Should I Have A Blog On My Site?
January 26, 2010
This is a question we get asked all the time, and has been quite a hot topic of the past couple of years so lets address the reasons why you would, or maybe would not have a blog on your site…
Reasons to consider a blog…
- Blogs bring personality to a site – A blog gives a company or an individual a voice, it adds an informal yet still professional factor to a site that people can relate to.
- Blogs are conversational – Due to the fact that the majority of blogs have a “comments” facility, a conversational, dynamic link is set up between you and your readers.
- Blogs build trust – Something very important… due to the conversational / informal aspects of a blog, a trust and familiarity is established.
- Blogs are instant – Due to the fundamental nature of a blogging platform, your thoughts and ideas can go from your head to your website in no time at all.
- Blogs are excellent for SEO – Due to the fact that a blog is generally a very dynamic website, they get indexed by the search engines a lot and carry a lot of weight with regards to ranking.
Reasons why a blog may not be for you…
- A blog is like a good wine, it needs time to mature – A successful blog is something that develops over time (+ effort), it is not a quick fix idea that can be injected into a website to make is successful…
- A blog needs constant work – The content of a blog needs to grow over time otherwise it would become stagnant, both in the eyes of your clients and the search engines… This is similar advice I offer to clients with regards to news sections, if you keep them up-to-date they are an excellent tool, but nobody wants to see the latest news item from May 2006!
- More than just typing – Along with simply typing the blog posts, other house-keeping tasks come along for the ride. For example you need to moderate peoples comments to monitor against people spamming your site or causing trouble, you also need to consider the marketing aspects like networking and self promotion to bring new viewers to your site.
I can definitely see why having a blog on your website would be advantageous – if nothing else it helps you to show some personality, separating yourself from other sites. Even having graphic design tutorials shows that you care about what you do, and are good at it.
If nothing else, having a regularly updated blog with interesting articles in it makes people come back again and again to read it, which can’t be a bad thing!