Blogging For Beginners - a Great Small Business Marketing Tool

A blog is a contraction word of "web log". It is a website that contains personal postings, usually the author's thoughts and feelings about things and events. It may also contain educational articles, videos, images, comments, opinions, descriptions of things or announcements of events.

Blogging, the verb, is the act of making the contents of the web log on a regular basis.

Since the availability of portable computers and the ease of internet connections, more and more people are taking advantage of broadcasting their daily activities online. The purpose of blogging depends on the goal of the writer, also known as the blogger. Some people write to express their feelings. Others blog to inform their audience on a particular topic. Most writers blog to share what they have, be it images, videos or thoughts, to the rest of the world.

No matter what the purpose of the blog, in order to enjoy a considerable number of repeat blog readers, it's important to ensure high quality contents are posted on a regular basis. It's interesting to note, however, that "high quality" is a relative term and its meaning will vary from audience to audience.

Who can do blogging?

Everyone and anyone is entitled to a blog site. There are many different blogging platforms currently available. You can choose to use a hosted platform - your blog will be hosted on a third party domain, such as Wordpress.com, and there are often no monthly maintenance fees associated with it. Or you can host your blog at your own domain - this will require you to install the blogging software on your own webserver and generally pay a monthly hosting fee.

What are benefits of blogging?

There are many benefits to maintaining a blog. If your blog is a personal one, it might be a great source of stress relief to pour out your worries and thoughts onto your web log. You might blog in order to improve your writing and thinking skills. Or you might want to develop your creativity and imagination while designing your weblog.

You may even monetize your blog by incorporating Pay Per Click (PPC) and Paid advertisements. This works best when the ads you display on your blog are targeted toward the audience that generally reads your posts.

Blogging is also an excellent small business marketing tool. The obvious business benefits to blogging include building a relationship with your customers and clients, setting yourself apart as the expert in the eyes of your prospects, and easily disseminating information to your target audience. Your blog can even be used as a lead generator in your small business marketing program.

How to start blogging?

If you're not sure how to begin blogging, you might want to register for a free account at Wordpress.com and take blogging for a test drive. Once you get the hang of blogging, and you're sure you'll be able to maintain your blog on a regular basis, you might decide you want your own hosted blog for business and branding purposes. At that time, you can always transfer your posts that have been created on the free site onto your own hosted blog.

It's always a good idea to have a plan before you start blogging, especially if your blog will be used for small business marketing purposes. Create an easy-to-follow calendar for yourself, and be sure to do your keyword research ahead of time so you can drive a decent amount of traffic to your blog. One of the great features of most blogging platforms is the ability to schedule your posts to be published at a later date. I suggest having at least 5 blog posts ready to go, then schedule them for future publication.

And make sure you schedule enough time into your own calendar to maintain your blog, or find a great partner who can keep your blog up to date. An abandoned blog is definitely not a good business branding tool.

Blogging is a great way to express yourself, to brand your business, and to create relationships with your clients and prospects. It's relatively inexpensive to get started - and if you want to do it all by yourself, you can even get started for no money at all. So add blogging to your small business marketing plan, and watch your business grow!