The blog is arguably one of today’s greatest tools for small businesses. Why is the blog so great? Here are a few reasons:

1. It gives you and your business a voice
2. It provides a way for your business to respond to news in the media relating to your business or industry
3. It allows your business a way to fight negative content such as biased or incorrect customer reviews
4. It is an immediate publishing tool that allows you to publish content without the need to have coding or programming experience (you can publish from virtually anywhere and any device!)
5. Blogs are typically very SEO-friendly

There is a lot of content on the Internet. There is a good chance that your potential customers will research your business or its products and services before the decide to step into your store, office, or before they place an order with you. 83% of consumers say online customer reviews influence their purchase decisions. (Source: Opinion Research Corp., June 2008) When customers do their research, how will they know what you have to say or what you point-of-view is? The blog is the one central place you can always go to to communicate with the public. It is also the one place interested-parties can go to to hear you speak.

Conversations happen in social media and you can interact with others and even post content. However, social media conversations and content are usually short and fragmented. That can make it difficult for you to say what you want to say and get the full message or idea across. Also, depending on the scenario, that content or those conversation may not by searchable and may not be found by search engines (e.g. Facebook comments are not searchable on search engines) and its users -something that can be very important to you and your business. Another drawback of social media is there are so many social networks out there, you can’t possibly cover all the social networks. With a blog, you have one single and central location where you can create messages and share ideas. Then if you want, you can use social media as a way to distribute that information.

From time-to-time, some of your customers may have a bad experience and those bad experiences can turn into things like negative or biased online reviews or negative comments, and they can hurt your business. Many large businesses that had experienced crises in the past had created new websites for damage control in responses to the crises. Your blog is an immediate publishing tool that will allow you to immediately respond to any serious problems or crises that may affect your business.

So if you haven’t yet, give the blog a try. We think you’ll find it to be a very useful tool for your business!