If you have a business you might have asked yourself numerous times whether blogging is still a relevant promotional tool. The short answer is an emphatic yes, provided you do it the right way. There will always be a demand for blogs that provide the information people are looking for, and that answer their questions.

Writing a regular blog has many benefits for a business, including:

More leads

Statistics show that companies with an SEO optimized blog that is regularly updated get up to 67 percent more leads than their competitors without one. Plus, 47 percent of prospective buyers first read between 3 and 5 pieces of content before they decide to engage with a sales representative of a company.

People don’t like old news

A blog is one of the best ways to make sure your website regularly gets fresh content. It’s also a great way to keep visitors coming back next week, next month, and next year. Ask yourself this: if there are two companies that offer a particular service or product – you and company B, who would people trust more: the one whose website has last been updated in 2000 or the one that regularly posts a blog with fresh industry news?

Hard selling scares off potential buyers

Hard selling is becoming increasingly more unpopular. Everyone knows and hates that feeling of being pushed into a corner by a salesman. The moment you get a chance to run, you will. That is why research shows that nearly 80 percent of businesses nowadays opt for advertisements in the form of useful content instead of following the old-style “You’re not leaving before you’ve bought something” approach.

If you want to sell in today’s world, your company needs a human face. And blogging is a great way to do that. Adding a blog section to your website and sharing the blogs on blogging sites and social media will also give you a way to promote your business in a creative, user-friendly way.

Soft-selling to your email list

The same principle applies when you are sending information to the subscribers on your email list. If you are going to simply send them product lists three times a week, you’re unlikely to have much success. A genuinely interesting and useful blog is a much softer and more effective way to break the ice. And a blog is also a proven way to get more email subscribers in the first place.

Quality beats quantity every day

Blogging is about playing a long-term game. It’s about gradually building relationships between you and your current and future customers. How would you feel about a sales representative who knocks on your door at 8 am on a Monday morning and promptly tries to sell you an encyclopedia you’ve never heard of? What if he does that every Monday morning? Annoying, right?

That is not how long-term relationships are forged. You have to spend time talking to prospective buyers about the topics they are interested in. You have to provide useful advice. You have to establish yourself as a source of trustworthy information (and if you can’t write, there are plenty of blogging services that can help you with this).

If you use the same strategy and logic in your blog, your chances of success will go through the roof. Blogs with top quality, original content will work today, and they will most likely still work next year and the year after that.

Focus is important

There are clear benefits to be derived from using your company blog to deliver in-depth content about a particular topic. According to Digital marketer Eric Enge sites that offer in-depth quality content fare much better in search engine rankings than those that only skim the surface of a particular topic.

You can do this by writing longer blog posts that allow you to explore a topic in depth. Use the extra space to look at the topic from different angles. This will go a long way to give your readers the assurance that you are not just pushing a particular angle, and it will be a hit with Google and its colleagues.

Another way to use a regular blog to establish yourself as an expert in your field is to write a number of ‘Ultimate Guides’. This will force you to go into more detail, which is great for SEO rankings, and readers who are genuinely interested in the field will love these blogs and begin to view you as the go-to source of information on the topic. Guess who will they turn to when they want to switch from reader to buyer?

Who are the businesses that succeed in the modern world of blogging?

Blogging is as good a marketing tool as ever. In fact, it has become more effective. A study carried out by Data Box recently revealed that 68 percent of marketers believe that blogging has become more effective over the last two years.

You might say that the internet has been flooded with blogs. That might be true, but the trick is that the successful ones are those that have adapted their approach.