Blog or Ezine? Top 7 Reasons to Blog Now!

Many of my small business clients ask me: "What is a blog and do I need one?" As a marketing consultant and business coach, I too had to address those questions in my own business.

A blog is a form of online journal that business owners use to develop customer relationships and establish credibility. Blog authors write and post relevant content frequently ? daily, every couple of days or weekly.

After publishing an ezine for some time, I decided to give up my monthly ezine for a blog. Of course I could do both -- for the more points of contact with my target the better. But for now, I'll share my top seven reasons why I choose to blog over a monthly ezine:

Interactivity: Blogging puts the humanity in technology. Readers can leave comments and respond to each other. Adding video and audio to a blog also significantly enrich the learning experience, allowing for various learning styles. Ezines on the other hand, are fairly static.

Convenience & Ease: I can communicate with my audience quickly and efficiently without the elaborate set-up and content requirements of an HTML ezine.

Inexpensive: Lots of blogs are free. For example www.blogger.com. I like Typepad at www.typepad.com. For a minimal charge of $4.95 per month, I get a professional looking blog with upgraded features. Compare with a professional ezine/contact management program costing $19 per month.

Increases Visibility: Search engine spiders love blogs for the simple reason that they constantly seek new content. Frequent postings are crucial for success. As a result, bloggers gain increased Web presence and higher search engine rankings. For example, Google, Yahoo and others often index blog entries within days of posting as opposed to waiting weeks for ezine postings.

Content Management: When I set up this blog I created keyword-based categories for the topics that I'll write about in the future. Each time I post, I select which category my post applies to and voila! My posts are catalogued by category and date. This feature is essential fodder for future e-books and other informational products. Try content management with your ezine articles on your website ? things can get unwieldy fast.

Clearly, blogging is an essential addition to my marketing toolbox. It's also effective for any service-based entrepreneur who needs to build client relationships and increase visibility.

Copyright © 2005

Lena Claxton is a small business coach & marketing consultant, committed to helping self-employed professionals reach their highest potential. She's author of the e-book "Small Business Boosts." Download your free copy at http://www.ontrakmarketing.com and receive a subscription to the "Ontrak Business Blog."

In The News:

Tips On Blogging For Dollars
Corsavoo.com, France - 1 hour ago
Use RSS feeds. This is a great way to encourage people to keep reading your blog, and will help you drive traffic with much less effort. ...

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Google says Goodbye to RSS, Hello to Followers
Appscout, NY - Aug 28, 2008
It mashes up blogging, RSS, and social networking without doing anything but changing the terminology. Blogger Buzz says eventually it will integrate with ...

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indiainteracts.com, India - 20 hours ago
... September 6th, 2008 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. ...

E-Mail marketing and blogging provider iContact gets $5 million in ...
InternetRetailer.com, IL - Sep 4, 2008
"We have worked hard to bring the best e-mail marketing, blogging, and RSS feed web application in the world to our customers. It is our mission to be the ...

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Social Computing Magazine, NY - Sep 4, 2008
Perform a content audit that covers not only existing content that should be surfaced, but external content (RSS feeds,blogs,industry sites) that needs to ...

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Corsavoo.com, France - 12 hours ago
When you post blogs or files in your account, everyone from your network of friends will be informed of the update through RSS feeds. ...

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m-Travel.com - Sep 5, 2008
It combines blogging, RSS feed syndication, Twittering and email harvesting with hotel profiles on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, Photobucket, Squidoo, ...

Fast Talk Response -
Fast Company - Aug 20, 2008
... in the last year to 18 mos. is because it has all the benefits of blogging (RSS,commenting,sharing,tagging,bookmarking) but none of the hassles. ...

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Entrepreneur - Sep 5, 2008
Joanne shared all sorts of valuable information about how to drive traffic, target influencers and handle the process of blogging so that itwouldn’t ...

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PR CannaZine (press release), UK - Sep 2, 2008
Now, subscribe to RSS feeds on those topics, or printed magazines, newsletters - anything that has info on those subjects. ...
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