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Your Business Needs a Blog! Here's What Biz Blogs Do For You

By S. D. Farrell

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 19Mar2012
Word count: 737
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Whether you're an entrepreneur or a rising professional, running a business website or maintaining an online portfolio, your business needs a blog. Gone are the days when only kids and shady citizen journalists used blogs -- now, they're sleek, professional, and a key part of your image online.

When you commit to writing a business blog, you're making an investment that will mean a minimum of a post per week, and probably include promotional activities. You might wonder what's in it for you and your company. Here are a few reasons why taking the plunge into business-oriented blogging will pay dividends in the long run. These are just a few of the functions a pro blog serves for you.

Why You Need a Business Blog

1) Credibility: You can't be an expert in your subject if nobody knows who you are or takes your opinions into account. A blog is a public forum that allows you to air your opinions and provides you with the opportunity to cultivate a built-in audience. You will be able to say that you created an informative resource that wasn't there before.

2) Activity: When you look at a website and the last update is from May 2010, you're much less likely to pay attention to what the site says. That's true even for subjects where the basic information changes very rarely. Having a business blog updated any time in a given month tells your potential customers that you haven't flown the coop.

3) Relatability: With a blog, colleagues have more reasons to reach out to you. They might find something on your blog they wish to comment on, or may reach out to you when they have something they want to promote. That helps you create a platform and the kind of real relationships that professional networking should be built on.

Promoting Your Content On LinkedIn

Starting a blog should be one of the first steps for building a web presence if you're starting a business. But it can also be valuable when making contacts in preparation for a career change or advancement. If your blog updates are informative and relevant to your industry, you can promote them on LinkedIn -- the social network for business.

LinkedIn gives you two ways to promote your material, and they can both create valuable customers or contacts for you. The first the LinkedIn update. In your LinkedIn updates, you can link to one of your posts and write a quick teaser about why your contacts should read it. This gets eyes on your site in a general sense, but it's most valuable when you can update at least three times a week. People will get used to seeing you and using your site.

The other way is through LinkedIn Answers. By answering questions, you'll be able to direct people to resources on your website that they might find valuable. Plus, you can skim over questions to get an idea of what topics you should write about. If you see a common topic coming up in your network, you can become the de facto "expert" by providing the answers people need. This also works well in LinkedIn Groups.

Getting Your Blog Started

Although your blog should always be a part of your own website, complete with its own domain address, you should not pay too much money for your business blog. A good place to get started looking for cost-effective ways to blog on your site is WordPress.org. The WordPress platform is a free, highly customizable way to introduce a blog onto your site.

Look for a "metered" web hosting service where you only pay for the services you use each month, rather than an expensive bundle of services you will never need. Make sure they offer WordPress compatibility -- even better if they auto-install the blog on your behalf, though many metered services expect you to do this yourself.

Building an online identity is integral to success both as an entrepreneur and in many high tech industries. If you use a blog correctly, it can become the source others find first when they're looking for you -- giving you a huge amount of input in the image you portray before a potential contact is introduced to you.

S. D. Farrell is a Certified Advanced Resume Writer, career development author, and speaker. He has placed hundreds of job seekers during the recession, helping IT pros from entry to C-level achieve employment at Tech 100 firms like Google and Amazon. Get tips on information technology resumes by this author at his site, Career Excellence Advisors.

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