Blogging is one of the most productive Inbound Marketing activities you can engage in. Yet, I almost always get pushback when I recommend that a small business owner get a blog going.

The top two excuses I hear are, “What would we write about?” and, “We don’t have time.” The ‘what’ is easy. You write about the ins and outs of your business and industry from your expert perspective. Make it non-commercial and helpful to existing and potential customers. Take advantage of seasonal angles, and tie in to news topics and lifestyle trends when they present themselves.

Time is a more serious issue. As a small business owner myself, I feel your pain. There’s so much to do each day and it seems like there’s never enough hours to get it all done. What motivates me to get at least one blog post up each week is that I understand the big payoff it yields to my marketing results.

Here are 5 Big Benefits of Blogging to motivate your efforts.

1.      Traffic. Blogging builds traffic to your website. This is one thing that I can positively guarantee you. If you blog, you WILL get more traffic to your website. Blogs are very visible and interesting to search engines. They represent new and dynamic content, tasty morsels for the voracious appetites of Google, Bing and Yahoo!

You can be sure that people searching for information on your product or service will find your blog. Point the way by publicizing each post on the social media sites that your customers frequent. A catchy headline about each post and a link to it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and/or other social media will build your blog readership. I can tell you that when I blog regularly, my traffic goes up, up, up. When I slack off, so does my traffic – very quickly.

2.      Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Every time you write a blog post you can highlight a specific keyword or search term that your prospects might use to find products or services like yours. Let’s say your company sells and installs replacement windows. If you write a blog post titled, “How to Choose Windows for Lower Energy Costs,” you could, for example, optimize the post for the search term ‘windows for lower energy costs’.

In addition to the headline, include that phrase one or two times in the body copy and in the ‘alt text’ that describes the photo you add to accompany the post. The blog post will help you rank higher in search engines results for that term. Each post is an opportunity to boost your ranking for a different search term.

3.      Thought Leadership. There’s no better way to establish you and your company as industry leaders than by blogging about your business and associated industry trends and issues. You’ll soon become the go-to expert in your field. Consider that the media in your market will likely find you through your blog. So your efforts can lead to traditional media coverage and the credibility that it brings. When industry and media websites link to your blog, it further boosts your importance to search engines.

4.      Engagement. A blog enables a two-way conversation. Not only can you share your expertise, but your readers can comment on them. Don’t worry about negative comments, you can either moderate comments before approving them, or better yet, reply to critics and clarify your position or correct misinformation. Getting into conversation with customers and prospects builds relationships that lead to sales and referrals.

5.      Lead Generation. Readers have the ability to subscribe to blogs by providing their email addresses and receiving each new post right in their inboxes. When someone types their email address into a form on your blog, they go from being a visitor to a lead and can be added to your prospect database. You can also capture contact information by adding a Call To Action (CTA) at the end of each post, offering a white paper, fact sheet or other useful information in exchange for contact information. Once a reader becomes a lead, you can further the relationship through ongoing offers, emails and other communications.

There are many ways to make blogging easier – blogging teams, video blogs, guest bloggers, and others. The main thing is to start blogging now to build business and the bottom line!