Welcome to blogging!

Welcome. I've been promoting the idea of a blog to a few of my clients now, and it seemed a bit ironic that I didn't have one to promote my own website and business. Blog is short for "web log" which is kind of an online diary. However, there are a lot of different kinds of blogs now, and most writers have one that they post to daily.

Blogs are now so commonplace, that I saw an article just today that a group of blogging journalists are trying to form themselves into a union to protect themselves and get health care! This is how mainstream blogs now are. As a person who owns a business you may think "I pay my web designer to do that sort of work". However, there are a lot of reasons why you should still consider adding the component of a blog to compliment your site.
In a conference I went to a few months ago, the presenter writes in his blog at least a couple of times a month. This created interest for people who want to know what he is up to and what specials his business - travel - are promoting. But I was searching the web last week for some information and found another radio broadcast from Australia and these guys are professional designers who were saying the same thing!
The fellow I listened to said that there were a few reasons why having a blog increased site traffic.

1. The structures of blogs are search engine friendly (they are often written in HTML with CSS (cascading style sheets), which cuts out a lot of design code to get to the meat of your message.
2. It uses basic HTML. (the language that websites are written in) A lot of sites have Flash, lots of images etc. and they aren't picked up as pure information.
3. Each post has an individual title page. These title pages are what the search engines use in their searches. And rank them as important.
   
4. Most blogs have links to other sites, and as I've mentioned before, that means site popularity.
5. Your content is FRESH! I have clients that I did sites for three years ago, and they do not feel it important to update their sites at all. Not even when they don't necessarily sell the same things any longer. Your customers will be bored and the search engines will be too.

To give you an example of what you would put in your blog would be a friend of mine who has a perennial business. It is a large farm and she is promoting it all the time. But if you know anything about the garden trade, people stock up on all their plants pretty early in the spring and summer and later on in the year her place is pretty quiet. But she has beautiful perennials that come into their own later in the season, that so many people are missing! With her blog, she can write about and include photographs of all the flowers that are blooming right now! Pictures of how her gardens are looking later in the seaon and even photographs of the animals that come to drink from her pond or just pass by. This is pretty handy for you, the customer, as you can keep an eye on her blog and not have to drive out there every couple of weeks. And she doesn't have to pay me to add more pictures each time, as a blog is straightforward to add messages and images to. Think email. It's not difficult.
You can give advice about the product or industry that you are in. Any news that may affect your business or may have your customers worried. It is a personal touch. The blog entry doesn't have to be long either, just a paragraph at least once a week. You'll see your traffic start to improve. So you can learn along with me, I'll let you know what improvements I see to my site traffic now that the cobbler has finally made shoes for his children! (you know what I mean).