Why blogging matters for your business?

Blogs (short for weblogs) first appeared in the late 90's, and have then become one of the biggest web phenomena. Blogs were primarily for individuals, but businesses slowly but surely started to use them. Nowadays, it is rare to find an online business without a blog. If you have a site and would like to have a strong online presence, then blogging is a must-have. Most blogs are primarily textual but there are several other types of blogs: photoblogs, videoblogs (also known as vlogs), sketchblogs...

Why you should have a blog for your business

There are many reasons why you should have a blog for your business. Here are some of them:

• A blog is another way to communicate with your existing and potential customers. Blogs can be considered as a more approachable way for your customers to communicate with you. People often say that blogs help put a human face on businesses. They usually know you by your products or services, but rarely by your business itself. Do they know about all your products and services, or just a few of them? With a blog, they get to know more about your whole business.
• A blog can help you educate your existing customers. You can indeed provide them with training through blog posts: how to use your product or service, what to do if something goes wrong... You can give them tips or even inform them with industry news. If you're looking at reducing your support workload, then you should definitely think about it!
• A blog can also help you generate more traffic to your site. Internet users may land on your blog before landing on your site. Blogs can rank very well in search engines and help you grow your overall traffic. Blogs are great at ranking well for very targeted keywords and keyphrases. That's a fact, because blog posts are usually about very specific topics.

How to create a blog for your business

We use Blogger.com (which is owned by Google) as a blog platform but WordPress is also a great platform. You can either have a blog hosted on WordPress (that's WordPress.com), or use WordPress as a blog platform with your web hosting provider (that's WordPress.org). Otherwise you may be interested in minimal blogging: Posterous.com is a great blogging platform that allows you to publish blog posts by simply sending an email to a dedicated email address. You just couldn't find a more simple way to blog!

At iSmart, we can help you with the design and set up of your blog, so feel free to contact us if you have any questions. We have helped several customers build and maintain their blogs over the past few years and we would love to help you too. Contact us at sales@ismartsoftware.com in Australia or sales@ismart.co.uk in the UK for more information.

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Posted By iSmart Software to iSmart Blog at 9/17/2009