Once you have decided to start a business of your own, there will be many important things to consider, ranging from business planning, financing and business development, through to sales and marketing, managing resources, production, product delivery and so on.
At some stage of your business planning and development process, you will want to give serious consideration to establishing a professional online presence for your business. In today's modern global economy, having an online presence is essential for any business, no matter what size or region you plan to operate your business in.
In this article, I want to outline a viable strategy you can use for setting up, growing and establishing a web presence for your business which, from the very beginning, will fully satisfy the following criteria:
- Your web presence will be inexpensive
- Your web presence will be easy to manage
- Your web presence will help you grow your business fast
- Your web presence will give you measurable results
- Your web presence will be flexible enough to meet all of your needs as your business grows
All of the above criteria can be easily reached if you are willing to consider a smarter, better, cheaper, easier and faster alternative to setting up a normal website for your business. This alternative solution is called a blog.
A blog is similar to a website, but it offers business owners - especially small business owners - many additional benefits and advantages that traditional web sites simply don't provide. To understand these differences, watch the video below, or go here: using business blogs
Let's now take a deeper look at how a business blog meets all of the criteria that we have outlined earlier:
An Inexpensive Web Presence
Many people will argue that it's hard to get cheaper than "free". When it comes to having a "free" web presence for your business, however, there are many downsides that you will want to avoid, such a "free" webhosting, or setting up your web presence on a domain name that belongs to someone else. In this situation, "free" could well end up being quite costly in the long run, especially when you need proper and timely support from your web host, or if you decide to make certain customizations or configuration changes to your site.
So, let's ignore "free" solutions and let's focus instead on creating an "inexpensive yet professional" online presence. Regardless of what kind of online presence you ultimately decide for your business, plan to at least own your own domain name and use a professional web hosting service. You can find inexpensive resellers for both domains and web hosting from different online locations for around $150 or less.
Getting a website built by a web developer or web designer, however, is a different story. Sure, you can always ask someone who has skills using HTML to build you a website for next to nothing, but it will probably also end up doing nothing to help improve your business, just like most websites out there.
A blog is different. With a WordPress blog, for example, you can download the full working version of the publishing software at no cost, host it on your server, and then choose a professional design from hundreds of available free WordPress blog templates to give your web presence the look and feel of a site that might cost thousands of dollars to design.
A Web Presence That Is Easy To Manage
With a traditional website, unless you know how to edit web page coding like HTML and upload files to your server, you will need to get someone like a web developer, web designer or webmaster to help you manage your site. This not only makes the process of managing your online presence more complex, but it can also cost you in terms of|you more in terms of|more in terms of time (waiting for other people to get the work done) and money (paying others to make changes to your site).
A blog makes managing your web content very easy. You simply write out your thoughts and click a few buttons to instantly publish your content online. There's no messing around with HTML code, no uploading files to servers and no fiddling about with technical stuff. Just write and click to publish. It doesn't get any easier than that!
A Web Presence That Helps You Grow Your Business Fast
Most websites are static, which means that once your content is published, you then have to figure out ways of getting people to visit your site. A blog, on the other hand, offers many dynamic features which can help to automatically drive visitors to your site.
A Web Presence That Gives You Measurable Results
Whether you decide to build a website for your business or set up a business blog, you will want to have an information system in place that gives you access to data about your site (like what words people are typing into search engines to find your site), so you can evaluate your site's performance and make better business decisions. Google's own web analytics application is an excellent tool for this. It's free and gives you access to an incredible amount of useful and valuable data about your site.
To watch a video that shows you how to use the results from your business blog to improve your business website and vice versa, go here: Business Blog Video
A Web Presence That Is Flexible Enough To Grow With Your Business
Adding new functionality to an existing web site can mean a whole new level of complexity and added expenses and time, especially if you need assistance from web developers to integrate new applications, set up databases, etc ..
With a blog - especially one powered by a content publishing platform like WordPress, for example, adding new functionality to your site can be done in a matter of minutes and a few clicks of the mouse. Simply download one of thousands of available plug-ins - most of which are free - upload them to your server and activate them inside your blog's administration panel your online presence to a whole new level, such as adding e-commerce, creating a membership site, enhancing its multimedia capabilities, and so on, by simply adding external modules created by plug-in developers for the blogging community.
In terms of flexibility, therefore, it is very hard to beat blogs. You can start off with a very simple barebones blog to inform and educate your site visitors about your business and totally scale things up as and when you need to.
Hopefully this article has helped you gain some new insights into setting up an online presence for your new business and I wish you a very happy and successful business blogging experience.
For more business blog setup help, visit Business Blog Tutorials
For business blog step-by-step video tutorials that show you how to set up a business blog in 48 hrs or less or how to use a blog to grow your business faster, visit: Business Blog Video Tutorials.
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