I've heard here and there that blogging can really help with your business marketing.

I've never been much into blogging. I never had a blog site of my own and rarely visit blogging sites. When I visit, its personal blogs I've seen. I never seen one for a business.

By the nature of my little experience with blogging, can someone please tell me how it can benefit us with our business?

Blogging is a great way to let your potential clients see how knowledgeable you are about your niche market. Posting information that you know they would want to read is also a great way to drive meaningful traffic to your website. Blogs are basically a link between virtual and reality - it shows there is a real person behind the business - with real expertise.

Blogs also help your search engine rankings (if it's self-hosted). That will drive traffic to your site as well.

A lot of VAs have blogs for different reasons. Maybe we could hear from a few blogging VAs? How does blogging affect your business?

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Brianna Young, VA and Graphic Artist
www.virtualsolutionsadmin.com
"It's not the piano that makes beautiful music. It's the person sitting AT the piano!"

I use wordpress for my blog(its free), but please don't use mine as any kind of example, because I'm really not good at it LOL. I have heard all the benefits of blogging and keep trying to work on it when I'm not busy with 50 other things. And I agree with everything Bri said. One other way that helps is posting comments on other people's blogs. By doing this others will click on the link to your website to check it out

Anyway the reason I'm posting is to point you in the direction of the blog section on this forum, you can find some really good blogs and articles to read in regards to our industry. The other suggestion I would make is whenever your reading the posts on the forums, look at people's signatures, alot have their blogs advertised and are really good!

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Deb Frawley
Gem's Virtual Office

There is a Business and Blogging blog I subscribe to. It focuses on both big business and small business.

Lisa

What you guys said makes a lot of sense. Thank you for explaining.

Deb, I visited your blog and I could see how it can benefit us. (oh by the way, it's nice!)

I have no clue what Wordpress is, or even RSS. So it gives you an idea how clueless I am about blogging, hehe. I will spend some time in the forum Deb mentioned and learn more about it.

Thank you guys!

You might want to check out this thread about blogging, I know it helped me a lot. I didn't have a clue about blogging either. I know I'm still not that great but i'm trying.

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Maria Quick Link Virtual Assistant Services
www.getquicklink.com
Let Quick Link be your link to today's virtual world

I'm addicted to blogging. For me it's a perfect outlet - I love to write so blogging has become a passion for me. It's also helped me position myself as someone who knows a lot about different topics. My blog for the Virtual Assistant industry was set up to help both VAs (new and experienced) and clients understand more about the industry and how clients can be helped by VAs. I've had this blog for 3 years now and have written over 300 posts.

I recently ran a competition on it to celebrate my 14th anniversary - the winners will be announced on there in the next hour.

I tend to pre-write most of my posts and set them up to publish at specific times, using Wordpress as my preferred blogging platform. But I do have some blogs at Blogger too, just to keep my hand in.

Just to show how addicted I am, I own 15 blogs and you can see them all listed at http://kathiet.blogspot.com/2007/04/blogging.html

If you want to write a book, blogging is a great way to test content too - I did this by accident and ended up turning one of my blogs into a book last year. That books is now available in bookstores in Australia and online globally.

Wow Kathie I didnt know you had 15 blogs, you've just given me some new reading material. I love reading your VA blog...you write so well and are so informative, I'll have to read all the others now.

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Deb Frawley
Gem's Virtual Office

Originally Posted by debs5

Wow Kathie I didnt know you had 15 blogs, you've just given me some new reading material. I love reading your VA blog...you write so well and are so informative, I'll have to read all the others now.

Gee thanks Deb - I always love to hear from a 'fan'

I am what you might call 'prolific' and as I get older, I have so much more to say. Writing is a fantastic outlet for thinking actually - often I reveal things to myself I didn't know I knew till I write them down. I've heard many other writers say the same thing.

I run a writer's group in my home on a regular basis and we all love to discuss different ideas and methods for writing. I believe that blogs are one of the best forms today.

Oh Kathie, how DO you do it all!? You're my hero!!!

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Brianna Young, VA and Graphic Artist
www.virtualsolutionsadmin.com
"It's not the piano that makes beautiful music. It's the person sitting AT the piano!"