You’re an entrepreneur and you want to start up a business. Great.
The first reaction to getting a slot on the internet is to get a website. Wrong!
Why wrong? This is because websites are notoriously expensive things! How much cash do you have? I suggest you should have a good think before you go throwing it away on unnecessary, inappropriate, uncostworthy things such as a website.
But surely everybody needs a website, or they won’t be taken seriously by prospective customers?
Of course you need a presence on the internet – it’s a requisite requirement nowadays. But not a website. What you need is a blog, and a good grasp of social networking. That’s how you get yourself known on the web. Only when you’ve made it, got a load of followers, built up your list of contacts, made some money, then you can go ahead and get yourself a website. By then you will know exactly what you want it for, and will build it with a proper purpose.
The trouble is, so many people get themselves a website, and it just sits there, looking pretty, and doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. They haven’t got the money to update it, because unless they have built it themselves they will have to pay a fortune to their webmaster to make any changes.
Now, if you have a blog, that’s exactly what you can, and should, do. This is because blogs are self-editable; they thrive on new material because they are designed for it. They are also little web magnets for internet traffic, as the search engine spiders are programmed to visit blogs extremely frequently, just in case there is something new for them to ‘read’. If they like what they find, and there are lots of keywords and key-phrases that match up to what is ‘hot’ at that moment, then you can get really high in the search engines!
And the other side of the coin is to get into social networking. The beauty of the web is that you can link and ‘feed’ all your blog content into social networking, so a lot more people can start reading about exactly what your business does – as long as you have written about it. And blogs are the place to write about your business: frequently, easily and regularly.
Don’t hide under a bushel – reach out and network. Tell the world about what you do. If people like what they read, you can start to make friends, contacts, business, liaisons, strategic alliances or whatever, all on the internet, through a relatively inexpensive blog – not by wasting your money on a website!
And does it work? There are plenty of businesses who are extremely successful today and have all started with just a blog, even before social networking got off the ground. Blogs are the beginnings of social networking, it’s just that the interactive side of the web (Web2.0) has developed a bit more recently…
Websites and blogs: how are they different?
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009Actually a blog is a kind of website, as they have many similar attributes.
They both occupy a presence on the internet, use an URL or web address, need a host server to keep them online, contain information such as text content, pictures, links and keywords, both benefit from search engine optimisation and can be tracked through Google Analytics.
But why don’t we call blogs websites? What is it that makes them different?
The difference is in their programming, and how they make use of Web2.0. The are pre-runners of social networking before Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. They thrive on interaction, new content, feeds and optimisation.
Blogs are designed to be self-editable. This means you don’t to pay a web designer to make changes or add content. You can update them through very easy access (a username and password) from any computer in the world. The programming is self-contained, and if you can write in Word, you can update a blog.
They thrive on being updated frequently and regularly, their programming is designed to attract search engine spiders who are looking for new content all the time. This is very good for web optimisation which puts blogs higher up the search engines than websites. Another consideration is that blogs are visited by spiders hourly, whereas websites could wait for months.
Unlike websites, blogs only update new material each time it is posted. Every time a website is updated the new stuff supersedes the old content, whereas blogs store previous entries like a news-roll, each post dated accordingly and assigned it’s own URL for access at a later date.
Blogs are designed to encourage interactive communication between author and readers. Those who comment can link back to their own sites, and this content is also considered as new material by internet spiders. This concept is not available in ordinary websites, except through sign up forms, and then contributors cannot view afterwards what they have written.
And another consideration to note: blogs are much cheaper to create and maintain!
OK, so what else makes blogs better?
Blogs are created to help businesses to spread their expertise, explain what their business does in different ways, maintain a relationship with their visitors and customers, offer subscription services for regular contact, channel traffic back to relevant websites, and can be fed to other websites like social networking for a higher readership.
Most websites, especially ‘brochure style’ ones, are static and once created are rarely updated, and can’t provide an opportunity to explain everything as space is often limited. In fact, over cluttering your pages with too much information can be counter-productive. Visitors will not return for new content, websites are unlikely to get bookmarked, and only through a sign up form to a newsletter can the business maintain a relationship with potential customers.
But this is only my opinion, what do you think about this subject? Since this a blog, leave a comment in the box below to share your views.
Tags: blogging, blogs, comments, content, internet, new material, readers, search engines, SEO, social networking, spiders, URL, Web2.0, websites
Posted in blogs | No Comments »