If your experience of blogging is reading the online musings of missionaries and scrapbookers, then you may be wondering what on earth you would want to bother with setting up a blog for say, your plumbing business.

Whilst blogging may have started as a Web Log, today, blogging is a marketing tool where the publishing platform is a content management system.

So What's The Point Of Blogging For Business?

Well here are 8 key reasons to kick off with…

1. A blog is a website which YOU, and not a web developer, can update in a click.

2. Whatever you sell, it’s people who buy and they have interests and problems, and they also like to know who they’re buying from. If you’re good at business, then you’ll want to establish a relationship with your most important clients. But why spread yourself too thinly? With a blog you can share the bit of yourself, the business persona that you want the world to see with all of your customers, not just the hallowed few. And wasn’t there an element of relationship building that elevated them to the status of your platinum client in the first place? Blogging for business makes that so much easier.

3. When you get it right, blogging for business can build trust and position you as an expert in your field.

4. Blogging for business gives you a mechanism for developing an ongoing relationship with your customers.  Isn't it easier to get an already happy customer to buy some more stuff, than to start all over again by finding a new one?  With a blog you can subtly promote different and new products to your existing customers.

5. Is the customer always right? No, but they always win if they just decide not to buy from you. A blog lets you collect comments from visitors (i.e. your customers) so you can find out what they want. And then you can give it to them.

6. Respond instantly to fads and trends. When Delia Smith mentioned a mini mixer on TV, most stores had sold out of the product by the next day.  The demand she created was so high there was a waiting time of over 1 month. This £17 cooking toy was selling on Ebay for over £50.  Yet, a few weeks later, they were stockpiled.

Fads dissolve and it’s the quick who cash in. Updating a traditional website can be a slow process for the non-expert. By the time you’ve got the information, emailed it to your web guy and done a bit of an argie-bargie about what goes where and how, had a bit of a gasp over how much it’s going to cost-then the flurry’s all over.

If you want to tap into what’s happening in your market TODAY, this minute, then you need a Wordpress blog.

7. A basic Wordpress blog is cheap and simple to start. It may not be too fancy looking, but it’s easy for you to tart up with informative photo’s and videos. And that’s what people want, information, solutions and entertainment. They care more about what’s in it for them than fancy gizmo's and graphics.

8. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a whole industry of expensive and complicated smoke and mirrors, when you have a traditional type of website. With a WordPress blog, the SEO element is just so much easier if you want to start doing some of that yourself and avoid paying out the recurring fees to the experts.

But what can I blog about, you ask? Your business.  If you’re a personal trainer, how about sharing tips and tricks for rock hard abs and keeping your readers up to date with fitness developments?  By demystifying what you do, you can open up a whole new client base of people who may have been reluctant to approach a personal trainer before they read your posts.

If you sell shoes, handbags, earrings, or chocolate, these items have a history, a creation or growing process, all of which will be interesting to someone.

Importantly, you will also be establishing yourself as an expert in your field by delivering interesting and useful information, instead of making your website all about you and your list of qualifications – about which nobody actually cares – really, they don’t.

Blogging for business has been a transformational marketing tool for millions of businesses, and with the right information, your business can be showing up online.

How To Get Started Blogging For Business

I recommend you get yourself a self hosted wordpress blog – so you are in control of it all.  Wordpress have a help site which can help you set up a very basic blog.  Or you can get a site set up for you and professionally designed for the business client.  At Smart Marketing Warriors, we do the professional set up but we also understand that some of you want to learn how to do it yourselves, so we will be launching a step by step lesson programme in the next few weeks.

Just pop a comment in below this post to register your interest and we'll make sure you're updated when it all kicks off.

If you want Smart Marketing Warriors to send you the free review questionnaire to get you on your way to having a professional blog built within your budget, then use this contact form.