There are a few key reasons why a business needs to have a blog. The first reason is for increased exposure and how quickly and powerfully a blog can spread information. Currently less than 5% of businesses have a blog but over 40% of the web traffic in Google is accounted for by blogs. This means that 5% of businesses are going after 40% of the web traffic and 95% of business are going after 60% of web traffic. Maintaining a blog greatly increases your exposure in the search engines.
The second thing this new technology allows you to do is track everything that is said in the internet. For instance, I can track any key word or phrase that is used on the internet. If I wanted to know every time the name “Chuck Brady” is used, I could get an instant update with the context in which it was used, delivered right to your inbox without having to do a thing and WITHOUT ANY SPAM. This is a fantastic way to keep track of your competition, keep abreast of your market or to ensure there is never any bad press spreading about your company.
In addition to being able to track key words, you can use this feature of blogging to your advantage to get your content read by a huge audience. The American political parties realized the power of this in the last federal election and blogging became the most critical part of their campaign. Microsoft realized the power of it and they currently have over 2000 employees whose only job is to maintain blogs.
Since blogs create a lot of traffic on the internet that are also very appealing to advertisers. There are lots of opportunities to create ad revenue with no effort on your part. Google knows that 40% of their traffic, and thus 40% of their revenue comes through blogging, so they reward bloggers accordingly. Google currently pays out over 75% of its revenue to its users; you can gain your share of this.
The final and one of the most appealing aspects of blogging is that you do not need a web programmer to do it. Once you have your strategy and blog in place; writing content is as easy as typing an email. This means that it becomes a very affordable marketing vehicle with no long term financial repercussions. As everyone in business knows, if it is not affordable, it does not matter how great it is.
Cheers,
CB