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Business Week magazine has claimed, “blogs will change your business.” The Wall Street Journal has stated “the blog as business tool has arrived”. Yet, less than 10% of small businesses use blogs to promote their products and services. This cost-effective promotional tool is more often overlooked, rather than used to its full potential.

While millions of people are starting blogs, both personal and professional, those who use to blogs to promote small businesses are still very much in the minority. Creating a blog, and keeping it updated allows you to stand out as an informational resource in your field, a powerful perception in your customers’ eyes.

Here are some strategies for using blogs as a promotional platform for virtually any business.

1. If you’re hosting an upcoming sale or special promotion, gather the details, and post them to your blog. This lets customers know when to take advantage of the discounts.
2. If you want to move a specific product, post a tip on how to use it, or include a picture of a completed project. Then let customers know they can get that product from you.
3. If you’re interested in enticing more teens into your store, give a teen “guest blogging” privileges, and have her post her top five favorite products each month.
4. Keep your content fresh with timely announcements, such as when the new service is available, or when a new employee has been added to your staff.
5. Offer reminders: when class registrations start, and end; holiday countdowns; and saving items for an upcoming charity drive.
6. Advise customers when products sell out, or are backordered
7. Tempt customers with listings of new product arrivals.
8. Report on the latest scoop from trade shows (these can even be blogged while on the road!)
9. Educate your customers with links to helpful informational websites and project instructions.
10. Open a discussion: ask customers to post their favorite organizational tips in the Comments section, for instance. Or offer a question of the week, and encourage customers to respond online.

Many small business owners struggle with too much to do, and not enough time. Although creating and maintaining a blog is easy, many professionals don’t have the time to dedicate to researching the how-to. For these situations, consider seeking out a marketing consultant who can walk you through the steps of setting up a blog. Setting up a blog is an easy task that takes 15 minutes to complete. From there, a blog marketing consultant can help you better understand how to use the blog to most effectively market your business.

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A personal online journal related to your business, a blog is a great, informal way of updating customers. Blogging can make your customers relate better to you on a personal level and is a great way to set yourself apart from the group of small and home based businesses crowding the Internet marketing scene. Tracked by search engines, your blogging information can be accessed not only by your current customers, but also by consumers browsing the web for the services or products they need. Like email newsletters, you can use blogging to keep your customers up to date on special sales, promotions, new products or services, major changes within a business, or general news about the industry your business is a part of.

Business owners who use blogging to update information about their company more than double their visibility on large search engines, such as Yahoo and Google. Each word you type in a blog is tracked by the search engine so the more blogs you post, the more traffic your website will get. To make sure you’re getting the most value and customer response from your blog, follow these five blogging tips:

Be Informative

Showing your customers how much you know about your business and the niche market youre targeting will put them at ease and make them more likely to purchase your products or services. Make sure your blogs are written in a knowledgeable, expert way and double check all of your facts, spelling and grammar. Include detailed and informative information about your business. Initial posts can include information about what your business offers and who could benefit from your service and, further down the line, you could blog about new products or services available. As long as the information is useful to consumers, you can write about it.

Keywords

Use keywords wisely and select words you think consumers would use when searching for a company like yours that offers the same products and services. The more common keywords you select, the higher you’ll rank on search engine pages and the more traffic your site will generate.

Quantity

A simple headline or single sentence will not attract a potential customers attention, so make sure you beef up your blogs with a lot of informative content. The more substance to your post, the more you’ll attract the attention of search engines and interest consumers who click on your link.

Frequency

Its important to update your blog frequently, adding new and important information. This will keep your customers interested and search engines will begin indexing your page at regular intervals.

Grammar & Spelling

In only takes one or two spelling errors to turn a customer off to your services, so take the extra time to review your post and correct any grammar or spelling mistakes. Try creating your blog in a writing program that offers spell check, such as Microsoft Word, and then copying and pasting it into the blog once you’re sure everything is perfect.

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Blogs have taken the internet by storm. More and more people are setting up blogs,  and in the most part they die off within their first year, before they pick up any momentum. Most people set up blogs to build their reputation, sell products and get traffic to sell ads.

Although blogs have been around for a while, many small businesses are still not taking advantage of all the benefits a small business blog can provide to your bottom line.

Creates awareness about your service / product

Many businesses have great, innovative products – especially in the technology sector. A major problem small businesses run into is getting the word out about their product on a small marketing budget. Creating a blog will create awareness about your product and ultimately drive sales.

Builds your reputation as a subject matter expert

If you are an expert in your field, it is very beneficial to write about what you do and how you do it. The quality of your content is key. It may seem counter-intuitive to give away your “secrets” – however most people will find your articles because they are not the experts and are looking to learn.

Strengthens your Search Engine Optimization strategy

The better quality articles you write, the more likely it is that other people will link to your articles. Link popularity is one of the most important aspects of SEO. Additionally, with correct code structure, you can create an internal cross linking strategy that will drive your PageRank higher.

These are some of the benefits of blogging for small business. Setting up a blog is very cheap, often times free (www.blogspot.com or www.wordpress.com) and all you have to risk is your time.

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