by Rob Jones

I believe that the benefits of a blog are as important to your marketing and communications strategy as your main site is. And you can read about some of those benefits in my previous article about blogging for business which was published in eBizine, July 28th. But, the next question to ask, once you’ve decided that a blog makes sense (and it probably does…), is: what now?

Well, here are 3 ways of going about starting your own blog, a line of communication to your customers that has the potential of increasing your visibility, your credibility as an expert in your field, and ultimately your sales too.

1. Get a free blog online. If you want a quick, and of course inexpensive, means of getting a blog going, you can do that with a couple of clicks.  Open source sites like Wordpress.com, or well-established sites like Blogger.com are great ways to start a blog quickly and easily.   Almost no technical knowledge needed for this option.  Basically, all you need is to know how to type, plus a bit of time getting used to some of the features in the dashboard of the service you’re using.  After, that you can publish your content right away – no waiting!  Your blog will be its own site, with a web address of its own, although you would be free to associate it by title to your name and main site.
2. Pay for a hosting package for your blog. Wordpress is my personal platform of choice in terms of what you’re able to do with a blog. Through Wordpress.org, you can find a number of hosting companies which specialize in hosting blogs. They’ve made a lot of connections with hosting companies who meet the minimum requirements for the Wordpress platform. To review some of them, check out the Wordpress.org web hosting page.  of course, there are other options open to you, such as finding a hosting company independently and finding out about what they can offer you in terms of setting up a blog on their servers.
3. Host your blog on your own server. Blogging platforms such as Wordpress, Moveable Type, Typepad, and others offer their blogging products for use on your own server. Simply download them to your server, choose a ‘theme’ and customize the templates, and away you go. It’s important to pay attention to the minimum requirements of each package, to make sure that your particular server will support the blogging package you’ve decided on. Coordinate this with your IT staff, or your consultant about this.

It should be pointed out that there are pros an cons to each of the options above. For instance, getting a free blog may be the fastest and cheapest way to get blogging. But, to truly leverage traffic for your main site, it’s not always the most effective option in the long run.

Getting off-site hosting means not having to worry too much about downtimes and other technical issues.  But, if you want to integrate your blog with the URL structures of your main site, it’s often easier to have a dedicated server which is in your direct control.

For our blog about wood flooring, and our other blogs too, we host on our own server.  This means that all of the maintenance and updates are done by our IT staff. If you don’t have the personnel or the know-how, it may not be the best way for you. It really depends on your circumstances.

So, now that we’ve talked about 3 options to consider when looking to set up a business blog, the questions in your mind may well be; “Right.  So I know why I should blog, and how I might set one up. But, what do I blog about?  Is there anything I shouldn’t blog about?

These are great questions, which I’ll talk about in the next article.