Blogging has soared in popularity, we often get asked ‘Why should I start a blog?’ here are just a few reasons why we think blogging is worth considering.

Blogs are websites that you can update yourself by writing your own articles. You write the articles and build up a collection that can be read and searched by site visitors. Visitors can post comments back and ask questions, so a blog is a truly interactive website. Blog articles also give you marketing opportunities to push out links to the blog from social networking and business networking websites. Regular blog posts give opportunities to keep in regular contact with customers and contacts as well as contributing to that organisation’s branding as experts in their field.

The software is free and it automatically archives past articles (or ‘posts’.) It functions like a content managed website so you can have real depth of content and amend your articles or add to them when you like. This can be really useful for companies with technical information or ranges of products to write about and can be used to publicise company news and events.

Blogs are great if you are an expert because you can build up a comprehensive collection of your knowledge online, share it with others and get feedback or share ideas with your readers. You may have picked up ideas, expertise and ways of working that you could share with others. They might be outside your company or they could be your employees, or they could be customers who want to know that you are an expert before they buy.

Blogs have several advantages over a traditional website but if you already have an HTML website you can have a blog that runs alongside your HTML website. This is done by installing the blogging software onto the web-server where the HTML website is hosted. The advantage of this method is that the blog will share the same domain as the website making it easier to promote the blog as part of the main website and making a more cohesive online presence.

This blogpost is an exerpt from the first Create Design Studio book on creating websites. If you would like to read more visit our website at: www.iwanttobeawebdesigner.com and download a chapter from the book FREE!

Create Design Studio provide graphic design and website services, we also set up blogs and make great PowerPoint presentations. If you’d like us to help you with your next project please call David on 01420 549637.

Looking back through some old copies of our quarterly newsletter there are some great articles for small and medium sized businesses on marketing and business promotion. Here’s an article from Bulletin number 1.

What could a blog, plus online social networking give your company? More connections to your customers and new marketing opportunities.

Developing your brand is about creating a relationship with your customers based on their perception of your organisation. Start not with what you sell but with those who buy and find the appealing values that your organisation shares with them to give it a personality they can relate to.

Successful branding helps to make sales easier because trust has been created between customer and organisation. Creating this kind of successful brand doesn’t happen overnight but it can be supported by making your organisation accessible to customers on the web.

A blog is a type of online diary, often used by businesses to publish articles about issues and events relevant to their industry that will be of interest to their customers and their peers. It can be hosted separately from your main website or the free blogging software can be installed on your web-server to integrate your website and your blog. Some smaller companies or freelance workers only have a blog as the software is versatile and can be used in a similar way to a traditional website with pages for services, products and contact information. You can update your blog as often as you like and as soon as you hit the ‘Publish’ button your articles are live on the web and can be indexed by search engines.

Blog-posts can be effectively promoted through the use of the social networking site Twitter where users write their current status in messages of 140 characters or less. These messages can contain hyperlinks that direct readers to your blog post, your website or to any other online resource you want to promote.

Your Twitter status can also be linked so it updates your Facebook status and your status on the Ecademy and LinkedIn business networking sites, meaning you only have to write updates once and all the people who ‘follow’ you will be informed. If you are trying to spread the word about a new product or service linking your updates this way could provide an effective and low-cost way to promote them online.

These websites can also prove useful in other ways. By posting questions to those in your network others can respond quickly with personal recommendations and links to information resources. Also, social networking can enable you to keep in touch with friends and business contacts you may not often be able to meet up with in-person due to geography or lack of time.

Social networking has received coverage in the mainstream media and on the BBC news website an article by Claire Prentice explains how small firms are harnessing social networking for their marketing. As many small firms cannot afford to spend large sums on advertising they have turned to the social networking websites to reach a global audience with a minimal cost. Promoting special offers, new services and even to fill cancelled appointments at the last minute, updates on Twitter or Facebook build trust between customers and your organisation because customers know the information comes from you.

Social networking sites invite your customers to enter into dialogue with your company and the feedback you receive can be used to improve your services. However, your organisation also becomes open to criticism. Approach criticism as a chance to improve your service and potentially win back customers and even this aspect of social networking for business use can have a positive outcome.

If you are a newcomer to social networking online, here are some tips on how to begin:

Online social networking site twitter.com, uses short messages to help you stay in touch with other twitter users and www.facebook.com is a full social networking site that allows you to upload photos, update your status and instant message other friends online at the same time as you.

Business networking sites include www.ecademy.com which is a large site with users from all over the world with clubs and regional networking groups you can join. You may also like to look at www.linkedin.com for opportunities to network with other professionals.

If you’d like to start your own blog visit: wordpress. com or www.blogger.com. Try reading a few blogs to see the breadth of writing that exists on the web. You can search Google for blogs or you can visit a blog search engines like technorati.com which has a list of 100 top blogs to browse. Also try mashable.com for blogs about the world of social media online and a series of articles on ‘How to’ that should help if you are having problems using the sites mentioned in this article.

Create Design Studio can help those of you who would like to start your own blog but don’t know where to begin. We can set up a blog on your existing website, design the page, show you how to log-in and write articles as well as using Google Analytics to see how well your blog is doing.

Create Design Studio provide graphic design and website services, we also set up blogs and make great PowerPoint presentations. If you’d like us to help you with your next project please call David on 01420 549637. If you would like to receive a copy of The Bulletin please visit our Contact Us page and fill in the form, add ‘The Bulletin’ and your address to the enquiry field and we will post a copy to you.