Having a website back in the toddler days of Internet was cool.
If you are a company and you had a website URL on your business card, that would win you brownie points..
..
tons of brownie points, actually.
Websites, those days, wasn't even impressive, really.
I mean, they were static and plain.
Some of them had designs and colors that gave you a horrible eyesore too.
Sad to say, I've seen many of such websites belonging to small to medium sized corporations.
However, as we move forward a couple of years later, in came flash.
Having a flash website was really flashy and it impressed the socks off of people.
That is, people who were willing to wait for the flash on the website to load.
Back in those pre-broadband days, that's quite a lot of waiting to do.
You could go to the kitchen, get that spaghetti cooked, come back to the PC and the flash would STILL be loading.
I kid you not.
But NOW, there's business blog.
Aaahhh..
..
didn't you ever notice that with blogs, we're going back to the basics? We're going back to being simple, nice, neat websites that are packed with information.
And most importantly, a blog allows communication, feedback and interactivity.
Actually, the blog is the best thing to happen to the Internet of recent years...
simply because it brings us back to the very basics of Internet marketing.
The focus is back to words and information.
A website needs to be simple, contains important information that the readers want to read, contain relevant links to relevant people or companies...
you know, useful stuff people are usually looking for.
Now, don't mistake 'content' with some SEO articles out there right now in some of these websites raking in the top 30 Google or Yahoo ranking.
Try reading through it carefully.
You'll see that they are so keyword stuffed that they hardly mean anything at all! You can do that with your SEO pages but you are discouraged from doing this in your blog.
Your business blog is supposed to contain only blog articles that your readers want to read.
You want them to come back to your blog to find more useful blog articles.
And besides, a blog is more personal.
If you tie your business blog with a personnel of your company or a face, your blog visitors will love it even more.
There's one more thing about business blogs that makes it better than a conventional website...
and it's because a business blog allows the blog reader to respond, provide comments and feedback! Blog readers love that...
it's called interactivity.
While a website is static and does not usually allow readers and site visitors a chance to comment on a particular topic or article, a business blog does.
It benefits BOTH the readers and the business because the readers get to comment and the business owner gets to collect information, feedback and data on the content of the business or article! So, to many search engine marketing experts out there, the blog is the answer that we have all been looking for - a bridge between the reader and the business blogger.
Don't assume that you don't need a business blog just because you are not selling anything online - that's wrong.
As long as people are finding you through search engines and checking out your business blog and website, you're spreading your business' wings across geographical boundaries and the potential of finding a partner or associate anywhere else in the world is beneficial to just about ANY business.
Instead of being just a journal, a business blog is almost ESSENTIAL to a business - irregardless of whether it's an online business or offline business.