If you think it seems like everyone online today has a blog, you’re probably right. And it’s for good reason. Launching and maintaining a business blog is a proven strategy for building your business.

Here are seven ways a blog will prove profitable for your company:
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1.Drives more traffic to your website. A daily business blog can drive six times more traffic to your company site. That’s because ninety-seven percent of people who read your blog will toddle on over to your website.

​More traffic means more leads which leads to more sales which results in a happier you.

​Writer’s block.

It happens to the best of us.

Whether you’re writing a blog post or web content for your business, it’s not always easy to come up with the right words, or even interesting ideas.

But before you curl up into a fetal position or begin banging your head against your keyboard, I’ve got a solution for you.

Start by writing down the answers to the most commonly asked questions you hear from your customers about you and your business.

Of course, every profession will have industry-specific questions. No one is going to ask a contractor about their oral health or a dentist about how to know when it’s time to replace the roof on their house.

Make sure to list those industry-specific questions in addition to the generic ones.

​In the meantime, here are twenty to get your juices—and the words—flowing.

Maybe your competition isn’t as fierce as the one between soft-drink rivals, Coca Cola and Pepsi (dubbed “The Cola Wars”) but the more you know about your competitors, the better you’ll be able to position yourself in the marketplace.
 
Competitor Research should be a critical part of your marketing strategy. By examining the competitions’ successes, failures, and messaging, as well as how they attract their customers and what they do to retain them, you can improve your own business performance. 

​A Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, is a concept you bring to your marketing that clearly defines what makes your business stand out from the competition.

It should directly illustrate to your potential customer why your product or service is different and how it offers solutions to them.

It’s the statement you’ll use to position yourself in the marketplace.
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Whether you realize it or not, you’re probably familiar with many iconic USPs. 

Our neighbors recently had new siding put on their house. They chose to replace the existing muddy brown cedar with a taupe-colored vinyl, making it the 2000th house in our neighborhood to be blanketed in one of the following electric colors--cream, ecru, sand, tan, fawn, mushroom, camel, beige or buff. The capacity for mediocrity here is dazzling.

Now don’t get me wrong--I haven’t got it in for earth tones. It’s just that when there’s a whole spectrum of colors from which to choose, why do people deliberately pick one that so clearly defines them as having all the zing of oatmeal?

Because everyone else is doing it, that’s why.

So what does any of this have to do with marketing a small business? Plenty.