Is there really a compelling reason to start a blog when you could be spending your time working on your website? Is a blog really as effective a marketing tool as a traditional website? It all depends.

Whether or not you should start your own blog depends largely on the use to which you blog will be put. Many bloggers are blogging for strictly social reasons; other use their blogs for productive purpose; and some bloggers manage to combine socializing and being productive in a single blog.

If your intention in starting a blog is to socialize, you will be most successful by creating your blog at one of the high-traffic social networking sites like MySpace and opening it up for comments so that you can begin a dialog with your readers.

If you want a productive blog, on the other hand, asking yourself why you should start your own blog takes on added importance, because anyone maintaining a productive blog will have to make a commitment of time if he or she expects the blog to succeed.

If you are considering a productive blog, you would do well to steer clear of the social networking arena and set yourself up on one of the blog hosting sites like WordPress or Blogger. When you have your blog up and running, you’ll no longer need to ask yourself “Why start your own blog when you have an existing website?”

One time consuming aspect of maintaining a blog is that of monitoring the comments posted by your blog’s readers. While those fresh contents can keep your blog in the of search engines’ radar, you could end up with some less than desirable blog posts and even get caught in the middle of battles between your viewers.

Blog comments are also often abused by spammers who simply want to plug their own websites, blogs, or pet causes. And if you have to spend a great amount of time refereeing warring readers, you’ll have that much less time to attend to the marketing aspects of your blog.

If you think you can manage it, create a blog which allows you to interact socially with your readers at the same time you are using it to increase your productivity. Why?

If you want to run with the big dogs in your industry, you will have to find some way of communicating to them that you are ready to do so. Being available to answer their questions on your blog is one way.

If you have a firmly held, defensible, but generally discounted belief regarding your products, leave a few challenging comments on related blogs, with links to you blog so that those who are interested can drop by to argue your point. When they arrive at your blog, lure them to your sales page.

Why start a blog when you already have a website? To socialize, to become more productive, or to become more productive by socializing. Blogs simply function in ways that websites were never meant to!