Okay, so maybe this is stating the obvious, but blogging has become one of the most important tools for building a business through audience, and it’s about time we all took a moment to reflect on why. Of course, I’m blogging right now… and now… making this a meta commentary. If you went to a liberal arts college, you will probably be falling all over yourself at the stunning post-modernism. If you didn’t, you’re probably annoyed. Sorry, I’ll move on.

First off, blogging matters because it’s content. Content is what the Internet is made of. It’s the stuff we consume, and we’re all hungry consumers. Content is information and, on the Internet, good, meaningful, non-fluff information is currency.  As more blogs appear every day, the heap of content begins to self-sort. What do you think rises to the top? The good, meaningful, non-fluff information that people actually care to read.

So, quality brings readers. Readers bring business. It’s a very simple equation yet so few people are really working to create blogs worth reading. In part, this is due to the hard work, writing acumen, and creativity that good writing requires. This would be a problem if it weren’t for the thousands of unemployed writers out there. So the problem isn’t finding a writer, the problem is prioritizing writing.

So, step one: write (or hire someone to write) good content. Invest in your company blog because it reflects directly on your company. Again, this is obvious. So why aren’t more people concerned with quality over quantity? I blame the search engines.

The search engines (Google) are the reason blogs became such valuable tools in the first place. Sure, good writing has always had innate value, but on the Internet, static content won’t bring in readers all on its own. With Google’s indexing and the preferential treatment Google began to bestow on fresh, new content, blogging took off, and not in a good way. For a long while (and still, to some extent, today) simply posting new paragraphs of semi-legible writing got Google’s attention. This prompted a huge increase in quantity without much of an increase in quality and, at the beginning, everyone was happy because everyone saw increased traffic. Of course, what happened next was the same thing we will see over and over again… the good content stuck around while the rest, well, didn’t.

Again, this is partly thanks to Google. As Google tweaked the algorithm to identify content that was actually read (based on traffic), it sorted the good stuff from the bad. Still, there is no shortage of poorly-written content. This is actually a great thing for the serious business writer. In a sea of bad writing, it’s not too difficult to rise up and get noticed.

This illustrates the importance of quality, but what about the other benefits of blogging? For starters, a regularly updated blog shows potential clients several things. It shows them that you are serious about building your company. It shows them that you care about sharing relevant news. It shows them that you are interested in having a dialogue. In the relatively impersonal online marketplace, engaging with potential clients about subjects other than what you’re selling creates a connection. It builds trust. The more you can foster non-sales-based connection, the more your potential clients will want to support your company and the more conscious of your clients’ needs your company will be. Let’s face it: we are all world-weary consumers. We all need a break from the sales pitch. How refreshing to find that breath of fresh air on a commercial site!

This is a little bit delicate. You may be wondering how you’re supposed to convert readers to clients if you never mention your products or services. Good point. It is important to communicate what you’re selling. We do it here. But we also work to provide plenty of other content that isn’t self-serving. In the rapid-fire world of technology there is always something that is both news-worthy and relevant to our web hosting services. By combining the two, we remind readers about who we are while offering more than a sales pitch. Really though: don’t worry too much about this. If someone is reading your blog, they’re already on your site. Let the rest of the site do the selling.

A blog doesn’t just provide your clients or potential clients with information, it also provides your employees with a window into the company, and with a forum for sharing their own observations and knowledge. Essentially, the blog creates a social network around your business. Convinced yet?

We welcome your suggestions about how we can make our company blog better. What would you like to read about? What posts do you like or dislike? We got all metaphysical with this because we believe in practicing what we preach. Amen.

These days blogging is a ubiquitous tool for businesses, but it isn’t always easy to get started. Many free platforms don’t offer the ability to use your own domain name, leaving you to give out amateurish addresses to business clients, while do-it-yourself programs present a steep learning curve without much in the way of style. With TurnKey Blog Hosting, we are fulfilling this obvious need by providing a ready-made blogging solution that is adaptable, robust and professional. As a blogger myself, I know how frustrating it can be to find a platform that meets my two most basic and important needs: good looks, works.

Functionality

TurnKey Blog Hosting offers incredible functionality with quick, customizable templates that are sleek and easy to use. You can use your own domain name so your clients will see your blog as an integral part of your company’s identity and brand. Set up takes about 90 seconds, and you can fully customize your blog to match your existing website. Choose from hundreds of templates and themes, migrate content easily from other blogging platforms like Blogger, Typepad and Livejournal and enjoy complete administrative control for managing access and permissions. TurnKey Blog Hosting also offers state-of-the-art SPAM filters to prevent junk from clogging up your comments. On top of all that, you can monitor your site’s statistics with our webstats program, and take advantage of email via your blog hosting account.

SEO

The other critical element of a successful blog is search engine optimization (SEO). With the constantly changing SEO rules (thanks, Google), optimizing your blog can be a full-time job. Thankfully for all of us, WordPress offers many wonderful plugins and add-ons for automating the optimization process. If you were managing your own blog hosting, you would need to configure your wordpress to integrate these tools, keeping up with security updates, patches and alerts. With TurnKey Blog Hosting we do all of this for you. We have researched the best plugins for SEO to drive the maximum amount of traffic possible to your blog. With our optimized configuration, your blog will be poised to ensnare each and every spidery Google tendril.

What TurnKey Does for You

Our goal is always to provide easy, ready-made “turnkey” solutions that don’t require any technical expertise on the part of our clients. At the same time, all of our products are enterprise-class, professional, sleek, and top-of-the-line. We always try to put ourselves in the position of our business clients. We ask ourselves: “if I were a small business owner looking for an affordable, easy, professional solution, what would work best for me?” When it comes to blogging, TurnKey Blog Hosting is our answer to that question, and we couldn’t be happier with the result. We hope you will try it out for yourself and explore the many ways a TurnKey Blog can enhance the image of your business while driving traffic to your website.

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