Why We Blog, and Why Giving Is Sometimes Better Than Receiving

By the turn of the twenty first century, it became essential that businesses have a website. Websites had faded from an optional marketing extra to an essential business tool, a company's address in the virtual landscape.

Websites had faded from an optional marketing extra to an essential business tool

Now that websites are commonplace, a new, more specialized evolution of the website is becoming a business prerequisite: Blogs.

Once only pursued by prolific writers and angst-ridden teenagers, blogs have become a valuable marketing device, making them many companies front line weapon in the battle for customers.

Keep reading for my guide on how to turn your companies collective knowledge into a blog, and a blog into profits.

What is a Blog Anyway?
A blog, or "Web Log", is simply a website consisting of relatively short articles usually listed on a main page from newest to oldest. Put simply, you're reading a blog right now.

The guts of any blog is only two pages: the home page and article page. Almost all blogs are designed in the same way, utilizing a standard layout and similar navigation.

Why Have a Website and a Blog?
At first is may seem redundant to have both a company website and blog. In reality though, a blog should serve a much different purpose than your main website.

Keep in mind that although a distinctly separate website, the blog doesn't have to be designed from scratch. Many companies choose to have the design and branding of both sites similar, which helps visitors recognize the relationship between the two.

Some companies choose to incorporate aspects of a blog into their main site. I find this inhibits companies from reaping the full benefits a stand-alone blog offers.

What Will A Blog Do For Me?

• Cultivate and Exploit Your Companies Knowledge -- A blog is the perfect place for your employees to distill and record their unique knowledge, experience, and advice. If each worker has access to concise slices of each others expertise, they can leverage it with minimal effort and ultimately perform better for the benefit of the whole organization.
• Establish Your Industry Expertise -- Expounding upon your companies industry knowledge in a normal website can be awkward, hard to organize, and many visitors won't read much of it. A blog offers a better format for showcasing your best work, and special industry expertise. When people visit a blog they are expecting a content-heavy experience, and skimming the material in a blog is easy.
• Sell Without Selling -- Even though a blog article, or the entire blog, may be a vehicle for promoting your products and services, quality writing and the blog format makes readers feel more comfortable and engaged. If visitors feel like they are getting quality information even at the earliest stages of contact with your organization, selling to them will be easier. Blog visitors don't feel like potential customers, even if that's what they may be.
• Content-Driven Promotion -- A blog can effectively promote your products and services unlike other web mediums. The articles in a blog read like stories, where your products are the characters that drive the story and save the day. Once a reader is engaged in the problem presented, they are much more likely to click your link to the solution.
• Engaging Customers, Past, Present and Future -- Most blogging systems come with a variety of features to keep readers engaged and coming back for more. Regular, predictable updates, RSS feeds, article subscriptions, and blog syndication sites will all help attract new customers and keep the current ones within in reach.

If you want to know more about blogging, there are a ton of great resources. For setting up and playing with your very first blog, try Blogger. For information on how to write for a blog, try Copyblogger. And to learn about how blogging can become its own means of income, check out ProBlogger.

ArcStone can help guide you through the world of blogging. To learn more about blogging in the larger context of internet marketing, click here.

The inspiration for this article comes from this article from the Wall Street Journal.