Are you blogging yet?

One of my mantras for small businesses is this: Work harder, work smarter, and be more creative. Combine those with a good marketing plan and I think you have a recipe for online success.

So the question tonight is: Are you blogging yet?

A blog on your business web site, if done properly, can fulfill all three elements of the SBS mantra. It’ll let you market harder, smarter, and more creatively than your Big Business competition. See, the suits and ties haven’t caught on to the whole blogging thing yet.

In a recent survey, 150 senior executives from the Fortune 1000 were asked about blogging, and very few understand the benefits:

Just 5% of executives said they were convinced “to a great extent” that corporate blogging is growing in credibility as a communications medium, while the percentage dropped to 3% of executives who were convinced “to a great extent” that corporate blogging is growing in credibility as a brand-building technique. As a sales or lead-generation tool, the percentage dropped to less than one.

They don’t get it. So while the bears are sleeping, you should be acting.

As a small business owner, it’s in your best interest to learn all you can about blogs and decide whether doing one is right for you and your business. A good place to start is an article from earlier this year by Barry Welford, Newsletter or Blog – Which works better?.

The title is something of a misnomer and doesn’t do the material justice, because Barry not only covers the newsletter vs. blog angle, but also gets into blog or web site?, blog plus web site?, newsfeeds, and much more.

The other great plus is that blogs often naturally create a great many links to and from other websites and blogs. Particularly for Google keyword searches, links are very important in boosting the importance of web pages that contain such key words. With a good link structure, a web page will appear very high in the search engine report pages (SERPs) for particular keywords. This means that the blog posts are thus more visible on the Internet and are more likely to be found by people searching for suppliers.

Enough of me yapping, go read what Barry wrote and figure out, if you haven’t already, if a blog can help you serve existing customers and attract new ones.