Why have a blog?

I was at the latest Blabit Networking meeting in Linlithgow and the discussion rolled around to businesses and blogging. One of the women present was a Herbalist and she was talking about ways to market her business, we chatted about various things but blogging seemed to be something that would really suit her business. We discussed the advantages of a business having a blog and it got me thinking on how businesses including myself could use blogging to their advantage.

If you think about your favourite website..... what makes it your favourite? For me it's regularly updated content. New articles, products and so on. So that should be the aim for your business. A blog gives you an easy oppertunity to do this.

For example the Herbalist could post quarterly blogs about seasonal pick me ups, advice etc., for my business i should be highlighting products, new products and special offers.

Blog aren't hard to work either, you don't need any special skills to run one. Sites like Blogger are very straight forward to use. If you want to add to it and expand the blog by adding gadgets, links, polls, ads and so on then you can but it's not manditory.

A blog would give you something to connect to your customers and give a more personal insight into you and your business. Blogs don't need to be super lengthy, 200 words to give people some thing to quickly read, add extra bonuses by finding links to other sites that maybe of inerest or back up what your saying. Can you post a picture to help make it look interesting? These all help and are easy to do. On Blogger it's just like editing a Word document.

Please reccomend blogs you know for us to check out.

some free blog sites:

Blogger.com

WordPress.com

LiveJournal.com