What does blogging provide to small business?
Your time might be limited, but there are several reasons why putting aside a little makes a lot of sense. Blog software such as WordPress, Typepad and Blogger is easy to use. Blogging is a low-cost method for web presence. For small businesses with small marketing budgets and little or no understanding of how to create a website and coding such as html, blogging is an inexpensive way to maintain an up-to-date presence on the Internet.
6 reasons why your business should blog
A blog compels you to share more of your knowledge and expertise more often with a larger audience. This has numerous benefits including:
1. Position you as an expert in your industry
This can translate into sales, consulting offers or other opportunities as you build your brand. Each blog post is a public demonstration of your thought leadership and professional insight.
2. Every blog is a SEO opportunity
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s natural or un-paid (organic) search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users.
3. Repeat visitors
Keeping your website content fresh encourages visitors to come back and see what is new.
4. Maintain your Google ranking
Google gives higher rankings to websites that are updated regularly because they want to present the best quality content. Google will periodically crawl websites looking for new and updated content.
5. An avenue for communication with customers and prospects
A blog is an opportunity to engage customers in a dialogue. Readers have the option to comment on each article. Blogging is a powerful way to develop a relationship with your community.
6. Blogs are link bait
A good blog article is an industry-specific insight or a thoughtful review. Blog articles harvest links because they are interesting and informative rather than sales-focused. The benefit to you is that more links means better search engine rankings and more site traffic, which translates into more sales leads.
What is a blog?
“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog features diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites, usually presented as a list of entries in reverse chronological order. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.
Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:
- A blog is a page of posts organised in reverse chronological order with the most recent at the top of the page – there may be archives of older posts.
- A blog is generally public – the whole world can view it.
- Blog posts generally consist of the date of the post, the title of the post, the message body, and the signature of the blogger. In addition, there is a link to post a comment (if the blog owner has allowed comments to be received).
For a great definition of what is a blog, check out this Youtube clip
Once you understand a few simple steps, you can be creating and updating your blog as often as you like. Talk to Black Mouse Design today to help get you started.
