May 15, 2006

Should You Blog? The Pros and Cons for Small Businesses

Blogging is a POWERFUL force that MANY businesses, even small businesses, are doing. HOWEVER, is it for everyone? For every business? Personally, I think that it can't HURT for EVERY small business to blog - for sure EVERY business needs a web site.

However, I think that having a blog might not be as important for some small businesses as others. A blog is great for quickly updating a web site. A blog is GREAT for helping your web presence be picked up by search engines more. A blog is GREAT for easily enabling your audience to communicate back to you.

Business Week writes TIME INVESTMENT. Josh Hallett, a business consultant who specializes in blogs, says that small-business owners can benefit from the fact that blogging has a low entry barrier in terms of technology and cost. "There are plenty of free and low-cost blogging tools, and publishing is very easy," he says.

Many of his clients start off establishing their own simple blogs, he says, and quickly recognize their potential as marketing vehicles. That's when they contact him and invest a small amount of money to take their blogs to the next level in terms of professional appearance and content.

What are some of the drawbacks to blogging? The major one is time. Blogs must be updated frequently -- several times a week, if not daily or even several times a day -- in order to hold readers' attention. "Depending on the situation, small-business owners either have [no time] because they're constantly working on their businesses, or it's the only resource they have since there are no hard dollars associated with it," Hallett says.

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