Why your site needs a blog

Every time I meet a new client, I ask them if know what a blog is. In most cases, they've heard of blogs but don't really know how or why they're used, other than the fact that everyone needs one. Let's start there. A blog is short for weblog, or web-log. I remember the first time that I hear the word blog: I didn't like it and didn't understand it.

To me, it was basically an online journal aimed at people who kept physical journals. I thought that it was a web fad that wouldn't last, but it wouldn't go away. 

A blog is just a way to regularly publish content on the Internet.

You can use a blog to keep an public, online diary. You can write news stories. You can post recipes or projects you're working on. You can write tutorials, how-to's, tips, or tricks. You can write anything as long as you do it regularly, whether it be once a day, once a week, or twice a month. If you are just not into writing regularly or find it hard to do, delegate it to someone else in your company who can excel at it.

The web is all about content and information, not sales pitches. A blog is a great way to give a face to your company: we express ourselves in our writing so a blog is a great way to give your website a personal touch to differentiate your overall sales pitch from your competition's. Depending on what you blog about and how it is connected to your business, the blog will become your marketing tool and the hook to your site.

A blog give your Google ranking and findability a huge boost.

Your Google ranking is based on a few things, two being the words you use on your front page and how often you update your web site. If the bell didn't just go off, I'll explain: a blog = reguarly published content. By adding a blog to your web site and by publishing content reguarly, you've just told Google that your web site is relevant because it's always updating and current. 

Once you add a blog to your site, you'll notice that the majority of your unsolicited visitors will come in through your blog. Your blog has just become your sales pitch. Your traffic will organically increase but you can really help the process by marketting to your blog.

You can easily market using your blog.

Once you have your blog up and running and you have your publishing schedule down, you can start marketting. There are a lot of different ways to do this depending on what you're blogging, but what I have found to work best relies on the community of your product or service.

Because I work in the design world and blog about the tech industry, I naturally read a lot of other blogs about these topics, which have a massive number of readers. I get involved by posting comments to different stories and if I've blogged about a similar topic, I finish my comment with a link to my post. This helps bring traffic to my web site because people will naturally click the link to read more and because web site address shows up on these high-traffic web sites.

Before my clients start blogging, I encourage them to look into current blogs in their field. This helps with both getting familiar with the culture of blogs in general and with learning what's being blogged about.

If you are still confused about blogs or have anything to add, let me know below.