Five Reasons to Start a Small Business Blog

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Number 1: Search Engine Optimization 

What’s the biggest benefit to starting a small business blog? You might be surprised by the answer: Improved search engine optimization.

Internet search engines view every entry on a blog as a unique Web page. The more posts, or individual entries, your blog has, the better its chances of ranking highly in relevant keyword search engine results. And the greater your search engine ranking, the more likely potential customers will find you. What’s more, blogs are more frequently updated than typical Web sites, which also helps boost search engine rankings.

Selecting the keywords that are relevant to your blog is the most important issue at this stage. You should seriously think about the keywords that are relevant to your blog. Everytime a blog posts a link to your blog with the keywords you identified, your blog’s chance to be listed on the top of the search results with those keywords increases.

What is a small business blog? 

A small business blog is a Website that serves as a frequently updated, online journal of news and commentary on topics of interest to your customers. A number of different people can author a small business blog, usually the owner, chief executive, other employees, or all of them. 

The blogosphere continues to grow rapidly. Technorati, a service firm that tracks and organizes independent, user-generated Web content, was recently tracking 99.2 million blogs and counting, up from 72.7 million just four months earlier.

Number 2: A blog is an inexpensive form of public relations and marketing.

It is a sort of do-it-yourself way of making public relations and marketing.  Reporters are searching blogs on the Internet to find opinionated experts to quote.  Being quoted in one article or news report could lead to other journalists contacting you for their stories. Along with the increased exposure for your company, being interviewed in the press helps you become known as a “thought leader” in your field. This can help boost your branding, reputation and sales.

Number 3: A blog can be more effective than traditional methods of turning prospects into customers.

It is fast and easy to update a blog which conveys the message to your customers. No middleman is needed. While it is very difficult to measure the outcome of the traditional methods, it is very easy to monitor the traffic of a small business blog. 

Number 4: Blogs can help you receive immediate customer feedback.
A blog should serve as a community forum. It allows visitors to comment on any blog posting, including comments left by other visitors. The interactive nature of a blog lets you communicate directly with your customers and receive instant feedback from them on your products, services, marketing efforts, customer support, and other topics. It’s more immediate — and certainly far less expensive — than doing surveys, focus groups or other ways in which customer input is often solicited. You can get immediate and honest feedback from customers.

However there is one potential downside of this: Negative feedback posted on your blog, for all to see. Your competitors are also allowed to comment. Therefore it will be safer if you moderate the comments.

Number 5: Blogs are easier and less expensive to manage than full-fledged Web sites.
Many small businesses pay designers hundreds or thousands of dollars to design their Web sites. The small business depends on the designer to update the Web site, too, by adding information about a new product or service. That’s not the case with blogs.

For starters, you don’t need a designer to create your blog. Blogging services such as TypePad and Google’s Blogger offer a variety of blog templates that you can customize depending on your level of skill. With these services, you can build an attractive blog for under $100 a year or, in the case of Blogger, for free.

WordPress is another popular open source platform where you can easily publish a blog by selecting thousands of free WordPress Themes. Most of the hosting packages come with one click WordPress installation. This is why i suggest WordPress for the first time users.

The Downsides to Blogging
The biggest hurdle to blogging is the commitment to keep it going. Though “writing a blog post is as easy as sending an e-mail, the real obstacle is actually sitting down and doing it. It needs commitment in the long run.

A business blog needs at least two-to-three posts every week so that it maintains search engine growth and keeps bringing readers coming back to read what’s new. 

Another potential challenge is keeping the blog fresh and authentic. I remember lyrics of  a famous Sting song “Be yourself, no matter what they say”.  I also believe that a small business blogger should be authentic. “Be yourself”. Being yourself will make your blog more interesting.

I should warn you,  being too honest can work against you too. This is going to be the showcase of your company, therefore be careful what you publish on your blog. 

Ultimately, to be successful, your small business blog should be all about your customers. The best small business blogs highlight their customers, answer their questions, provide them with a forum and offer premium customer service. Therefore it would be perfect if you first start by learning your customers needs before building your blog. This will spark the light for a successful small business blog.

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