A blog is a type of website which you can easily add/update contents without any knowledge of web design.
The blog creation process is a simple one, you can have a blog up and running in less than ten minutes if you don’t mind having the out of the box branding. Blogger.com is a good place to start, but if you are more serious about blogging or if you want a more professional and reliable blog then I would recommend WordPress.
One of the advantages of using WordPress is that all files are stored in your own web host as opposed to a shared host that has hundreds of other blogs Blogger.com for example.
You can integrate WordPress into your existing website if you already have one, to do that you probably need to hire someone for this depending on your skill level and requirements, or, you can have your a website designed in WordPress, giving you CMS functionality and the core blog engine.
So how can blogging help your business?
- You can use your blog to keep your customers up to date about your products/services. For example, you can have a category on your blog called “Our Weekly Special Offers” and update it weekly.
- You can use your blog to provide valuable information that relates to your industry – information which your target audience would be interested in. For example, if you have a gallery website you can use you blog to offer advice on buying art, how to care for your art, where to buy art, what events you are planning and promote your newest pieces.
- You can use your blog to improve your search engine rankings, and increase traffic to your website. Writing articles related to your business would bring visitors to your site, once there you can use your post to reference a particular service(s) you offer, this at the same time creates a link to a page on your website, another plus for Google. An example would be if you have a hotel website, and there was a popular event happening in your town, you would create a post about this event, and within the article you reference that you can provide accommodation for this event. Thus, anyone looking for accommodation for this event, is more likely to find your website/blog.