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Informative Articles

5 Reasons Why Your Site Needs to Publish a News Feed
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Blogging for Business - Should You?
Copyright since 2009 Peter Tarrida del Marmol So you've heard that having a blog is a good idea for your business, but are you sure WHY it's important? Understanding how blogs operate and how to use them for your business will give you great...
Blogging for customers
Blogs are a great way to keep in touch with your customers. Why? No spam filters. Blogs are proactive tools and not reactive like an email. If people want to know what’s going on, they must log on to your blog and find out on their own. This is...
Brief History of Blogs
Summary: A quick look at where blogs came from, where they are and where they're going. So where did all these blogs come from? How did they get from an underground geek toy to a mainstream tool that has revolutionized politics, journalism,...
Feed me - Satisfy the Search Engines and Your Site's Visitors With Keyword-Rich Content
Search engines love content. Graphics may make your site look great, but a nice picture does not attract a search engine. Or a searcher for that matter. Good, relevant content does. Search engines aren't all that different from people. When faced...
How to Get Your Web Site Content Syndicated
[Kalena] Following our successful experiment of setting up a news feed for my site, search engine marketer Dan Thies and I have joined forces to write this article to show other webmasters how they can do the same for their own sites. But before...
How to put your offer in front of enough people to make money on the net
Whatever it is that you are selling online, there is a simple truth. You will need to get your offer in front of enough people to be able to make a single sale. Once you know your conversion rate (that is how many people you need to put the message...
Residual Income, a myth?
I'm writing this in response to the every distributor in every company and program that tell you that the greatest things about MLM/Network marketing is the residual/passive/ongoing income that "keeps making you money forever" and they'll even try...
Should Bloggers be Helping Google Fix Their PageRank System?
By now, most bloggers have heard the announcement that the Big 3 search engines - Google, Yahoo, and MSN - have united in support of a new tag that will supposedly combat comment spam. The new tag is a nofollow attribute that can be added to links....
This Piece of Software Does It All
I make my living as a writer (hard copy niche non-fiction books and online instruction courses) and I use the internet to promote my wares. For years I searched for a piece of software that would free up my time to concentrate exclusively on...
 
 
 
Should My Home Business Have a Blog?

It's fair to say that blogging has taken the Internet by storm over recent years. And it's no surprise that today there are hundreds of thousands of new blogs being launched every day.

But as a home-based business owner, should I have a blog?

To put it bluntly, if you conduct any part of your business over the internet, then Yes, you should have a blog.

So what is a blog?

Wikepedia describe a blog as ..... a weblog (usually shortened to blog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order). Although most early weblogs were manually updated, tools to automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible to a much larger population, and the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging".

You might be thinking that to set up a blog is far too advanced for me, but that is furtherest from the truth. Blogger.com is a Google-owned hosted blogging platform that is 100% free to use and literally takes only minutes to set up and start posting.

Secondly, you might be thinking it's going to cost too much. Wrong! The only cost is your normal web hosting. You don't even have to purchase a new domain for your blog. It can be easily attached as a sub-domain to your current business website eg: http://blog.MyBusiness.com or as a directory: www.MyBusiness.com/blog/.

So why should your home-based business have a blog? Will it benefit me?

The truth is, a blog is just one part of your marketing strategy, although it can quite easily end up being the most valuable and cost-effective way of marketing your business to new and existing clients.

Come to see your blog as a means of getting closer to your intended market.

With a blog, you

 


are giving your home business a personality. You are chatting informally with your market and building that much sought after long-term relationship and trust.

With credibility and trust being what separates successful home business to those that fail, a well-delivered blog can help build a strong rapport with your customers, via you offering insights into your business and your industry. In a low-pressure setting (ie: there should be no hard selling at all), you are networking with your customers in a way that humanizes your business.

So how can a blog work for my home business?

Let's take an example. Your business (which by the way, you run from home) is sells PDA add-ons.

By including a blog as an addition to your e-commerce site you could deliver news, facts, figures, views ... in fact, anything to do with your industry.

You can have your rant and raves on topics close to you. You could offer inside tips on using PDA's. You could provide links to other sites of interest that your customers would appreciate.

Your market will love you for your openness and willingness to chat informally, and in time you become perceived as an expert in your field.

But a word of warning. Don't start up a blog just to push sales, offering little but mere "buy from me now" posts. This is a sure-fire way of actually losing credibility.

If you view a blog as a way of communicating better with your customers (ie: talking 'with them' rather than 'to them') then you are well on your way to blogging success and more importantly ... business success.

About The Author

Martin Neumann is publisher of HomeOfficeVoice.com ... for the internet-savvy home business entrepreneur, HomeOfficeVoice offers news, reviews and commentary in the world of online home business.