The Blogosphere has advanced from discussing personal lives, criticisizing politicians and displaying family photgraphs into a effective marketing weapon for small and medium businesses.

The moment, I explain blogs to my clients, their first question is “I have a website, why do I need a blog?”. I offer them following explanation:

1. A business blog lets you talk about your products, services over and over again in a first person narrative form and reach out to your clients in a manner that a website never can.
2. Informal language lets you “humanize” the business and connect with your customers at their level. The Website is strictly formal.
3. A business blog brings you closer to your client. You get an instant feed back via comments and you can respond back instantaneously, thus improving customer service and reducing customer dissent. The only way of communication on a website is via e-mail.
4. The business blogs can be easily written daily, weekly, even hourly, thus giving you an opportunity to communicate with your clients and prospects as often as you want. Websites generally remain static or update once in every few months
5. The business blogs are ideal to lodge short or long term Marketing “projects” like contests or surveys. Websites require additional page development for this effort.
6. Last but not least, the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Advantage is a built-in advantage that only a blog can offer. If the content on your blog is carefully written, then your blog becomes a findable resource for the prospective customers. Websites are no match to blogs, when it comes to Search Engine Optimization.