Running a company blog can take up a significant amount of time. As a result, many small business CEOs are reluctant to start one. However, a company blog can reap long-term benefits for your business, particularly in terms of web traffic, viable leads, and brand reputation.

According to one survey, businesses with a company blog get 55% more traffic and 70% more leads than those that don’t. Here are the reasons why you should seriously consider starting a company blog.

• A business blog is a hallmark of authority and quality. It demonstrates that your company is run by knowledgeable people, who have a deep understanding of their industry. If you regularly post informative content, your business will build a reputation for being trustworthy – and as a result, will attract more customers.
• Social media can be a cost-effective way of promoting your business. However, social media marketing is only successful when you have interesting and relevant content to share with your followers. Maintaining a company blog ensures that you always have fresh information to offer through your social media channels.
• A company blog can be highly beneficial in an SEO context. Updating your website regularly with fresh, high-quality content can help push your site further up in Google’s search results. This is a worthwhile investment, considering that sites on the first page of Google receive 92% of all search traffic. Your company blog is a cost-effective way of boosting your rankings, without investing in costly SEO services.
• The most successful businesses are those which are led by industry experts. Complacency can be fatal to the small company – as a CEO, you need to keep your finger on the pulse of your market, reacting and adapting to new insights and trends. Running a company blog is an excellent way of staying up-to-date with industry news.

A company blog is an important investment for your business. However, launching a blog is a daunting task – especially if you’re not a confident writer. It can also be challenging to think of fresh, original ideas for posts. Here are some ideas to get you started.

• Which questions do customers commonly ask when approaching your business? You could address these in a series of blog posts. Not only could this give you plenty of content, it will also boost your brand’s reputation as being knowledgeable and informative.
• Create a list of content ideas before you launch. If you’re running a blog, it’s important to maintain it properly. An abandoned blog gives visitors to your site the impression that you’re unreliable, and will encourage potential customers to look elsewhere. It’s a good idea to get a bank of posts ready before you launch your blog.
• Maintaining a high-quality blog is time-consuming, which is often why company CEOs fail to start one. However, the responsibility need not fall entirely to one person – ask your employees to write posts. This is a valuable idea for several reasons – it secures a regular supply of fresh content, and also ensures that your workers are keeping up to date with industry news.
• Once your company blog is established, reach out to other industry experts about the possibility of guest posting. Having an authoritative figure connected to your blog can only improve your brand reputation.

Running a company blog takes time and effort. Be sure to create a solid plan before launching your blog – rushed and poorly-planned projects are destined to fail. You need to decide how often you’re going to post, how you’re going to promote your content, and create a list of content ideas. This may sound daunting, particularly if you’re new to blogging. However, don’t be discouraged – the potential rewards for your business are significant.

About the Author: This article was written exclusively for SMB CEO by Alexey Artuyants, Head of Marketing at Namecheap.com, a leading ICANN accredited domain registrar. He has extensive knowledge in marketing within the domain and hosting industry, and likes to keep on top of the latest news and developments around these areas.