Park Lane Services   Serving the seacoast area since 1989

To Blog or Not To Blog:  That Is The Question

The decision as to whether you should have a blog on your website or not is really not as dramatic as a Shakespearean play and should not take as much effort to decide.  In this short article we will look at some of the pros and cons and dos and don'ts of blogging.

1)  Why have a blog?  The politically correct answer is that you should have a blog to provide valuable and useful information to your clients, customers, and readers.  (That is, of course, why I have a blog!)  Okay, a second reason for having a blog attached to your site is that it can attract more readers to your site hoping that they can find something valuable and useful or, at the very least, interesting.  I suppose I should also mention that blogging can increase your search engine ratings as well and, hopefully, gain you even more business.

2)  When should I not have a blog?  As I said, blogs can make your internet presence look stronger, more professional, and more inviting, however, it can also make your internet presence look weak, unprofessional, and uninviting.  Have you ever gone to a site to look at someone's blog and see that there was an entry last June followed by an entry in September, with nothing in between?  So, timing is one issue with a blog.  If you can't regularly post (or hire someone to post) to the blog, chances are you should not have a blog.  It could make you look worse.  In addition to regularly blogging, it is important to blog about something that people will want to view!  And, since nobody knows your business like you do, you probably have the best idea of what to blog about.

3)  How do I blog?  Okay, now that you have decided that you 1)  want to have a blog and 2)  have a way to make regular blog posts, either by writing them yourself or hiring someone, then you have to figure out how to get the job done.  Similar to the problem of writing the blog posts, you have choices.  An assumption is made here that you have your own website.  If you don't already have a website for your business, then you should read some of the other posts on this blog and begin by getting your own website!  Once you have a website, you will want to set up a blog that can attach to your website.  One simple way to set up your blog is by using Blogger by Google.  It is free and relatively easy to get started with and to use.  More attention to blogging will be paid in some later posts.  For now, I just want to emphasize the importance of having the blog connected to your domain name.  If your blog is totally separate from your domain name, then you may be missing the potential search engine rank improvement that was mentioned earlier.

To summarize:  It is a good idea to have a blog attached to your website provided you can make it relevant and keep it current.

If this brief article raises any questions you'd like to see answered, please contact Park Lane Services at greg@plsnet.biz and let me know what you'd like to see in future posts.  Thanks for reading.