Most people these days have heard of blogs.
In the early days, they were commonly used by teenage girls and got a reputation as a time-wasting, trivial thing.
Times have changed and so has the blog.
Over the last few years, blogging has become a respectable, professional approach to establishing a public presence on the internet and keeping in contact with customers.
One of the biggest advantages blogs have is that anyone can easily set up and maintain a good quality, professional looking blog.
Business owners are no longer at the mercy of web designers for every detail of their web sites.
Small business owners have especially benefitted from the recent development of modern blogging platforms.
WordPress is readily available, easy to use, and can be hosted on the owners own web site.
This gives the business owner the freedom to add content whenever he feels he wants to.
All the information is stored on his host and can be accessed at any time Another benefit of a blog platform over a traditional html website, as a business tool is that it can be updated daily, or even hourly, and customers can add comments, if this feature is enabled.
A clever business owner would monitor all comments before publishing and add information to assist his customers, both present and future.
This feature is great for the clever businessperson because it is a free form of information gathering.
If there are any questions that recur, often the owner knows it is an area that should be addressed.
By keeping up with customers needs, the business develops a reputation for caring and following up on any issues.
Competition is fierce and every business owner needs an edge.
An up to date blog could be that edge.