25 Non-Financial Benefits of Business Blogging

While the use of blogging as a marketing and communications platform continues to grow for many organizations, you still might be facing this question from your boss — “Why are we doing this?”

The most obvious answer is that you are ultimately trying to influence some behavior or attitude. You want your readers to buy, register, understand, donate, attend, etc. But there are many other tangible benefits of business blogging that might be more difficult to measure … but no less important. Here are 25 non-financial benefits of business blogging:

Create a database of answers — Blog about customer questions. Use links to those posts to save time and answer future questions.
Reward employees — Shine a spotlight on brilliant employees by featuring their ideas and accomplishments on your blog.
Marketing integration — Turn content from your blog into sales and marketing materials.
SEO — Having an active, relevant blog can have a powerful impact on search engine ranking.
Point of differentiation — If your competitors don’t blog, is this an opportunity to stand out in your niche?
Solidify POV — The act of blogging forces you to be clear on your company’s position on issues.
Re-purpose the content — Your blog content can be cost-effectively re-purposed for newsletters, eBooks and other publications.
Humanize your brand — There is probably no more powerful and cost-effective way to show the “soft” side of your business than storytelling through a blog.
Sign of activity — A current blog confirms that your website is updated and relevant.
PR — Tweets and Facebook status updates probably aren’t going to attract the attention of reporters. Helpful blog posts will.
Internal communications — Don’t forget about the impact blogs have on your internal audience.
Customer engagement — Creating a dialogue with your customers can lead to powerful business benefits. Why not have customers contribute posts?
Solve problems — Some companies like Caterpillar are using blogs to crowd-source technical problem solving.
New product development ideas — A hot trend is using the blog platform to deliver new product and service ideas.
Voice of authority — Is your company the industry leader? What better way to demonstrate that than a voice of leadership on your blog?
Market segmentation — Many companies (especially in high tech) have multiple blogs to reach customers by different interest, demographic or geography.
Identify advocates — Blog readers may be among your brand’s most powerful fans.
Constant customer connection — Calling on customers is expensive. But a blog post can be a little “sales call” every week.
Test ideas — Need to take a position? Why not test it with the blog community first?
Assemble chapters for a book — Many companies piece together blog posts to create larger publications.
Research — Throw a question out there and use your blog as a cost-effective and rapid way to get feedback.
Networking — Blog connections have led to finding interns, suppliers and partners for my business.
Establish emotional connection — Blogging’s ability to connect through a story is powerful — especially for non-profits.
Social Proof — Simply having a blog sends a message that your company “gets” social media.
Crisis management — If you have a blog, you don’t have to rely on the press to get the story straight. Your blog can put the facts out there.