Blogging, Part I: Is Blogging For You?

What is Blogging?

Blog, short for “web log” is simply a type of website where information is posted in a chronological style, sort of like a journal.  People have personal blogs to share information about their lives & families, and businesses have blogs to share information about their company, products, services.  Or to share knowledge and information that their readers find helpful.  Some businesses use their blog as a company “newsletter”, where they will regularly post information about their business (maybe a current sale going on, or schedule of events or activities).  A blog makes it very easy for the owner of the blog to write posts without knowing much of anything about creating websites, or HTML, or anything technical like that.

Why Should I Blog?

Blogging is a great way to communicate with your clients and prospective customers.  The goal is to write articles or “posts” to your blog that are helpful and informative to your readers.  If you can supply information and knowledge that others want to know about, it will keep them coming back to read more.  And better yet, it will eventually get internet searchers to find your blog, and ultimately your business.  Hence, you can use your blog as a sales lead tool.  Or as a customer retention tool.  Either way, posting good information to your blog about your industry or service will help shape people’s view of you – they will start to see you as a professional in your field.  And someone who is open and willing to share their wisdom with others.

How Do I Setup a Blog?

To setup a simple stand-alone blog, it is very easy.  There are lots of online services that do it all for you, and they are free.  Yes, I said FREE.  Here are a few that I would recommend looking at:

• Google’s Blogger (probably the simplest & easiest to use, and you can use your existing Google account)
• WordPress (very powerful with lots of options, still very easy to use, it’s what this blog uses!)
  
• TypePad

If you want to take it a step further, you should setup your blog at its own domain.  So instead of having a blog at a web address such as http://yourawesomeblog.blogspot.com, you would have it at www.yourawesomeblog.com.  It looks more professional, and will be easier for people to remember.  If you already have a website, then the best thing to do is to integrate your new blog directly in with your existing website.  This means it would look & feel the same as your website, and would be part of the navigation on your site.  You can have a separate page on your website be your blog, or you can even integrate your blog postings into an existing page on your website (such as a sidebar on your homepage).  To do this, you’ll need to have your web designer/developer do this for you, as it’s quite technical to setup the blog & database at your domain and intregrate it into your existing site.

Getting Your Blog to Work For You

Now your blog is setup.  You’re posting some great information to it regularly.  Now what?  It’s time to get your blog to start working for you.  First, get your blog listed on the major search engines.  The best way to do this is pay a small fee and use an online service to do all the work for you, such as GoDaddy’s TrafficBlazer ($30/year).   Then tell all your friends about your new blog; spread the word. Do this by sending our email newsletters, and posting links to your blog on your facebook, linkedin, and other social networking sites.  Another great way to market your blog is to work with other bloggers.  You can at least comment on other blog posts and include links to your blog, where visitors with the same interests may follow the link.  Or you could even be a guest writer on someone else’s blog, or have someone write a post for yours.

The key is to post fresh information to your blog regularly.  Keep people coming back for more.  Or better yet, they can subscribe to your blog using an RSS feed.  More on that in the next post!  Stay tuned!…