Let me reiterate the title, tech startups should blog. All of them. And often. To not do so is to risk becoming irrelevant, to get left behind, to fail to properly launch.
Blogs date back to the late 1990s, getting their start as personal online journals and eventually evolving into business marketing tools. As of 2023, there were over 600 million blogs (Web Tribunal) found on the internet, yet only a small percentage are actively maintained.
Think of a blog as a garden. The more you tend to them, water them, feed them, the more they produce. It’s a fact that regular updates play a crucial role in a blog’s success. Studies show that blogs with frequent posts (one or more a week) attract significantly more traffic and user engagement, generating 434% more indexed pages and 55% more site visitors than those that post infrequently (HubSpot, 2023).
Similar to a daily newspaper back in the day, a well-tended blog is one of the best ways to keep your audience engaged and up-to-date with your latest accomplishments, product announcements, and upcoming plans.
If you’re on the fence about starting a blog for your tech startup, consider these 30 compelling reasons:
1. Boosts Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Want to know one of the best reasons why tech startups should blog? Blogging improves your SEO by adding fresh content and relevant keywords to your site. It’s no wonder that companies with active blogs get 97% more links to their websites (HubSpot, 2023). Just be sure to follow best practices SEO by doing plenty of linking to websites outside yours and to various pages and blog posts inside yours.
2. Establishes authority in your industry
Publishing well-researched, insightful posts helps establish your startup as an authority in your field. Consumers are more likely to trust a company that demonstrates its knowledge and expertise through content. (Check out Swyft thought leadership content for more insights.)
3. Increases website traffic
Companies with blogs get 55% more website visitors than those without (HubSpot, 2023). It’s the ultimate gateway to your tech startup’s ideas and offerings.
4. Generates leads
Blogs full of insightful content that offers consistent valuable insights to visitors are a lead magnet. Companies with active blogs receive 67% more leads per month (Demand Metric, 2023). For more information on how PR can generate leads and support the sales funnel, check out “How PR impacts the startup sales funnel.”
5. Enhances customer engagement
Blogging offers an interactive platform where you can engage with your audience through comments, social shares, and discussions. Just make sure you turn on the comments section in case you are using WordPress. Pro tip: if you leave the comments section up, just be sure to police it regularly for low value posts like spam and other nefarious posts.
6. Supports content marketing strategy
A blog is the starting of a content marketing strategy, allowing you to create and share valuable content that attracts and retains a clearly defined audience. It’s your single most important content asset, in fact, given how impactful it is to SEO, lead gen and thought leadership. Because of that, make sure you use an editorial calendar to schedule posts into the future, and use writers who can create quality content at an affordable rate.
7. Educates your audiences
A blog is an excellent way to keep your customers, prospects and other followers up to date on your products, services, coming plans (e.g., trade show attendance info), and general industry knowledge. With 80% of business decision makers preferring to get company information from a series of articles rather than a paid ad, educational content that builds trust is a no-brainer.
8. Showcases company culture
Blogs give you a way to share behind-the-scenes content to your audiences, essentially showcasing your company culture and what makes your startup unique. Think of it as a way to support your hiring plans, as well as a way to make your company relatable to prospects, customers, and investors.
9. Builds brand awareness
Blogging consistently keeps your brand top-of-mind for your audience. Regular content updates ensure that your brand remains relevant and visible.
10. Provides long-term and long-tail results
Blog posts can continue to generate traffic and leads long after they are published, offering a significant return on investment over time. Combine that with the optimization of long-tail keywords, and you have a recipe for SEO success.
11. Offers a platform for announcements
Blogs are an ideal place to announce new products, features, or company news, offering more depth and context than a social media post. Think of it as an extension of your press page. Anything that’s worth announcing to the media should be mentioned in the blog too. Got a new infographic or customer poll result to share? Post it.
12. Helps you understand your audience
Analyzing the performance of your blog posts, just like the rest of your website, is critical to determining what content is working, and what content needs tweaking. By reviewing your analytics at least monthly, you will gain valuable insights into what topics resonate with your audience, as well as what marketing CTAs drive clicks.
13. Builds an email list for drip marketing
Valuable content is like sugar water for bees. That means your content has to be thoughtful, well researched, and smartly written. In short, it takes concerted effort. But the reward is visitors will want to receive your latest content updates and, by extension, enter the top of your sales funnel. It’s their win, and yours.
14. Supports social media strategy
Think of your blog content as long form social media content, in a way. The blog is where you go deep into topics and fill your readers with lots of insight into your POV on a variety of industry topics. You can then find the bite-sized content from that content to polish and share with your social networks. Just make sure to provide links to the blog so that your target audience can pay your website a visit and enter your sales funnel, if they haven’t done so already.
15. Facilitates networking opportunities
Inviting guest bloggers and doing interviews can help you build or tighten relationships with industry influencers, customers and brands in adjacent fields, opening doors to new business opportunities.
16. Drives conversions
Companies that blog frequently have conversion rates that are 6x higher than those that don’t according to research from HubSpot. By providing a consistent stream of valuable content, you will build a glide path from TOFU to BOFU.
17. Provides content for other marketing channels
As you develop enough solid content on your blog, you can turn it into a content hub to feed various marketing assets and channels, including newsletters, e-books, social media, and podcasts.
18. Establishes thought leadership
Regularly publishing insightful content helps position your startup as a thought leader in your industry, building credibility and trust. If your smart, you are pulling content from your blog to build compelling content to submit to 3rd party news publications that accept contributions from experts. And you can convert some of the content into pieces that your CTO or CEO writes for a reputable publishing platform like the Forbes Technology Council.
19. Improves internal communication
Your startup’s blog can also be used to share updates, achievements, and company news, fostering a sense of community among employees. While the bulk of those communications may take place as emails, they can be reinforced with posts to the blog – just make sure it’s not revealing too much or your prospects and customers will have a TMI moment.
20. Encourages backlinking
The a benefit from building a reputable blog is that it can attract backlinks from other websites that cite your blog’s expert content, which can significantly boost your SEO rankings.
21. Enhances product development
Customer feedback from blog posts can play a role in product development. By posting an informal survey, or sharing new features in your latest product update, you can get a fresh take on your work.
22. Creates shareable content for others
Another motivation for building a great content machine for your tech startup’s blog is that other professionals in your industry might want to cite your expertise in their blog and social posts, thereby extending the reach of your content and driving more traffic to your site.
23. Builds relationships with customers
Mentioned in a different way above, high-frequency blogging gives a good reason for visitors to frequent your website, and it’s a great way to start connecting with your customers on a more ‘personal’ level. Over time, customers and influencers may feel a deeper relationship to your brand that can lead to increased loyalty and advocacy.
24. Increases visibility in search engines
Search engines love fresh content, especially quality content that others visit and link to. They will reward your diligence, especially if you are using a smart keyword strategy, with higher rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs), increasing your visibility to your target audience.
25. Helps you stay ahead of the competition
Tech startups who commit themselves to a robust content strategy anchored by a high frequency blog are more likely to stay ahead of their competition. By establishing themselves as industry thought leaders and continuously seeding their social channels, they will keep their brand top-of-mind among their target audiences.
26. Encourages repeat visits
Consitently posting insightful content gives potential leads a reason to return to your website, increasing the likelihood of repeat visits and future conversions.
27. Trade show logistical support
For any tech startups planning to attend a major industry trade show, the blog can be used to communicate vital information such as where to find the company’s booth and a schedule of planned activities.
28. Supports PR Efforts
Your blog should complement your PR efforts. Planning to share a press release? Include it in your blog the day it goes out. If you lack a press page, then post any articles you secure to your blog to share the news to a wider audience. The blog allows you to control the narrative around your tech startup, making it an essential tool for managing your PR strategy.
29. Drives organic traffic
Blogs underpin every successful SEO strategy. By using your top keywords and linking to other pages on your website, you will drive more organic traffic to your site and create inbound leads that typically have more value than paid advertising.
30. Facilitates crisis communications management
No tech startup thinks they will have to manage a crisis, yet the very nature of a crisis is that it’s unexpected and fraught with potential danger for the brand reputation and revenue potential. In the event a crisis does happen, make sure you have a crisis communication plan in place, and put your blog into good use as a way to share daily (or hourly) updates with your key stakeholders to help manage the narrative and provide needed information.
Conclusion
In today’s digital landscape, blogging is one of the most important ways for tech startups to grow their brand awareness and build their sales funnel. By committing to a consistent blogging strategy, you can build relationships, increase visibility, and ultimately drive growth for your startup.
[Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash]