Why You Should Consider Blogging?
Our goal at SocialToolKit is to provide our customers knowledge through step-by-step instructions of how
they can promote their business or products via Social Networking. This lesson track will be covering is
Blogs. Blogs are the oldest venue in the Social Networking world. Blogging is the easiest and quickest
avenue for non–coders to get their message online. You don’t have to know PHP or HTML. Whew!! Most
blog services are even free. Blogging is at the forefront in today’s connected world, giving anyone or any
business the opportunity to get their message delivered. With our current recession hitting companies hard,
it’s more important than ever to find cost effective ways to attract new customers and increase revenue. The
saying doing more with less is so true. Blogging can help you achieve your financial goals.
Here are three reasons why you should blog: low cost, marketing, and growing your customer base.
1. Low Cost - Designing and launching your blog is easy, you don’t need a degree in computers to
set one up. There are many free blog services available such as Wordpress, and Blogger, which
can boost your online presence, I strongly recommend that you incorporate your blog with the rest
of your website so that corporate branding and messages are as consistent as possible. I will
review several blogs sites later in this lesson that we recommend.
2. Marketing – Gone are the days of printed marketing materials for news and product information.
By the time the materials are printed out, they are out of date. Many individuals and companies
use blogs for free marketing. Posts can be created as product reviews, articles, and corporate news
to inform your customers. As mentioned before, you need to link your blog to your corporate or
sales websites. This helps out with Google rankings and search results. It is absolutely necessary
for businesses to keep up with the trends in today’s fast paced world. A blog can make your
company appear more "alive'' and approachable. A website promoting your products or services is
an essential marketing tool. But a blog, in effect, gives your company a personal voice, which also
can help boost customer loyalty.
3. Grow Customer Base - Another way to get your message out and also drive traffic is to post
comments on other people blogs. If they are writing about something that directly relates to yours
you can post a comment with your link and details of your own blog. Now don’t shamelessly
advertise yourself in these comments though as this may get it deleted. There is evidence to
suggest well written blog comments that add to the conversation with valuable and insightful
commentary attract significantly more attention than even the main post itself! Clearly there is
scope for businesses to therefore brand themselves as an authority to people outside their own
circle of influence.
The key to a business blog is helping new people find it and making it easier for those people to navigate
your site. With that in mind, much of the useful widgets and plugins for business blogs revolve around
increasing the performance of your blog in search engines and helping viewers find other content that
interests them.
Let’s visit Top-Ten-Reviews, which is a neutral site, and see how they rank each of the major blogs
available.

Add Meta Tags – It’s important to make it easy for search engines to categorize your content and viewers
to find articles that interest them. A good meta tag plugin on your blog will help you define what each
article is about, thus making it easier for people to find the topics that interest them.
Share This – An important part of getting your blog noticed is using social networking and social media
sites, where millions of people recommend sites they have found to each other. By adding the Share This
plugin, you are placing icons for major social sites under each post making it fast and easy for readers to
submit your blog posts to these sites. Share This plugins can be a great way to get your blog out into the
blogosphere faster.

Instead of sending out a communication through email that may or not be responded to, a blog offers a
business a chance to build a real community. Blogs make it easy and quick for people to post, comment,
and update posts - making it easy for everyone to participate.
A well-done blog does three important things for a business;
1. A blog can be an inexpensive way to establish an Internet presence.
2. Makes it easy to add and update content, so there's always something fresh on the site;
3. It helps establish a relationship with visitors and build a climate of trust. Potential customers get to
know you and know about your company through your blog.
4. Great way to promote your business and products