There are over 80 million blogs on the internet [1], but what is a blog and why should you care?
A blog, short for “web log”, refers to a website (or part of a website) which lists entries in reverse chronological order. This format is suitable for many types of websites from personal diaries to corporate communications.
There is a great deal of free software for creating blogs which is part of the reason why they are so popular. Two good examples of free services are Blogger and Wordpress, both of these are easy to set up and maintain and you don’t even need your own web space. However, for a more professional approach you can install a blog on your own website.
How does this help you?
The primary purpose of a blog is to build and interact with your audience, it is an open conversation and as such should be written in a less formal tone than a news page for example.
Each blog article, or post, can be replied to publicly by your readers. While allowing the public to write on your website might seem dangerous, comments (replies) can be moderated as little or as much as you like.
The other main benefit of a blog is that it can help your site in search engines. Whenever you write a new post it can be set to notify what are known as “update services”, these tell various websites about your new post so that they can index it in various search engines. While this doesn’t directly affect your ranking it does demonstrate to search engines that your site is both active and growing.
Should I have a blog?
If you are reasonably confident that you can write regular posts that will be of interest to your audience then it can’t hurt to try.
Any questions?
If you have any questions, or would like to speak to us about setting up a blog (or anything else to do with your website) then feel free to contact us or leave a comment below.
[1] Source: Technorati, a blog search engine