Do you have a Blog yet? Some ideas for incorporating a blog

My favorite piece of social media would have to be the blog. It is so versatile, so search-engine-friendly, so easy to use and so delightfully free! If you don’t have a blog yet…you should definitely consider starting one. Why? I’m so glad you asked…

• Number one reason (from my standpoint as a website designer) – search engines love blogs. Blogs generally do very well with search engines. Because of the constant fresh content (assuming you actually create posts for your blog regularly) and because of the popular platforms (wordpress, blogger…), blog content can definitely boost your search engine ranking. Sure – you still need to follow guidelines to make your content search engine friendly, but if done appropriately, blogs can yield great results!
• Almost as important is the fact that blogs are so versatile. You don’t have to be a published author or journalist to have a blog – break all the rules. Use a blog as a portfolio of your work, use it for your latest news, use it for upcoming events, press releases, white papers, a diary, random thoughts… or all of the above! Use it AS your website! You can create as many pages as you want, plus you’ll have a content management system built right in – so you won’t have to pay someone else for updates. As with any ‘free’ service, there are of course pros and cons and limitations with using a blog as your website, but it’s worth looking into. KDesign can customize your blog to give it the look you want as a website, with all the functionality of a blog. Or we can very easily integrate your posts into your existing website, so that fresh content appears there too!
• As mentioned above, blogs can be customized. Again – there are limitations and pros/cons, but with some minor upgrades and an unlimited selection of plugins, your blog can do virtually anything you can dream up and have a completely customized look to go with it. Chances are, you’ll need to enlist the help of a designer/css guru to do this. Contact KDesign for a quote!
• Blogs are easy to use. All it takes is  some poking around on your own and you’ll likely figure out how to create posts, categories and pages without any training. As mentioned above, blogs are being used more and more as content management systems for websites. This gives the client full control over the content on the website – new posts, updates to static pages, new plugins and widgets. Of course, this can be a double-edged sword! There’s no wordpress hotline to call, so if you are an ambitious do-it-yourself type of client, and go changing settings that aren’t meant to be changed, you could mess up the whole site very quickly and it might take a professional a long time to figure out what you did and how to fix it! But with appropriate training and access to the professional support of your website designer, you will love updating your own blog.
• Blogs are free! What’s the catch, right? Well, there’s a lot of them There are certain paid upgrades likely required to get your blog to do what you want and look how you want – but the good news is they are cheap. $15/year for css editing (for a designer to customize the look). $12/year for your chosen domain to point to your blog (instead of myblog.wordpress.com). AND of course the costs of enlisting a website designer to customize the code and integrate fancy plugins when necessary. The upfront costs will be worth it in the long run as the ongoing costs will go down since you are doing the site updates.

So what are you waiting for?! Unless your business is in a perfectly static state and no changes ever occur (anyone? anyone?) then a blog would likely fit in well with your online marketing strategy.