7 Reasons You Should Have a Business Blog [BT broadband office]

7 Reasons You Should Have a Business Blog

Posted 12 June 2007 at 12:47PM by Mark White in Business blogging

While Business Blogs are excellent tools for companies of all sizes, I feel that they're particularly beneficial for small and medium sized businesses, who can benefit most from the range of potential uses. Small businesses also need tools which are going to support them and help make the best use of their often limited time and resources. A blog can do all that as well!

There are lots of elements on the technology side of a blog which are working hard for us, either organising, distributing or promoting our blog - all automatically. But that's only one side of the equation. The other of course is what we actually write about and it's those two elements working in tandem which make blogs such a powerful tool.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day, blogs are really just websites which have special characteristics - at least from a technical perspective. It's how we put them to work for us to achieve our business goals which is the key and the choice of how we use them will depend on each individual business and the requirements it has.

But, just what are the special characteristics and, more importantly, how can we all benefit from them to develop our businesses? Well, these are some of the key elements that I believe will appeal:

Easy to update: you don't need any technical expertise to write a blog so there is no need to rely on a web designer to maintain and update it for you, thus saving you time and money. You add articles or posts through a "Word" type of interface so if you can write an email, you can post on a blog.

Business Development - creating connections: your readers can leave comments, expressing their own views on your posts, asking questions and starting a dialogue with you. The perfect opener to creating new connections with potential clients, suppliers or partners as well as developing your own network!

Improved Search Engine Marketing: with regular updates, recent relevant content and search engine friendly links and addresses, business blogs have all the main characteristics that Search Engines look for when ranking pages. As a result, you can rank very highly!

Instant Distribution: using RSS and pings, a blog will instantly distribute your posts to subscribers, directories and search engines when you publish it. This means that you can be instantly spread your information around the internet to customers and prospects alike. No waiting around, no additional actions to take.

Best use of work and material: every time you publish a post, at least 5 pages on your blog will be instantly created or updated - that's 5 additional places where Search Engines can reference and index the information about your business or your expertise, and hence 5 additional places where your target audience can find it.

Internal and External Linking: blogs thrive on links and referencing other articles so that your ideas and the conversations they encourage can be spread and developed. At its best, this allows a viral effect helping to promote your business and develop both relationships and networks.

Online Information Store: every post and every category has its own individual web address called a permalink, forever! This means that you can refer to them in articles, emails, newsletters and literature safe in the knowledge that they will always be found and allowing you to benefit from the knowledge you are sharing. And of course, you won't lose the Search Engines links you have built up!

But do remember that the technology - the tool if you like - is only part of the answer; the other (larger) part comes down to us! But with the functional side taken care of, we at least can focus all of our attention on the important element of what we actually want to say!

Tags: blogging benefits, business blogs, small business blogging, small business seo, SME

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Comments

1. At June 12, 2007 1:38 PM, Simon Dickson wrote:

Actually Mark, I'm finding large organisations just as open to the potential for blogging as smaller ones - but for precisely the same reasons. Too many big businesses have huge, cumbersome content management tools, which just don't lend themselves well to the increasingly informal, lightweight style of the web.

I'm beginning to think that big businesses are just groups of small businesses, forced to work together - without the threat of competition.

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