blog: user-friendliness. A user-friendly small business blog can greatly improve your SEO.

Businesses are often looking for ways to make their websites more user-friendly, and graphics are key to this. Use tables, charts, videos, and photos to give a positive experience with your blog that makes it feel more personal to your users. 

Additionally, images are important in blog articles to break up chunks of text, making it easier to read as well as more interesting.

Business Graphics on Your Blog Can Help With SEO

I already mentioned SEO, but this point is important enough to warrant its own section.

Organic traffic is something that many businesses strive for, and improving your SEO is a great way to have effective digital marketing at a low cost. One of the best ways to do this is by optimizing your blog to decrease bounce rate. If you choose high-quality images that promote user engagement, there is a good chance you will see your SEO ranking improve over time.

If you don’t know how to start creating graphics for your business, your best bet is to get easy-to-use graphic design software such as The Graphics Creator by Laughingbird Software. The Graphics Creator has over 1500 design templates plus more than 5,000 high-quality graphical elements and can be used by anyone, even without any graphic design experience.

Using Business Graphics for Social Media

One growing area where businesses are taking advantage of graphic design is on their social media pages. Whether you are on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any other platform, it is vital to have graphic design incorporated into your posts. This will attract new customers and keep the attention of existing clientele.

Studies have shown that when businesses post an image with their social media messages, they can be greater than two times more likely to have user engagement than if they don’t include any graphics. 

User engagement is a metric for businesses to track their social media presence. It is a great example of how your customers feel about your post. Graphics are a great way to capture the attention of your target audience and draw them into the text portion of the information you’re trying to convey. 

Facebook Images

There are several reasons to use graphics on your Facebook posts. One of them is brand recognition.

Using your unique logo design on your Facebook account inspires confidence from the user and assures them they’re in the right place. If you are an established brand, graphics help generate trust with the user. Smaller businesses can use graphics on Facebook pages to establish brand recognition for prospective customers.

Posts with graphics are also more likely to receive attention from users in the first place. Images can make your posts more relatable to users, and Facebook is the perfect social media platform for this. You can post images and videos of people using your products in their daily lives to establish a sense of community. 

Instagram

One of the best digital marketing strategies for Instagram is to have influencers share images of themselves using your brand or product. It has been shown that people have a more than 80 percent higher chance of purchasing a product if someone they know well recommends it to them. Sending products to social media influencers allows businesses to reach more clients through their connections.

Creating an attractive business logo and using images, videos, and other visual communication for your account can give your small business brand visibility, helping you get on Instagram trends and attract the attention of influencers. The advantage of having social media influencers share your brand through their posts is that their followers are likely to trust their endorsement of your brand, which can generate more engagement and sales for your business.

Here are a couple of tips for choosing graphics for your posts:

• Choose images that capture what you are trying to convey through text. You can use images to explain your product or convey a message.
• Include infographics in your posts. People have short attention spans, and this is especially true while they’re using social media apps. Using Infographics is a great way to increase user engagement and explain more about your brand to customers with less of a risk of users scrolling past your post. You can include lists, charts, and statistical bullet points to help present important information in an attractive way.
• Include your business logo on a graphic when appropriate. This is a chance to remind viewers who you are and helps establish your brand identity.

Twitter

Business Graphics are used on Twitter to increase engagement, but they are also used for promotional reasons. It is essential to set your business apart from others on Twitter to gain new followers and better brand recognition. 

One exciting way that businesses can use graphics to help establish an identity and improve their online presence is by choosing a visually appealing color scheme to represent their brand. Experts recommend selecting one primary color and one to two secondary colors that will represent your business and stay with it. This will give you a visual identity that’ll help visitors on Twitter recognize that they are looking at the correct account. 

Watch the video below to learn how to create impressive marketing materials for social media, along with some great design tips:

Ways to Use Graphics for Business Emails

Email marketing is an essential tool for any business. Whether you are trying to reach out to existing customers with news related to your brand or sell a product to new customers, it is a great way to promote your business. Using graphics in your emails can significantly improve the effectiveness of your content.

Here are some of the ways businesses use graphics to help promote their emails:

• You can promote upcoming events using eye-catching graphics, photos, or videos in the body of the email. This is an excellent way for businesses to give their clients relevant information about special events that you want them to know about. Place the image or video where readers are most likely to see it.
• Include an image in your email to help with your link-building campaign. One way that businesses can reach out is by link-building campaigns. Encouraging other sites to reference yours gets your brand in front of more users and makes your website more favorable to Google’s search algorithms.
• An image will make a business email more readable. Not only is it essential to get your clients to pay attention to emails, but it may also help you reach your employees. If you break up the monotony of daily block text with graphics like charts, images, or polls, you’ll be more likely to convey important messages.

How to Use Graphics in Your Sales Funnel

Most businesses use sales funnels to encourage potential customers to buy. There are typically several steps that guide them through on a journey to a purchase. Each step should use a graphic to entice and keep the attention of the prospective customer.

Typically, once the target audience is aware of a problem they need to solve, a business offers a lead magnet to get the people in the funnel to engage with the company. This can be a free product offer, service, or more information on how they can solve their problem. It’s essential in this step that a stunning graphic or image accompanies your offer.

For example, if you offer a free search engine optimization guide (in return for an email address), you will want to include an image of the free guide (create a virtual book cover) when making the offer. The lead magnet graphic is the most important image in a sales funnel because it takes cold prospects and gets them to interact with your company, giving you a chance to make a sale.

Naturally, you’ll want to use graphics in this way throughout your sales funnel, leading to the final purchase of the product or service that solves their problem.

Final Thoughts

Business graphics are used for many reasons. Whether you are trying to promote upcoming events, keep the attention of your target audience, or communicate with employees, graphics are a great way to make a message easier to understand.

Businesses can use various graphics like a memorable logo design, charts, videos, or even memes across social media platforms, emails, and websites to generate a better image and user experience for their brand. 

Grab the free Graphics Creator to get started creating your own business graphics. Save money, get the images you want fast, and have fun!

With almost half the globe accessing the internet regularly, there has never been a better time to give your business an online presence. Blogging is one way of helping your small business grow. It’s also one of the best and easiest ways to market your business online, although it does require a good deal of time.

Take a look at the benefits of blogging for your small business (and why blogging is worth it):

1. Blogging helps bring traffic to your website.
2. Blog content connects readers to your brand.
3. A blog keeps customers updated about your business and new offers.
4. Blogging helps with lead generation.
5. It offers long-term results.
6. It boosts your visibility.
7. It encourages feedback from your customers.
8. You can repurpose blog content for your social media presence.
9. Blogging provides natural link building.
10. Blogging provides value for your customers.
11. It helps you build a network within your field.
12. It’s a cost-effective content marketing strategy.
13. Blogs teach and explain more about your products.

This article looks at the potential benefits of blogging for your small business and the impact good blog content can have. Keep reading to find out why you should invest in a small business blog and how to get started.

1. Blogging Helps Bring Traffic to Your Website

Every business wants more visitors to its website. Gaining visitors is one of the best small business blog benefits there is. Without blog articles, potential customers may only find your site in these ways:

• They could type your business’s name in search engines or even enter your address in the address bar. However, this is limited to visitors already familiar with your brand. They already know what products or services you offer, meaning you’re not getting new traffic.
• They could click on your paid ads. While these are often effective, they’re very expensive, and the traffic stops coming immediately after your money runs out.
• You could also buy a mailing list, spam the users, and hope that some will click on your links. However, this is illegal in many countries, and you risk violating GDPR laws, and is absolutely not recommended.

Instead, the best way to create organic traffic for your website is through blog articles and social media posts. 

By writing helpful blogs related to your products, new visitors will stumble upon them as they look for solutions or recommendations on search engines. This will lead them right to your website.

Further, if you have a sales funnel (and you should to further improve revenue), a blog is a great way to lead new users to it. The visitors will then be on your site where you can place an offer right in front of them.

2. A Blog Connects Readers to Your Brand

As a small business, most of your prospects might not be familiar with your brand. This is always a hindrance to sales because people prefer to buy products and services from companies they trust.

Therefore, one of the other big benefits of business blogging is that a blog gives you a chance to connect with your readers. At the same time, it helps position you as an authority in your niche. 

Most blog posts are either solution-based or offer recommendations. Therefore, if your readers get value from your blog articles, they will respect your authority on the subject, and thus trust your brand.

Additionally, most blogs are written in the second person, which gives the reader the feeling that you’re talking to them directly. And as they continue to read your posts, they’ll feel like they’re talking to a friendly expert and therefore warm up to your brand. Further, you can, and should at times, provide personal experiences

3. Your Blog Can Keep Customers Updated About Your Business

Online marketing is a headache for most small business owners. It’s too costly to run ads on mainstream media or run enough paid ads on social media to get everyone’s attention. It’s even more difficult if you’re a small company that has a new product or service to announce.

Fortunately, blogs don’t have to be just informational or how-to articles; they can also contain the latest industry news or relevant content for your company.

If you’ve hired a new executive, interviewed an industry expert, or had a case study that shows how your products are beneficial to clients, you can post it on the blog. You can also announce new products or offers, which will keep your existing customers engaged with your business.

These constant updates also humanize your brand and show your customers that you’re focused on value as opposed to just sales. 

4. Business Blogging Helps With Lead Generation

Since your blog brings some traffic to your website, it’s a great opportunity to convert the traffic into leads. 

Just as every blog page on your site is an indexed page, every post is a chance to generate new leads. This is pretty simple to achieve as all you need is to create a call-to-action at the end of each blog post.

These call-to-actions typically offer a lead magnet such as a free service or free trial of your product, webinar, ebook, or other valuable content that the visitor can trade for their contact information. Here’s a small breakdown of how it works:

• A new user reads your blog.
• They see the call to action and click on it.
• They’re redirected to a landing page, where they can buy or sign-up for your product.
• If they’re not interested, your page offers them a free token if they fill out a form with some information, including their email address.

Once the visitor leaves their email address, you can use it to send them discounts, offers, and links to your new articles. This way, they won’t forget about your brand and might make the purchase when they’re ready.

5. It Has Long-Term Results

Great blogs answer most of their readers’ questions about a particular topic or niche. They solve their problems and recommend trustworthy products. 

Therefore, if you have a good blog, your readers are likely to consider you an authority in your field and come back when they have a question about a product. This gives your blog a long-term impact on your website traffic.

For instance, if your visitors find helpful information on your blog, they are more likely to click the call-to-action and join the sales funnel because they’re confident about your abilities.

In addition, prospects who’ve been getting value from your blogs are likely to enter your sales funnel with some knowledge about your products. This makes conversion rates faster because they don’t need to take a lot of time to decide whether or not to buy.

Finally, when you post a blog, it remains on your website forever, or until you delete it. 

Therefore, a user who encounters a problem you blogged about five years ago can search and find your helpful article. This means that even if a post doesn’t increase website traffic immediately, it will eventually. Further, you can always remind your target audience of a blog article and how it can help them through your social media.

And the more well-designed social media posts you have, the more traffic you’re likely to generate in the future.

6. It Boosts Your Visibility

A good ranking on search engines can do wonders for small business owners. When most users type something on Google, they are likely to click on one of the first-page results. 

And if your website ranks on the search engine results page, you will get lots of new traffic, if you have done satisfactory search engine optimization. Unfortunately, many business owners don’t know what it takes to appear on top of the first page.

Thankfully, there’s a whole industry that deals with Search Engine Optimization for websites. SEO experts can generate high-ranking blog posts for your website that will likely appear on the first search page.

However, if you don’t want to outsource these services, you can also learn how search engines rank results on their search pages. Although their algorithms are complicated and hard to predict, most search engines prefer authoritative content.

Therefore, if you write a well-researched, informative blog post for your website, it’s likely to rank higher up on the search engines. As a result, prospects who search for a product or service you offer will not have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to get to your brand.

7. It Encourages Feedback From Your Customers

A good blog is a two-way conversation between you and your reader. It should allow the visitor to voice their opinions about the content you’re writing and your products. Most blogs achieve this by including their social media pages in the call to action section (or down the side of the blog page).

This also encourages the visitors to visit your social media pages and increases the number of followers you have. With many followers, you can get good topics for your blog based on the frequently asked questions. You can also find out what your customers think about your products and what you need to improve.

Having these two-way conversations is a great way to boost your customers’ trust in your brand and increase the chances of returning customers and referrals.

8. You Can Repurpose Blog Content for Social Media Platforms

Most small businesses don’t have social media managers. This makes it challenging to find something to post about every day. 

Unfortunately, inactive social media pages get little engagement and don’t add value to their companies. With almost half the people on earth accessing social media regularly, this is a huge missed opportunity.

Therefore, instead of pulling new social media ideas out of a hat, you can just repost what you wrote on your blog and keep your accounts active. 

Alternatively, you can post the most interesting snippet of your blog and attach an interesting graphic or photo with a link for those who want to read the whole post. This enables your blog and social media pages to feed off each other.

You can also add a share button to your blog post and allow your readers to post it to their social media pages. If you write informative blogs, your visitors will want to share the information with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, effectively increasing your brand’s visibility. 

The random shares and reposts will expose you to prospects who’ve never heard of your brand but are likely to trust it if they trust the visitor who shared.

9. Blogging Helps With Link Building

Backlinks are among the 200 factors Google algorithms consider to rank pages on the search engine. Some experts also believe that it’s one of the top 3 factors in SEO. Many SEO experts also believe that link building is the most challenging part of Search Engine Optimization.

When you create articles that give value to your visitors and other companies they see as authorities in your field, it gets easier to gain relevant links. Linking authoritative websites shows recognition or confidence in other sites. This signals to Google that you understand your field and network with other experts.

Backlinks also help your website build its domain authority and make it more visible.

10. Blogging Provides Value for Your Customers

For your business to be successful, you need to forget about sales and think about customer satisfaction. If your customers are happy, they will buy more of your products and even refer their friends and family.

A good blog post helps your readers solve problems, find something they’re looking for, or learn something new. These posts are more interesting than in-your-face ads because they serve a meaningful purpose other than just marketing.

When you take the time and create an informative blog post for your readers, you’re creating loyalty from potential customers who will likely choose your company when competitors approach them in the future. This value also increases your approval on social media and your brand’s overall appeal.

You can even add testimonials from these loyal customers on your website to help convince those who might be having doubts about your products.

11. It Helps You Build a Network Within Your Field

Thanks to backlinks, you can connect your blogs and website to authoritative sites in your niche. This is not only good for Search Engine Optimization but also for how customers perceive your brand.

Every field has a handful of reliable blogs that post regularly and provide useful information. These blogs often use backlinks to promote each other and stay on top of the search page. Joining such a network could be very beneficial to your sales.

12. It’s a Cost-Effective Content Marketing Strategy

The benefits of blogging are accessible to all small business blogs. You don’t need qualified professionals to write your content, especially if you’re already an expert in your field. You also don’t need to pay for ads because relevant content and good SEO will ensure that your blog gains organic traffic naturally.

Therefore, your main investment while blogging will be the time you spend researching and writing. Otherwise, a blog article is essentially free marketing! This can be time-consuming and take a while to pay off in terms of search rankings, but it is a solid way that blogging can benefit your small business.

13. Blogs Teach and Explain More About Your Products

Since most new visitors are unfamiliar with your brand, you can use blogs to explain how your products and services work. You can link to case studies that prove their quality or give step-by-step tutorials on using them.

It’s also advisable to use professional-looking graphics to grab your readers’ attention and better market your products. 

With adequate information on your products and services, customers will be more confident about paying for them before using them.

How to Start a Blog in 5 Steps

The truth is, starting your small business blog is probably the hardest part. It shouldn’t take you too long but you do need to consider the best way for you to start. However, as you have read, the many benefits of blogging make the time invested truly worth it.

Here are the 5 basic steps you need to follow to begin writing your business blog:

1. Choose a blog platform– You can make it easy and use a free blogging platform such as WordPress, Blogger, or Tumbler. We use WordPress because it gives us the most flexibility to add functionality (using plug-ins) and design our blog.
   
   
2. Get a web host– For example, you can get a web host through WordPress or use your own domain name and self-host. Although self-hosting requires a bit more work, visitors will go directly to your web domain and you’ll be able to add any content, images, and videos you’d like.
   
   
3. Design your blog– Assuming you’ve chosen to use WordPress as we do, you’ll now need to find a WordPress theme (which is free!). You’ll have to do a little research on how to design your website, so keep the theme simple. You’ll want the light to shine on your amazing content and beautiful images, not on a complex theme.
   
   
4. Write your first piece of content (and add more articles consistently).
   
   
5. Create a social media post that includes your new content and beautiful blog graphics.

Then continue to repeat numbers 4 and 5. Although it can be a little confusing, just go step by step and you’ll be sure to end up with a stunning blog for your small business!

Now that you understand the benefits of blogging, Laughingbird Software will help you easily design your small business blog graphics! Sign up for free access!