Blogs come with an archiving function

Blogs come with an archiving function where posts that are published are archived on a monthly bases. This is about the same frequency as a regular email newsletter. Visitors to your blog can view past issues to see what was written in past months.

Newsletters are published documents describing information of interest to customers, employees, or anyone that is interested in learning more about that company regarding the array of business and nonbusiness issues. Blogs can be used as a delivery method for bringing these same news and announcements about a company, products/services and the online industry in general that the company is in. Whereas newsletters tend to be a one-way communication tool and are more impersonal, using blogs as newsletters can make it more personal by creating a two-way dialogue.

Blogs can be a huge opportunity for small businesses and be a very real threat for email newsletter companies, such as Vertical Response and Constant Contact. These companies help small businesses build their email lists, publish their newsletters, and manage their email marketing campaigns. Small business owners only pay for the number of email newsletters that they send. The cost can range from as low as $15 for 1,000 to &750 for as much as 100,000 email newsletters.

By using a blog to publish a newsletter, the small business owner can save this money. The money saved can then be allocated to investing in the training and development of their employees, another critical aspect of running a business.

Improve a web presence
Search engines want to provide high quality search results for their visitors. Search engines love blogs and favor sites that are updated frequently.

Websites can get indexed almost instantaneously. Everytime you publish an article to your blog, it pings other websites. Pinging lets dozens of services know your website has been updated, thus increases traffic to your blog.

Become a published author
Everyone has an area of expertise, or core competency. Usually this area of expertise is based on a strong interest of the owner. You could haved owned a web design company and handled all of the Human Resources activities for your company because you had a strong interest in that field. Perhaps within this field you developed a strong interest in attracting and selecting the best candidates for your company. Maybe you tweaked the employment interview and turned it into an oral examination for the job applicant.

By writing articles, you will become known as an expert on the topics you write about. This will give you and your business extra credibility which will help you compete against your competition as you demonstrate your expertise.

To get started blogging, small businesses can save money by purchasing a reseller webhosting account, such as that from HostGator. A reseller hosting account is a tad more pricey, but cheaper in the long term. You have the ability to host unlimited number of websites without having to contact your web hosting provider and set up new account. You have to pay for every new hosting account, which can be a strain on your budget. With a reseller hosting account you will be able to create a hosting account for no additional cost (except for the domain registration).

Blogs are here to stay. As more people continue to learn what a blog is, it will continue to evolve with many new uses.