A well-thought out blog can be a wonderful thing. It’s a chance to give your clients a glimpse of your personality, it could bring you extra work and it could help you make valuable connections. But (and it’s a big but) that’s only if you’re willing to invest the time.
Effective blogs take time and work, but if the thought of regularly posting doesn’t send you running for the hills, they can be very rewarding too. Here are some of the reasons why.
1. Exposure and visibility
A blog is a great platform to demonstrate who you are, what you do, and generally put your name out there. It’s your chance to put a personal stamp on your work and write about what you love. In short, it’s a constantly updating advert for you and your brand.
2. Low cost
Blogs are cheaper than websites and the cost to maintain them is minimal. They do incur a time investment though, unless you are happy to pay someone to write posts on your behalf.
3. Building your brand
Creating a brand takes time. Consistently well-informed and high quality posts will begin to build an impression of you and your work that potential clients can trust, so it’s important to focus on providing information that your readers will find useful, even if it’s not directly related to your services. The key is quality and frequency – well-written posts demonstrate your knowledge, while updating your blog regularly will help people to become familiar with your brand.
4. Demonstrating your knowledge
Call yourself an expert? Show potential clients that you know what you’re doing by putting your design knowledge into writing. It will help you identify your unique selling points too.
5. Making connections and building relationships
Networking with other designers, potential clients and marketers helps to build your business and makes the job more enjoyable. With a blog, networking of this sort takes place naturally online. It also allows future clients to get to know you before working with you, so takes away some of the perceived risk of hiring a freelancer.
6. Improving your SEO rating
Generally, having a presence on a number of online channels makes it easier for people to find you, either through natural search or through word of mouth. If you have a Facebook page or followers on Twitter, so much the better. A blog is another channel where potential customers can find you.
What’s more, it means you will have more pages indexed on search engines, and fresh content that covers a wide variety of keywords, which will improve your SEO ranking.
7. An interested audience to promote to
Everyone has slow patches, but once you have a fair number of subscribers you can promote your services to an interested audience. Your regular readers are already invested in your services and what you have to say, so you may be able to reach out to them.
8. Improved communication skills
By blogging you will be constantly practising your writing and communication skills. Developing these skills will make your projects more successful by helping you communicate more effectively with clients and other people in your industry.
