So What IS a Blog?
By now, everyone may know what a blog is and have probably seen one, but just in case, here is a quick description. Skip to the next section if you already have this part down. Wikipedia describes a blog as: A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.
Many blogs provide commentary on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (video blogging or vlogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.
As of 16 February 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence.
Does My Business Need One?
As a marketer, we can tell you that a blog is a powerful tool that allows us to create content about your business and more importantly, about what your business does. This alone may not garner increased profits or traffic to your site (in some cases, it does both). However, the interesting thing about blogs, currently, search engines love them. And weight them. That means, it is a huge part of any marketing strategy currently, allowing your business to bolster their status with the likes of Google.
Do I Need to Hire Someone to Build It?
If you have some experience with software or applications, blog software is fairly easy to use. Although you may be able to build it, they key to using the blog as a marketing strategy is in the details. Simply put, there are a lot of key things that can be implemented and done within a blog that increase your ratings. We recommend a trained professional set up and get the blog optimized for use. Blogging is excellent for SEO and should be part of your website design strategy.
What About the Content?
Again, it is not difficult for an average computer literate person to maintain a blog. The secret is in the sauce so to speak. Meaning, your content should read naturally to your users but should also be optimized for the search engines, containing your target key phrases and links that again, bolster your ratings. The way you put the phrases together and what those phrases are followed by or the links they go to, all are analyzed and rated by the search engines. Portside Marketing has built over 500 blogs to date and currently maintain over 100 monthly.
Focus On Your Business
It is OUR BUSINESS to focus on YOUR BUSINESS. Instead of spending time writing content for your blog, we recommend you focus on your business and let us do the same. Our trained professionals know what to write, how to gain marketing results with your specific keywords. We have a group of folks who are focused and trained specifically to build your content and blog to garner results.