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Top 10 Reasons to Start Blogging

Top 10 Reasons to Start Blogging

"What's blogging?" you ask.

"Where have you been?" I reply...just kidding, of course. Blogging has been around for quite some time, but there are still a few of us who are just getting started on it. A blog, which is a shortened version of the words "web log," is basically an online diary, resource and commentary. It generally contains links to other blogs, websites and informational resources. And it has the ability to "ping" sites to get you more exposure.

I've been doing a blog for Marketing Idea Shop for a few months now. In it, I give my readers various resources, information to help their businesses, and links to websites that I find interesting. I also link to other people's blogs whenever it makes sense. And I answer P.R. and marketing questions that my readers submit. Occasionally, I include complete articles I have written on marketing topics. You can take a look at the Marketing Idea Shop blog here: http://www.marketingideashop.com/blog/

I literally set this blog up in 5 minutes. I'm using the software "Blogger," and my blog is being hosted at Blogspot and connected to my own website.

The Blogger software, which is owned by Google, is free and so is the hosting. A couple of people have recommended "Moveable Type" as the best business blogging software, and I have found it's much more confusing so I eventually abandoned that idea. If you want to have more control over your blog, you will want to own the software and host your blog yourself.

Moveable Type is a software program that you can purchase; it resides on your own computer. Blogger is software that resides on someone else's computer. Currently it's free, but who knows what will happen to it later. There are several other choices, too.

Bloggers (as the folks who write blogs are called) have many reasons for starting and maintaining a blog. Here are the top 10 reasons for blogging:

1. It's good for business.

2. It improves your search-engine ranking.

3. It makes you more valuable to your customers and prospects.

4. It will generate more traffic for your site

5. It will improve your sales.

6. If you participate in Google's Adsense program, you can make some big bucks, even if your visitors don't buy directly from you or they go to your competitors.

7. It can get you and your company noticed.

8. If you add RSS news feeds to your blog, you can get loads of content without working so hard AND you can easily distribute your blog's content to other bloggers and websites. (RSS means Really Simple Syndication)

9. You can invite your readers to comment on your posts, thereby creating a better relationship with them (and increasing the possibility that they will buy from you).

10. You can have fun writing about your company, products, industry, competitors, conferences you attend, just about anything!

Lois Carter Fay, APR, is a 30-year veteran in the P.R. and marketing field. She works with women businesses and small businesses to improve their marketing and business success. She now produces three marketing ezines, Brainy Tidbits, Brainy Flash, and Success Secrets of Women Entrepreneurs. All are free. She's also the co-author with Jim Wilson of "Sales Success! Strategies for Women," a quick-to-read ebook containing 52 easy-to-implement sales tips. The ezines and ebook are available through her websites.

Visit http://www.MarketingIdeaShop.com or http://www.WomenMarketing.com to learn more sales ideas and subscribe. Claim your free special report when you subscribe.

In The News:

Tips On Blogging For Dollars
Corsavoo.com, France - 1 hour ago
Use RSS feeds. This is a great way to encourage people to keep reading your blog, and will help you drive traffic with much less effort. ...

Appscout
Google says Goodbye to RSS, Hello to Followers
Appscout, NY - Aug 28, 2008
It mashes up blogging, RSS, and social networking without doing anything but changing the terminology. Blogger Buzz says eventually it will integrate with ...

Lessons from the India USA Nuclear deal
indiainteracts.com, India - 19 hours ago
... September 6th, 2008 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. ...

E-Mail marketing and blogging provider iContact gets $5 million in ...
InternetRetailer.com, IL - Sep 4, 2008
"We have worked hard to bring the best e-mail marketing, blogging, and RSS feed web application in the world to our customers. It is our mission to be the ...

9 Things To Think About When Planning An Executive Blog
Social Computing Magazine, NY - Sep 4, 2008
Perform a content audit that covers not only existing content that should be surfaced, but external content (RSS feeds,blogs,industry sites) that needs to ...

Getting Sucked Into Social Networking
Corsavoo.com, France - 11 hours ago
When you post blogs or files in your account, everyone from your network of friends will be informed of the update through RSS feeds. ...

Travel 2.0 marketing services for hotels launched
m-Travel.com - Sep 5, 2008
It combines blogging, RSS feed syndication, Twittering and email harvesting with hotel profiles on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, Photobucket, Squidoo, ...

Fast Talk Response -
Fast Company - Aug 20, 2008
... in the last year to 18 mos. is because it has all the benefits of blogging (RSS,commenting,sharing,tagging,bookmarking) but none of the hassles. ...

The Snags in Doing Business with Friends
Entrepreneur - Sep 5, 2008
Joanne shared all sorts of valuable information about how to drive traffic, target influencers and handle the process of blogging so that itwouldn’t ...

Pro-Blogger - How to have a Constant Stream of Blogging Ideas
PR CannaZine (press release), UK - Sep 2, 2008
Now, subscribe to RSS feeds on those topics, or printed magazines, newsletters - anything that has info on those subjects. ...

blogging rss - Google News

Top 10 Reasons to Start Blogging

Blogging, RSS & Feeds