I said it once before but it bears repeating: if you want to be a relevant brand with positive recognition in 2016, you need to have a blog. Even if reaching consumers isn’t your top priority this year, a B2B blog can also be a successful platform and opportunity for you to set yourself apart from your competition with helpful thought leadership for your customers. Whether your company could benefit from a consumer-focused blog full of beautiful recipes or a buyer-centric approach focused on best practices for your products, here’s WHY you need to get a blog in 2016:

A blog provides shareable content.

Blogs allow you to generate a steady stream of new and timely fodder and content to share with your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn fans as well as your email subscribers or customer lists. You can use your blog to talk about anything from new products, services, recipes, trends, crop updates, usage ideas for your products, food inspiration, promotions; the possibilities are endless.

You can use blogging as a PR tool.

Have something you want to share with your audience but not sure that it’s worthy of a full blown press release? No problem – just blog about it! With strategic promotion, your post will still reach your intended audience without the added step of a press release. Bonus: journalists often get their story ideas from stories shared on company blogs, so you may receive additional industry press on top of your post.

Blogging drives traffic to your website.

…and who doesn’t want more traffic? According to Hubspot, the average company that blogs generates 55 percent more website visitors than similar sites without a blog. Think about it: as a part of your website, your blog will add more pages to your website for traffic to visit and for you to share on social media to drive them there. In fact, Hubspot says that websites with blogs have 434 percent MORE pages on their site for Google to index, make searchable and for people to find. Which brings me to my next point…

One of the best ways to achieve SEO greatness is through blogging.

There are several ways to optimize your blog for search and help your company be found for the right keywords. Consider that Google’s web crawlers favor websites that continually publish new content and create new pages on their sites. Having a blog is sure-fire way to get noticed by Google because you should be updating it about twice a week. Have you ever noticed that recent posts and content appears at the top of Google search results? With recent blog content, Google is more likely to give you a boost.

Blogging sets you up as a thought-leader in the industry.

Two companies offer comparable products and services, but one of them has invested time to blog about their knowledge and expertise by providing helpful information to their readers. Which of these companies would you rather work with? Probably the one that has taken the time to establish their authority on the subject or service. And there is that word again: helpful. Marketing that wins today is the marketing that is as helpful as possible, in turn making the company a trusted-resource in the eyes of their customers or consumers.

Throughout our journey publishing The Core for the past EIGHT years (holy cow!), we’ve experienced each of these benefits first-hand. With a little inspiration, you too can crank up your company’s online presence and content through blogging.

Still not convinced? This infographic from Social Media Today breaks down some pretty compelling stats. Here’s a taste:

• 77% of internet users read blogs
• Interesting content is one of the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social media
• 61% of US consumers have made a purchase based on a blog post
• 70% of consumers learn about a brand through articles instead of ads
• 82% of consumers enjoy reading relevant content from brands

Ready to get started? Get yourself set up on a user-friendly platform like WordPress if you aren’t already and browse our free marketing resources to gain inspiration. We recommend this guide to help you generate more content on a continual basis.