Get blogging, it's good for the site.
It is good for the site if you blog regularly. Whether or not it is good for you or your business or it is the best use of your time is a different matter.
Is blogging a word that scares you?
Basically it is writing updates, news updates, company updates, Facebook updates.
It scares me, no-one wants to look like an idiot, it's not confidential, it expresses a view and everybody has their own rules to abide by.
The first blog you write is the hardest and then it gets easier as your confidence grows.
The problem is that you are not in control of what everybody thinks and if you are going to blog, you want it to be beneficial, to you, the company and for it not to result in anything anything drastically outrageous like hearing the sniggers of your colleagues in the canteen or the smoking room (outside in the cold by the fire escape) or worse still being fired for bringing the company into disrepute.
People earn money from blogging
There are professional bloggers out there, they do it full time and somehow, some of them, do a bit more than eke a living out of it.
This a real blog , this particular item, it's longer than a tweet and shorter than a column for the Times and it is being written and uploaded as I type it.
This is in contrast to another blog that I have, which has been written, re-written , updated and not actually published........yet, because I have to cross the T's and dot the i's.
If you tweet, then include the url of your blog in your tweet
It's not for twitter with 140 characters and it's not for face book. Twitter is great for some things, I think, like getting the scores updates on various sporting events for example, and referring people to blogs by including the url in the 140 characters- more of a mechanism to connect to your followers.
So what is so important about blogging?
Well, I am looking to generate a bit of a groundswell of activity.
I want you to recognise the value of writing content updates on your websites.
It's free, does not cost you a bean, apart from your time and only you benefit.
It is an absolute fact that if you update your website with some content on a regular basis, then the search engines index it on a regular basis.
This lifts the rankings of that particular page on Google, so when people are searching for a product or service the page is more prominent.
More prominent than what?
Will I be on Page 1 of Google?
Maybe and maybe not, but more prominent than it was before.
So let's cut to the chase here, the objective is to get more traffic to your website, where people will buy products or services, or make an enquiry.
So if you have information on your website detailing current thinking in your industry, or specific technical aspects of the product you market or the science behind the product, it all helps and more so very, very pertinently it establishes the fact that you know your business and imbues the reader with confidence.
So basically, write about your business, service or product and provide information.
Write about your successes, new product lines, new projects.
Blogging is not for blogging's sake.
It's just a fashionable new term that addresses something that we have been doing since time immemorial, but now you can do it and the the whole world can see it, and it's free.
But only if you do it (before it was if they passed your shop window, read your advert in the Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph or took one of the leaflets you were giving out as they passed through the shopping mall) .
As always, if you do it well, and it takes a bit of time and effort, then you will reap the rewards.
Free Blogs
Blogger - (This used to be called Blogspot) This is free, but you sign in with your Google ID, so if you have not one, sign up it’s also free.
Wordpress - Absolutely stacks of plugins and generally regarded as the easiest to use
Tumblr - more associated in the blog world with sharing pictures, videos and graphics
I will leave you with this piece of news:
Yahoo has just paid £723 million for Tumblr.