Blogs are an excellent marketing tool for a home based business and any internet business. A blog is the fancy name for a web log, which is comparable to an online journal. Creating a blog and blogging on a regular basis provides one of the quickest as well as simplest not to mention most cost effective ways of promoting your home based business. To get started there are websites where you can create a blog for free, such as at www.blogger.com and other places where you can create one for a small price such as at Typepad.
At your blog identify who you are and what your internet business is as well as what your company provides in regards to services or products and then explain how you do what you do and how you are able to bring value to what you offer. Explain why customers should come to your business for a particular product or service as opposed to going elsewhere. Always make sure to provide contact information on your blog and make it clearly visible so web searchers do not have to look very far.
Use your blog as a marketing tool by showing potential clients that you are a professional and that you know what you are talking about. Make sure to include plenty of brief but insightful articles at your blog. Aim to make the articles both informative as well as "actionable." Actionable means that you prompt the client to take action after reading various blog posts (or articles).
A blog can become as effective at promoting new business and encouraging continued business as can the website you design for your home based business. In particular you can put your blog to good use by using it to direct clients to new content that is available on your website. It is important to commit yourself to blogging and to not let it lapse. Posting consistently to your blog is beneficial to the success of your business. You do not have to go too crazy but commit yourself to posting to your blog at least once or twice on a weekly basis. Blog posts do not have to be terribly long- sometimes even a paragraph up to three short paragraphs is enough to get your message across.
Having a blog is a fantastic way to drum up new business and having incoming links makes it possible for your website to rise higher in the search engines. Be aware that having a blog for your business is the optimum place to create links that connect directly to your site. For example linking to other blogs and vice versa helps promote business for the both of you.
http://consulting.about.com/od/growyourbusiness/a/WebIntro1.htm
http://www.flyte.biz/resources/newsletters/04/11-blog-or-perish.html
http://www.fortymedia.com/blog/post/29