Many businesses today use blogs to communicate with their customers, potential customers, and the general public. You may be wondering if a blog would help your business.  A blog provides many benefits for most businesses.

• Before You Start: You are considering starting a business blog.
• Learning level: 1 | Social Media Basics
• Article last updated: Thursday, September 22, 2011

Advantages From Business Blogs

There are many advantages you gain from keeping a business blog. Here are a few of them.

• Develop a casual dialog with your customers. A blog allows you to speak casually to a wide range of people, including your customers and potential customers. Through a blog, and through blog comments, you can create a casual conversation that builds real relationships.
• Fast communication of current information. Most businesses don’t update their website frequently. A blog allows you to provide up-to-date information to your customers quickly and easily. It’s much easier to update a blog than your website, and it requires no special technical skills.
• Increase your visibility in search engine results. As you blog about topics, you increase your business visibility in search engine results for those topics. A business blog with posts written around your most desired search results raises your visibility, making it easier for potential customers to find you.
• Share multimedia content. With a blog, you can embed other types of content such as videos, photos, and podcasts easily. By including multimedia content in your blog, you centralize all of the content from your company, and make it easy for people to see and use the content you create and provide.
• You are in control (mostly). Many people use a variety of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. These sites are run by other companies, subject to hacker attacks, and may close in the future. Your blog is the only place where you run the show. Yes, your hosting service may have some downtime, but with a good backup strategy, you can be up and running again quickly.
• Be seen as an expert. A blog allows you to showcase your knowledge about a topic. As other people discover the benefit of your knowledge, you become seen as an expert in the field.

Deciding to start a blog is an important business decision that can help you build your business.

Your turn: Do you keep a business blog? What benefits have you found from keeping a blog? Share your insights with the community here.

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