Why blog?
Why Blog when you can build a Website instead?
To understand the question: ‘Why Blog’ you first have to understand the difference between a Blog and a Website. To be honest now-a-days it is pretty darn difficult to tell the difference.[image_frame image="http://bsmart.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/rubix_cube.jpg" zoom="" alt="" width="" height="" float="right" ]
For example Ebay, Sony & CNN are all built using the WordPress platform. So whilst Ebay to most people looks like a website it is actually more of a morphed version of of a shopping cart and a Blog all rolled into one.
Essentially the main difference between a Wesite and a Blog is that a Blog originally started out as a platform used by small interest groups who wanted a interactive than a static website. Cast your mind back about 20 years and you may remember that building a website was a dreadfully complex and quite often expensive process involving a professional web designer and hours upon hours of complex and tedious programming. Once your website was built it sat boldly on the Internet like Parliament House proudly proclaiming you had joined the digital age. Because it was expensive to change that was usually the end of it so like a derelict building it sat slowly decaying.
Snap forward to today wherein the number of websites / blogs (call them what you will) has now moved on from totals in the millions (20 years ago) to current totals in the Trillions! Niche marketing is a well practised and very sophisticated science / art form and old static sites simply don’t cut it any longer. In fact I can almost guarantee that if your site is not receiving some sort of improvement every month (preferably every fortnight) you will lose rankings to your competitors who are making the effort.
So Why Blog verses Build a Website – which is better?
Blogs are interactive and Google likes interactive sites with original content.
Just read the post and mull over that statement for a moment. If Google, the largest, most widely used search engine in the world likes the way a Blog works then is your business big enough to ‘swim against the Google tide’?[image_frame image="http://bsmart.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/confused-150x150.jpg" zoom="" alt="" width="" height="" float="right" ]
Put simply Matt Cutts and his merry men at Google are determined that the Internet is and will always remain People Focused. That means that for the perceivable future the Google search engine will try to find sites that humans like to visit.
What’s even better is that if you are interested Matt has Youtube videos explaining everything they are doing, why they are doing it and how you can benefit from the changes if you own a ‘people freindly’ site.
All this sounds expensive and like a lot of work for a Small Business right. WRONG!!!
- A Blog can have as many STATIC PAGES as you want i.e. as many traditional pages that look just like the old websites used to have. This is all the stuff you don’t want to change much e.g. your company profile, an overview of your services, pictures of your office / machinery / smiling Boss / etc.[image_frame image="http://bsmart.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Stressed-150x150.jpg" zoom="" alt="" width="" height="" float="right" ]
- But here’s the really good thing: A Blog can also have pages with information that comes and goes. The pages are called Posts and may include things like: weekly specials / end of year run-outs / special offers to special customers that no one else gets / supply delays / over supply discounts / special shipments coming in / pre-orders. Basically anything your business does can be beamed live to the world (try doing that with your phone directory add).
- Create a single Post and with the press of a single button you can send that information to every customer you have via Facebook.
So suddenly all this ‘extra’ work doesn’t look so daunghting. After all what business doesn’t want to be able to change its advertising to reflect what it has to sell here and now. What’s more creating a post takes no longer than it does to write an email using programs like WordPress .
Why Blog?
- Blogging is simple.
- The cheapest way for any business to advertise.
- ‘Google friendly’.
