Once you have made a decision to start or grow a business, there will be many important things to consider, including getting a web presence for your new or existing business.
In today’s modern global economy, having an internet presence is essential for any business, no matter what size or region you plan to operate your business in.
In this article, I want to outline a realistic strategy you can use for setting up, growing and establishing a web presence for your business which, from the very beginning, meets the criteria below:
- Your web presence will be inexpensive
- Your web presence will be easy to manage
- Your web presence will help you grow your business fast
- Your web presence will give you measurable results
- Your web presence will be flexible enough to meet all of your needs as your business grows
All of the above criteria can be easily met if you are willing to consider a smarter, better, cheaper, easier and faster option to setting up a regular website for your business. This alternative solution is called a blog.
A blog is much like a website, but it offers business owners – especially small business owners – many additional benefits and advantages that normal web sites just don’t provide. To understand these differences, watch the video below, or go here: business blog tutorials
Let’s now take a deeper look at how a business blog meets all of the criteria I have outlined above:
An Inexpensive Web Presence
Many people will argue that you can’t get cheaper than “free”. When it comes to having a “free” web presence for your business, however, there are many pitfalls that you will want to avoid, such a “free” webhosting, or setting up your web presence on a domain name that you do not own. In this situation, “free” could well end up being quite costly in the long run, especially when you require proper and timely support from your host, or if you decide to make certain customizations or configuration changes to your site.
So, let’s avoid “free” solutions and let’s focus instead on creating an “inexpensive yet professional” web presence. Regardless of what kind of web presence you ultimately decide for your business, plan to at least own your own domain name and use a professional web hosting service. You can find inexpensive resellers for both domains and web hosting from several online locations for around $150 or less.
Getting a web site built by a web developer or web designer, however, is a different story. Sure, you can always ask a neighbour, niece or nephew who has skills using HTML to build you a website for next to nothing, but it will probably also end up doing nothing to help improve your business, just like many websites out there.
A blog is different. With a WordPress blog, for example, you can download the full working version of the publishing software at no cost, host it on your server, and then choose a professional design from hundreds of available free WordPress blog templates to give your web presence the look and feel of a site that might cost thousands of dollars to design.
A Web Presence That Is Easy To Manage
With a normal website, unless you know how to modify web page code like HTML and upload files to your server, you will need to get someone like a web developer, web designer or webmaster to help you manage your site. This not only makes management of your web presence more complex, but it can also cost managing your web presence extremely easy. You just write out your thoughts and click a few buttons to instantly publish your content online. There’s no messing around with HTML code, no uploading files to servers and no fiddling about with technical stuff. Just write and click to publish. It can’t get any easier than that!
A Web Presence That Helps You Grow Your Business Fast
Most websites are static, which means that once your content is published, you then have to figure out ways of getting people to visit your site. A blog, on the other hand, offers many dynamic features which can help to automatically drive visitors to your site.
A Web Presence That Gives You Measurable Results
Whether you decide to build a website for your business or set up a business blog, you will want to have an information system in place that gives you access to data about your site (like what words people are typing into search engines to find your site), so you can evaluate your site’s performance and make better business decisions. Google’s own web analytics application is an excellent tool for this. It’s free and gives you access to an incredible amount of useful and valuable data about your site.
To watch a video that shows you how to use the results from your business blog to improve your business website and vice versa, go here: Business Blog Video
A Web Presence That Is Flexible Enough To Grow With Your Business
Adding new functionality to an existing web site can create a whole new level of complexity and added expenses and time, especially if you need to hire web developers to integrate new scripts, set up databases, etc ..
With a blog – especially one powered by a content publishing platform like WordPress, for example, adding new functionality to your site can be done in a matter of minutes and a few clicks of the mouse. Simply download one of thousands of available plug-ins – most of which are free – upload them to your server and activate them inside your blog’s admin panel. In just a few minutes, you could take your web presence to a whole new level, such as adding e-commerce, creating a membership site, enhancing its multimedia capabilities, and so on, by simply adding external modules created by plug-in developers for the blogging community.
In terms of flexibility, therefore, it is very hard to beat blogging technology. You can start off with a very simple barebones blog to inform and educate your site visitors about your business and totally scale things up as and when you need to.
Hopefully this article has helped you gain some new insights into setting up a web presence for your new business and I wish you a very happy and successful business blogging experience.
For more information on how to set up a business blog for your small business that helps grow your business online fast, please visit my blog here: Business Blog Tutorials.
