Sales Solution Consultant
George Ajazi
Business Blogging: A Primer

The decision to dive into the blogosphere with your company Web site can be a difficult one. Would my site benefit from a blog? Do I have the proper resources to manage the blog? Upon what platform should I build the blog? The fact that many answers to these questions exist, can make the decision even more difficult. Let’s go over some pros and cons of creating a business blog.

Reasons why you should not create a blog:

• You don’t have the internal or external resources required to write content for or manage the blog
• Your Web site contains all the information a customer needs or wants to know about your product/service offering
• Customer service and feedback is best handled via your call center
• You are getting all the natural search traffic you can handle
• You rank well on generic and long-tail keywords

Reasons why you should create a blog:

• Your site is anemic from a content standpoint
• IT is too busy to keep your site updated
• You need the ability to quickly and easily add keyword-rich, search engine friendly content pages to your site
• Your natural search traffic numbers are low
• Adding a blog to your site can cost you as little as: $0

While there are definitely some corporate Web sites whose content and offerings do not lend themselves well to a blog, the majority do. The ease and low cost of adding a blog to an existing domain makes not doing so short-sighted.

Currently, a number of free blog applications exist with search engine friendly architecture built in. Additionally, free third-party plugins can be utilized to expand a blog’s functionality. Once implemented, you will be able to easily add keyword-rich content to your domain without further assistance from your IT team.

Your responsibility going forward is diligent blog maintenance. It’s important to add quality content on a regular basis (weekly or daily if possible). Make your blog a dynamic entity and give your end-users a reason to visit in the future.

In time, you will see increased rankings for long tail keywords as well as an increase in your site’s overall natural search traffic.