tapacity

Blog. It wasn’t long ago that the word did not exist. I heard that when it first appeared and for some time after that the word “blog” was the most searched for word or term on the Internet. I have already posted on what a blog is (see this) so I won’t repeat that here, but let me share with you why a blog is useful by answering a few common questions.

Question: If I have a web site, do I need to have a blog?
Answer: Well, that depends. If your web site is a large one chocked full of information, it may be difficult for your visitors to always see what they want to see AND difficult for you to make sure they see what you want them to see. If you have frequent updates or news pieces you want your constituents to be aware of, a blog can be very helpful and a good companion for your web site. That is because a blog posts your pieces in chronological order, with the latest news appearing first on the blog’s home page. By making use of blog publishers (see our links) these written pieces can be archived automatically by month and can also be sorted by themes or categories like I have done on this blog.  What is so powerful about that is this: you can tag a written piece with more than one theme or category. You can’t do that on a web site without spending quite a bit of money on development costs.  Click on a category to the left and see what happens.

More Questions and Answers>

Question: Can’t I just email people our latest news and articles or tell them about an article on our web site?
Answer: Sure you can, but emails get buried in an inbox and you would have to write an email for each update. A blog will be there with ALL your news and articles — a permanent fixture on the Web for them to see and anyone else to see for whom you may not have an email address. Search engines will notice your blog and display it on searches for the topics you cover on your blog. You can promote your blog from your web site but also include its web address as part of your signature line on all of your emails, thus ensuring a constant promotion of it to everyone you communicate with.

Question: Don’t you need special or technical skills to operate a blog?
Answer: Well, you need a good mind to blog, but no special skills. Services like WordPress (the host of this blog) and Blogger (a google site) have all the functionality laid out for you and they give you free templates to use for your blog’s design and navigational structure.  Just about anyone can start a blog and just about everyone has. Of course, the more technical skill you have the more you can take advantage of the blog software.

Question: Other than search engines, how can a blog be promoted?
Answer: “Blogs Can Be Syndicated Through RSS. RSS most popularly stands for Real Simple Syndication. Visitors can “subscribe” to your blog and get regular updates delivered to their desktop, their newsreader, or to their personal homepage at Yahoo or MSN. Alternatively, other Web sites might syndicate your content to help populate their own Web site. You blog, RSS helps deliver your message…for free.” (Source: http://www.flyte.biz)

Question: So, should I blog more and email less?
Answer: No. If you are thinking of email and blogs in a marketing context then use them together as part of an overall marketing strategy. Use email to not only drive people to your blog, but use the blog to enlist people in an email magazine or newsletter. Then use the newsletter to also promote and link to the blog. Also, there are services (like feedburner.com) that will allow you to create an email subscription link for your blog. When people enroll, they get an email automatically each time you update the blog AND you get one more email for your database.