Blog versus Website

Many business professionals mistakenly believe that once they have set up their landing page and website that they are done with using the internet to effectively market their company and services.  However, while websites are necessary, they are limited in their reach, unlike blogs.  When they are created correctly and managed properly, blogs are almost always more effective than websites for many reasons.

Here are four reasons blogs are better for business than websites:

      ·     Blogs are Easy to Create and Manage

Most blogs are easy to create and manage. While you may have to pay a small fee to get a domain name and find a host for your company’s website, there are many sites that offer low cost or free blogs. Many have a wide variety of free templates and themes to personalize your blog to help capture the interest of visitors and readers of your blog. There is really no other form of advertising your company and services that reaches so many people so easily for little or no cost. By using your blog to take the pulse of readers’ interests and needs, you can build potential customer loyalty and change clients into advocates. It’s also beneficial to provide liniks on your blog to your website and vice-versa, which allows instant surfing to where your products are sold as well as creating a strong connection in the public’s mind between the blog and the business.  In this way the blog supports the website and the website supports the blog at no extra cost!

·     Blogs are more SEO Friendly than Websites

It is vital to optimizing web traffic for your site to appear as close as possible to the top of Google Search and other search engine results. Many people do not click through the vast multitude of matches in a search; rather, they click on the first few links on the results page. Everything you can do to help your site place higher in the rankings will serve to inform more potential clients about your company and improve your web traffic and results.  One of the ways to increase your rankings is by updating your content frequently. Since blogs are updated often –  indeed,  the most successful are updated several times a week if not daily –  search engines will pick up these updates and return to the updated blog more often, particularly when interlinking and keyword research is done correctly.

·     Blogs Encourage More Interaction between Readers and Your Business

When someone visits your website, often the only interaction a business will have with a visitor to its website is the actual financial transaction or possibly an email asking a question.  In some cases, they may even click on a link on your website such as the Skype Button and place a call directly to you to ask a question.  While a good blog will have a links to contact the author by email or possibly even telephone, a blog allows for much more interaction than a static website. Blogs allow readers to leave comments for one another as well as the author, which allows for better, more in-depth research about how you can tailor your product or services to fit your readers’ needs and increase your business.  Readers are more likely to become “invested” in the author and their services and make that vital transition from customer to advocate for the company and its products and services. Many bloggers connect their website with their social media sites like Facebook, Google +, and Twitter to expand this personal interaction to a higher level as well, so more readers have the opportunity to find out about the blog and become followers.

·     Blogs Help Improve and Maintain Reader Interest in Your Company

Any company’s website tends to be a static presentation of that company and its services. Once an individual has made a purchase, or worse, surfed away out of boredom, there is nothing really there to hold a reader’s interest because it is the same. A great blog provides a continuous stream of information and dialogue to inform and captivate the reader and make them “hungry” to know more about the company and its services and its practically free. The more that any site is updated with relevant and captivating content, the more readers are likely to return to the site while telling others about the company and its services.

In short, while websites are by necessity static and impersonal, a blog is a very dynamic and personal experience for both the blogger and the viewer.  It is a direct form of interaction between you and the people you want to reach, one that allows useful information to flow both ways.  This makes for an overall better experience for your customers while allowing you to optimize your marketing position based on feedback.

 

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