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Business blogging
by Tash Hughes of Word Constructions (www.wordconstructions.com) 

If you spend much time online with other business owners and managers, business blogs will be discussed at some point. But if you don't know much about blogs, it can be something of an overwhelming topic.

What is a business blog?

A blog is simply an online diary and comes from the term 'web log' (think about a Captain's log in a ship where he records the trip and significant events.)

There are many blogs online now, and a growing proportion of them are business related instead of purely personal observations and reflections.

In the same way that there are many different types and styles of business, business blogs can be very different from each other. However, the basic factor of a business blog is that you write from the business to your customers and potential customers, and therefore should stay relevant to your business.

Why would a business blog?

The main benefits of having a business blog are building relationships with customers and potential customers, and increasing your website's popularity.

A blog is an opportunity to show your personality to a number of people so that customers get to know you and develop trust in you. You can use the blog to share ideas and information as an expert in your field to help your customers.

Adding a blog to your website also shows your commitment to both your customers and your business - someone who posts on a blog regularly obviously is expecting the business to last more than a month or two.

One of the factors that search engines consider when ranking a website is how frequently fresh content is added to the site. Obviously, a new blog post every week will add more content to your site and search engines will visit your site more often to update their files.

The changing content will also attract people to return to your site more often than they would if the information was static. This increases your traffic and further helps with search engine rankings.

Links between your blog and other web pages will also help with search engines as internal links are important for navigation and gauging each page's importance.

Having a blog also opens your site to new avenues of traffic and marketing - people looking for information may find your blog rather than your main site, you can promote your blog in blog directories and carnivals, other blogs may link to your blog posts, and so on.

Is it really worth the time?

Like anything, the value of your blog will depend on how much value you put into to. If your blog is purely an ad for your business and you only post a few times a month, it probably won't help your business very much.

However, if you post regularly with quality information, a blog can be of huge benefit to your business. For maximum benefit, make sure the blog is on your domain name, too.

As an example, the Love Santa website was launched in October 2007 and yet by mid December 2007 it was on the front page of Google worldwide (and in the top 3 entries more often than not) for all relevant and many less relevant search terms. This was largely due to the blog on the website which was being visited by hundreds of people every day during December. While it had the advantage of being topical, it is a competitive industry and the results are significant.

With careful management, a blog can be a useful tool in increasing the traffic to your website and building trust in potential customers. How much time you put into it and how relevant website traffic is to your success will determine how worthwhile a blog is for your business, but it is certainly worth considering.

Clear communication is critical to the success of any business, but it is often left to care for itself in many businesses. Tash Hughes is a professional and skilled writer who makes technical and otherwise boring information accessible for everyone a business needs to communicate with. Next time you need webcopy, articles, newsletters, reports or any other business document, visit www.wordconstructions.com.au to see how Tash and her team can help your business succeed.

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