Why a Home Business Should Have a Blog - Guest Post
Today please welcome Kathy Hendershot-Hurd. Kathy is the owner of VirtualImpax, a marketing and consulting firm, and she’s the author of Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results. I recommend Kathy’s book to all my students as the one local marketing book they should need. Kathy is going to talk today about why you should consider setting up a blog for your home business.
Here’s a thought provoking question for any home based business owner: Why do you want a blog (or a website) for your business?
You’ll notice, I use the terms “blog” and “website” as if they’re interchangeable - because today they are. While there are HUGE differences between the two from a coding standpoint, from the typical home based business owner’s point of view, a blog is simply a website with a CMS (Content Management System) in place to make updating content on the site both easy and efficient.
A business website, whether it takes the form of a static HTML website or blog, is often asked to function as a communication tool. Just as there are different tools to perform different tasks in your home and garden, there are different tools to accomplish different tasks in your home based business.
For example, a rake is a tool that does a great job of moving leaves in your yard when used properly. However, as any parent of a lazy teenager will attest, in order for the rake to accomplish the task of leaf removal, effort must be exerted on behalf of the (lazy teenaged) rake user. Oh, and it’s important to note that while a rake in the proper hands does a GREAT job of moving leaves, it does a terrible job of making holes.
That is why it’s important to determine what task you want your home based business website to perform. Since the primary task of marketing is to communicate the benefits your business provides to customers, it makes sense that a website can be a great marketing tool for home based business owners.
Creating an effective and easy to use marketing communication tool is a GREAT reason to have a website for your home based business.
However, if you want your website to act as a marketing tool for your business, then it’s important to recognize the role testing plays in creating marketing messages. Marketing professionals are constantly “tweaking” marketing messages because sometimes changing a single word in a headline can result in a huge increase (or decrease) in sales. Being able to perform that kind of testing is an important part of creating marketing messages for your business.
That is why I recommend blogs as the “website of choice” for home based businesses. Blogs allow the message to be delivered quickly, and they are easily tweaked. Many home based businesses don’t have the budget to hire a full time marketing professional to create and test marketing messages, nor do they have the resources to hire an IT professional to implement such testing. Because a blog style website is easy to update, you can easily “test” various versions of your marketing message.
When you know you want to remove leaves from your yard, you use a rake not a shovel. When you want to create marketing messages for your home based business, a blog is a great choice. Because blogs are super easy to update, you can use your blog to “test” your marketing message. You can tweak quickly and split test almost on a dime. Oh, and while you’re testing your marketing messages… you’re also building relationships and earning trust with potential clients.
That is why your blog can be your most powerful marketing tool and as such, can provide the foundation for your home business success.
Kathy Hendershot-Hurd is founder and president of Virtual Impax, a consulting firm that helps small business owners develop marketing strategies to grow and build their businesses. She is also the author of Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results. You can read more from Kathy at http://virtualimpax.com and http://beyondnichemarketing.com
Tags: blogging, home businesses, Virtual ImpaxShare This
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POSTED IN: Books, Business Blogging, Guest Posts, Marketing, Online Resources
2 opinions for Why a Home Business Should Have a Blog - Guest Post
Do Small Business Social Media Blunders = Small Business Marketing Blunders?
Jan 12, 2009 at 8:09 am
[...] you’re a small business, I don’t think it’s possible to separate the sharing and communication that goes on in [...]
zibex
Jan 21, 2009 at 4:10 pm
IDUtF8 hi! nice site!
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