1. Having a well updated blog attached to your website helps establish you as the local expert in the eyes of the community because you are establishing your credibility and sharing your knowledge.
2. People feel more comfortable buying from you and approaching you because you have become more accessible to them as you add more and more content to your blog.
3. You cans use your blog to demonstrate specific areas of expertise that are of interest to your reader. These can range from short tips through to full blown instructional videos.
4. You can take your reader behind the scenes and show them some footage of how you operate when you are setting up for your shots
5. You can use your blog to educate your readers about others services you offer such as training workshops or seminars.
6. As you build a relationship with your reader, they will go from casual reader to fan to advocate who endorses you to their friends. Over time you will build for yourself a large database that makes selling your services far easier.
7. Blogging allows you to put in place a structured sales funnel that takes your reader from a prospect who knows little about you, to someone who feels comfortable buying from you and recommending you to their friends.
Blogging Platforms
There are two basic types of blogging platforms.
The first are hosted blogs that you create on someone else website. An example would be Blogger.com. Here anyone can set up a blog and tell their story.
But you are at the mercy of the host in terms of the advertising that gets shown alongside your blog posts.
The second type of blogging platform is self-hosted, which means it is attached to a domain that you own.
WordPress is the most popular software to use for self-hosted blogs. Over the pas couple of years the use of WordPress has really exploded, and along with this growth in popularity has come innovation in terms of what you can use WordPress for.
Being an open-source software platform means there are constantly new functions being added by developers. If you want your website to do something in particular, it’s almost certain that someone has already designed a plugin that can do that for you.
If at all possible you should opt for WordPress. There is slightly more of a learning curve than there is with blogger.com, but the benefits to your business far outstrip the downside.
So if you’re looking to grow your business and get your name out there a little more, there aren’t many better ways than to start your own blog.