How to Blog as Your Website

If you don’t already have a home business website, you can use a blog to create your online business presence. Of course, you probably already realize that you don’t need a blog if you have a website. Likewise, you don’t need a website to have a blog. Here are just a few of the many advantages of learning how to blog and then using a blog as your online business presence in place of a website:

• You can use a free blog hosting platform so your blogging efforts costs you nothing but some time and a little effort.
• Blog hosting platforms can be an easy way to manage your blog content without needing to know anything about HTML, uploading files, etc.
• Search engines love blogs, so in general, it’s likely your blogging will get noticed in search engines well before content on a new website would get noticed. Learning how to blog can definitely give you a leg up when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO)
• Learning how to blog allows you to interact with your customers and prospective customers in ways you can’t interact through a website (unless you spend additional money to have this type of feature built into your website).
• Some blog hosting providers, such as Google’s Blogger, even offer mobile blogging capability so you can post your content directly from your cell phone, SmartPhone or PDA. They also offer plenty of help that makes it easier while you learn how to blog.
• Blog platforms offer built-in editing capability that makes it easy to format your content without knowing HTML. However, if you know HTML, you can use that to your advantage while blogging.
• Blog templates make it easy to learn how to blog and allow you to set up your blog layout in a matter of minutes. If you are so inclined, you can further customize your blog’s layout to reflect your home business branding and color schemes.
• Blogs are part of social media that can take advantage of viral marketing techniques, which can dramatically increase traffic to your blog in a short amount of time.
• Blogs are really content management systems – they manage posting, displaying and organizing your blog content that makes it easy to stay organized around selected keyword phrases, which you can use for labeling your blog posts. When a visitor clicks a label, all posts that use that label are made available for your visitors to find what they are looking for quickly.
• Some blogging platforms allow you to host ads within your layout, providing the opportunity to make money off of your blog from programs like Google AdSense without paying any domain name or hosting fees. You can also post affiliate marketing ads to help monetize your blog.
• Blogs allow visitors to register for blog feeds that will allow them to receive your new content in a feed reader – a utility that allows visitors to read your blog posts outside of a Web browser. The blog user community and the number of blog feed subscribers is continuing to grow rapidly.