Business owners must accept the reality the Internet is not going any where. Inf, it is only growing. This is something many have yet to accept as their reality. But you must go one step beyond accepting. You must act. It is time for you to start business blogging today.

Today, I want to give you at least 15 solid reasons to bring up your website and start today. Let’s go!

#1 Educate Your Market

Blogging gives you an opportunity to be a resource for your market. The Internet presents a massive amount of information. Your market is going to get their information from somewhere, so it may as well be you. In fact, you would be smart to ensure it is you and your business.

Provide how to, research studies, white pages, news, insight, experience, stories and more with your market. This can easily be done through your blog covering multiple mediums, text, audio, video. It is your choice. This allows you to bring life to your presentations.  And it can all be done right inside of your business blog.

#2 Demonstrate your Product or Service

Take time to show how your product or service works. This can be done in article format with pictures. You can use video to present it in action. The options are endless, but the point is the same. Demonstrate your product or service.

Show that it works. Ask questions and answer them right inside of the blog. This is a great way to solve the doubts your customers or clients may have. Add testimonials showing results those that use your products or services are having.

This is a great opportunity for you to build your business through blogging.

#3 Answer FAQ’s from Customers

Every business has a set of questions that the majority of their customers will ask. This presents a great opportunity for you answer these questions through your blog. You could list a question, then solve it in the body of the blog post.

You could take it a step further and demonstrate the solution. Say there is a question about size and your product not fit into something important. You could take your product and the important element, showing that your product does in fact fit. Also, that it will make more sense for them to use your product instead of another.

#4 Use as a Testing Grounds for Feedback from Clients & Visitors

Connect with your clients and customers through your business blogging. Ask them questions. Get their feedback. It is amazing the information they will share with you about your business. You are able to take that information and put it into business model to make it better for the customers. Great benefit for those that follow through and engage their market.

#5 Engage your Target Market

This step is taking #4 a step further. It seeks total engagement with your target market. Having a blog allows your market to get to know more about your business. And it gives your customers an opportunity to tell you their thoughts through the comments.

Every blog has a comment space below the main text. This comment area is an opportunity for your customers to leave their feedback, insight, even add to the conversation. They could provide additional resources, answer questions you may have posed inside the main text. The bottom line is they get involved with you and your business through the blog.

#6 Gain Expert Positioning

Establishing yourself as an expert in your market is critical. Especially in these tough economic times, whose business do you think is the most secure? The business that can be replaced by any and everyone or the expert?

Almost every time, depending on the niche, the expert has a better chance of not only surviving, but thriving. People believe in the expert. This is the business that has the most respect and authority in the marketplace. This is something your business needs.

Business blogging puts your knowledge and expertise on display for people to make contact with, grow, and learn from. This is a great thing because person by person, your expertise grows until ultimately you overtake your market to be know as the professional and expert business.

#7 Stay Current with the Times (My children have a blog)

You do realize it is 2011, right? Just checking, I have to. If your business is not blogging on the internet and extending your website to your market, then you are missing out. And I am serious about my children having their own blog. They have three in fact. One a personal site for each and they have one together about video games, what else?

The point is that 7 and 11 years are blogging, and your not. Get over the phobia, get with the times, and get to blogging already.

#8 Branding

Business blogging creates a great opportunity for your business. You can further brand your company inside your niche and to your target market. You give them what you want them to receive. This is a hidden benefit of blogging. Everything is on your terms. Why not use this time to continue to tell the story of your company, your expertise, and brand your business?

#9 Build a Writing Portfolio for Writing Opportunities

Landing writing opportunities for trade associations, newspapers, magazines and more are great for your business. They expose your business to the market as an expert and engages people that you  may have not had the opportunity to engage.

These opportunities become more likely when you can show proof of your writing, style, and grasp of the subject manner. Best of all, this gives a glimpse of your business over time and is a portfolio of writings. You can send those providing these writing opportunities directly to your blogging efforts to get a sample of your work.

#10 Gain Traffic and Exposure to Your Site

It’s true. You can gain traffic and exposure from your blogging efforts. This is always one of the highest reasons people get involved with business blogging. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but it just takes the wrong side of the coin in my opinion.

I feel as though you should move into business blogging in order to provide  information for your clients and have another outlet to satisfy, inform the clients. Ensuring they are happy.

Therefore, just to move into business blogging to gain exposure and traffic is just wrong to me. Not that this shouldn’t have space on your list of goals because it does.

The bottom line is this. Blogging makes your content more accessible to people, social media outlets, search engines and more. All of this activity is good for your business and can lead to addition traffic and awareness of your brand.

#11 Take Advantage of Social Media

Business blogging creates much of the content that you are going to promote and push through your social media outlets. If you are just sitting on Twitter sending out tweets about this product or service or that one you offer, then it is no doubt you are not seening any results. You probably think social media is a waste of time.

On the other hand, if you are using your social media outlets to promote and engage people, clients, customers with content that seeks to educate and uplift them first, you will see better results.

You can not hard sell in the social media space. It typically does not work. You need some finesse to your tactics. Business blogging will help you in this aim.

#12 Protect  Your Web Presence

There is no doubt about it. At some point in time, someone is going to say something negative about your business in the social media space. This could get out of hand or it could be something minor. Either way, it is not something that you want to let go unchecked.

Business blogging gives you an opportunity to address the concern or foul statement properly. You can reference it in the blog post if you like or talk around it, but you can address it. This is very powerful when you are seeking to protect  your brand.

In addition, your blog post can rank in the search engines for terms related to your business name and activities. Therefore if there are some unsavory things ranking in the search engines for your business name, blogging could help bump those search rankings to the next page and out of site of your potential client or customer. (Will discuss this much further in our SEO post.)

#13 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Benefits

Over the past few months, I have been obsessed with search engine optimization. If you desire organic search traffic to your website, then you should be interested in SEO as well. But my words of warning to you is this is a very deep well of information. Dive in, but understand there is a lot to learn.

One of the major benefits of SEO come from your content. Business blogging content provides excellent material for the search engines to analyize and use in their indexing. Business blogging that is correctly optimized for specific keywords and be pushed to the top of the search ranks with the right techniques.  But it all starts with you producing the content.

#14 Connect Your Business to the World

Recently I read “Delivering Happiness by Tony Heisch, CEO of Zappos, and it has had an enormous impact on my thinking about business. Yes, he breaks all the rules and it works. I am not suggesting you model your transparency with Zappos, although I am sure there is something to learn here.

I am saying that you must start to engage your audience. Build the conversation. Connect with them. Let them  know there are real people behind the screen or the telephone.

Blogging and  interacting with your customer based will help build your business. It is a great practice and opportunity to answer customer questions and concerns. Blogging presents this opportunity and more.

#15 Add Your Thoughts

It is not my intention to claim I know everything about moving  your business into blogging. Nor would I rob us all of the opportunity to learn from the crowd, get your input on the list. WE know better than anyone of us individually.

Therefore, let’s hear your suggestions. Make your comments below. What is at least one more reason to start business blogging today?