7 reasons you should have a blog in addition to (or instead of) a regular website
BloggingWritten By Amy
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This post is especially for all the musicians and store owners who attended my session at NAMM last weekend. I briefly touched on the idea of having a blog, but there wasn’t time to get into much detail about why it is so important for your business. So I’m going to tell you some of the reasons why I think nearly all businesses like yours need one.
Some of you were unfamiliar with what a blog is. A blog is essentially a ready-made, highly customizable website which includes lots of interactive features. Wordpress is the most popular blogging software and the one I recommend. Even better, the Wordpress software is free!
Advantages of a blog over a traditional static website:
1) It’s easy to install.
Contact your web host to see if they have an automatic way to install Wordpress on your server… most of them do. If you want a separate website for your blog, then I recommend ANHosting (about $6.95/month). I have several sites with them and have been very pleased with their uptime and customer service.
2) It’s easy to maintain.
Wordpress includes an excellent CMS (Content Management System), meaning that you can easily upload all your own content (text, images, links, etc.) without needing to know any HTML code. You can edit your site with the online administration panel that Wordpress gives you, or use one of several free utilities instead. My favorite free blog editors on each platform are:
- for Mac: Ecto
- For Windows: Live Writer (If you are on Windows, or have it installed on your Mac like I do, then I’d definitely recommend Live Writer first. It’s what I use. Ecto is a good second choice and also available for Windows.)
3) It’s highly customizable.
Using templates, many of which can be found around the web or on Wordpress.org for free (see some of my favorites), you can easily change the look of your entire site by applying a new template– basically, clicking a button in the Wordpress control panel. You can also customize a template to suit your needs. (Note: customizing the graphics, layout or text styles in a template is trickier and requires some understanding of PHP and CSS.) You can even make a blog look like a regular website, but still have all the advantages of a blog.
4) It’s interactive, which helps build community.
A blog, by default, includes a "comments" feature which allows your site visitors to write you a comment, which will show up on your site, and which you can then reply to. It’s a great way to give your site visitors the feeling of being part of your online community. It also gives them another means to communicate directly with you, which increases the likelihood of turning them into a customer.
5) It builds credibility.
People want to see the human behind the curtain, especially if the service you’re offering is something as personal as teaching or training. The more you humanize your business (always keeping it professional, of course), the more people tend to trust you, your recommendations, and your products. A blog’s more conversational, less rigid format is perfect for establishing a personal connection to your readers. Even the largest corporations are encouraging their employees to blog.
6) It’s more flexible in structure than a traditional website.
A blog is a great place to include articles, comments, editorials, reviews, tips, drawings, giveaways, and other types of news that is harder to do on a more structured traditional website. If you think it will be valuable to your readers in some way, it can go on your blog. You can organize all your posts by category, making it easy to keep things organized.
7) It is very search-engine friendly.
This is HUGE, and reason enough to do a blog. Because of the way blogs are constructed (making it easy for Google to access the important content), and because of the frequent activity that you get on a blog vs. a traditional website, they will rank much more highly on Google than a regular static website. The more active your blog, and the more people that link to it, the more points you score with Google. It’s also a great idea to visit other peoples’ blogs on a regular basis, leaving comments that include your blog’s URL. This will not only give you an opportunity to share your expertise or opinions with other readers, it will also send a lot of "link love" your way and help your own search engine rankings at the same time…a win-win scenario.
I hope this gives you a bit of food for thought as you think about how to redesign your own website. Could your website redesign mean ditching your old-fashioned website an doing a blog instead? (It does for me!) Feel free to leave me a note below, and I’ll respond to any questions or comments.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Very informative, well written article. Should be a useful resource for those considering setting up a Blog.
January 30th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Great post, Amy! I pick up more useful tips and tools from you.
Thanks much!
January 30th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Do you know if the presentation was recorded? Would love to see it live!
Hope all is well!
Tanya aka @cre8tn
January 30th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Hi Tanya,
Yes, it was recorded, and I’ve requested a copy from NAMM. I will post it as soon as it is available. Thanks for posting!
February 1st, 2009 at 12:41 am
I would say that both have their places depending on the objective of the website. For example, we invested a great deal of money to rebuild our site as a blog format (ok, it’s not a traditonal blog but we mimiced the format by posting monthly recipes, cocktail recipes and blogs about various subjects from a Mike’s loyalitst point of view). It’s cost time and money to keep up. If Mike’s was a brand with hordes of loyal drinkers that visited our site on a monthly basis, this would have been a great way to interact with them. It keeps the content fresh and encourages repeat visits. But our brand doesn’t have loyal visitors except during the summer sweepstakes months when people visit our site to enter and re-enter. But for the most part, people visit our site for two purposes: to find out more about our product and to learn where they can buy our product. During the off season, we average only only a few thousand visitors. Mostly new, rarely repeat. For us the traditional static format serves our purpose better by providing the information that our consumers want. And we won’t be wasting our resources trying to give them what they aren’t looking for. And the focus will be on the product and brand. When we relaunch our site in a few months, we will keep the primary elements of our site, but added some monthly freshness by highlighting a different brand or product each month on our splash page. We can build these ahead of time and I, I will be free to spend my time and money where it counts — grabbing my consumers’ attention in the store.
February 1st, 2009 at 11:26 am
Hi Jennifer,
Thanks for your post. I took a look at http://www.mikeshard.com and I can see what you mean. I suspect that those who redesigned the Mike’s Hard Lemonade site were trying to push users to interact with the site a way that they weren’t coming there to do, or inclined to do. It’s likely that you end up with frustrated visitors who have to try too hard to find what they came there for:
Goal 1: Find out more about the product:
Why is there not a “products” section that lists everything you sell? That should be one of the very first things you see; I couldn’t find a page like that after several seconds of scanning the home page. That definitely needs to be fixed.
Oh– I see now that your Products page is actually the “From Our Fridge” tab. That needs to be renamed to “Products and put in a more prominent location. Nobody will know what “From our Fridge” means. The cuteness of the name is inhibiting its usefulness.
Goal 2: Find out where to buy the product:
The “Product Locator,” rather than being a tab at the top, would be more visible and useful as a sidebar element. You should move it to the sidebar.
It’s good practice to use nomenclature in a way that answers the question that’s already in the user’s mind. If you get too wrapped up in trying to match a theme or be “different,”, it can be detrimental. Good rule of thumb: use conventions. It makes it easier for customers to navigate.
I loved the previous iteration of the Mike’s website, which was a guy’s house with a fun party going on– you could walk from room to room, learning more, and see the Mike at the bar with the whole lineup of the products in front of him. I thought that was a much more fun and memorable way to show off your product, and to show it in the context of its use.
I would have to agree that the Mike’s site isn’t as effective in showcasing your product in the way it is now, in the format of a traditional (and not particularly visually appealing) Wordpress blog. How do the numbers stack up to the previous site? I’m curious to know if you have more visitors/subscribers now than before, and if you are easier to find in Google than before. I suspect that the frequent postings are helping your Google rankings quite a bit. Though whether it is worth the high maintenance cost you guys are paying is debatable. It shouldn’t be that expensive to maintain a blog.
I bet that they could keep the blog format but make a few small changes and see some definite improvements.
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:17 pm
amen! You are preaching to the choir. One of my primary objectives is to be more user-friendly — which includes simpler naming conventions.
Traffic has increased immensely vs. the prior site driven by online promotional tactics (banners, viral video, etc.) and … sweepstakes. We spiked to about 30K visitors each month during the sweeps, about 50% new-50% repeat visitors (re-entering the sweeps). Since September, we have averaged 2K visitors, 85% new, each month.
June 26th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Love it! Thanks for the great info. I’m trying to train my clients on why WP sites are better than traditional. This answers a lot of their questions.