Here is a guest blog post by my good friend, Mitch Mitchell. In this post he gives some good reasons why you should have a business blog. Take it away, Mitch!

Sometimes I wonder just how far the computer age has gone. I say that because quite often I’m answering the same question over and over; why should I have a business blog. I’m going to give you a few reasons why you should have a business blog and how you can have a business blog.

The first reason you should have a business blog is to show your expertise in your field. Your website obviously should be the first place where you tell people what it is you do and try to give them as much information as possible. But a blog consistently allows people to see what you’re made of, and if there are any new changes in your industry you can reach your audience a lot faster.

The second reason you should have a business blog is because it helps to build up the prominence of your website if you have your blog affiliated with your website. Search engines love new content on websites, and your website will rank higher if someone is looking for your services in your area if your content is always fresh. All this basically means is if you wrote something on your blog even once a week, your website will benefit because something new has been added on some kind of consistent basis.

The third reason you should have a business blog is because it gives you an opportunity to show some personality and to interact with people who come to your website or your blog. Now this one is dicey if you’re someone who doesn’t write well or doesn’t have the time to keep up with the blog, let alone to respond to people who come to your blog and leave comments. It looks bad if you have a blog and no consistent content, or if you never respond to any comments.

This one can be addressed by hiring someone to write and manage your blog, which is a service I offer through one of my businesses. This may seem sneaky, but in actuality it allows you the freedom of having someone else researching your industry and keeping your blog up to date, responding to comments in your name, still allowing you to either respond to comments or write articles from time to time, and you may even learn some things about your own industry that you haven’t had time to keep up on.

I will say this however. If you decide this is something you want to do on your own, make sure you don’t define yourself so finitely bet you run out of things to say pretty quickly. There is nothing worse than a blog associated with your website or business that hasn’t had an update in three or more months. That can actually harm you more because people will think you don’t have enough imagination to take care of your own business, so why should they hire you to try to take care of their business.

Okay it’s me again…
If you want to get more information from Mitch, be sure to check out his two blogs at the following locations.

I personally like DoFollow tags. I use DoFollow tags on my blogs because I feel like if someone wants to leave a useful comment they should get some page rank from leaving that comment. But alas I am not Google. The following video gives some insight into how Google views DoFollow Tags…

Now with that being said, does that change my personal opinion on DoFollow Tags? No not at all. I’m trying to build a community on my blog and comments are part of that. So I’m keeping my DoFollow tags in spite of the so called risks they may pose to my blog.

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I came across this blog post from one of my friends, Connie Ragen Green posted about people using twitter to harvest new affiliates. Instead of just leaving a comment, I decided to write my own blog post about the topic.

I honestly don’t see anything wrong with this. I wouldn’t let the first interaction I make with a potential affiliate be, hi, promote my product. That does seem kind of crass. Instead, I would develop a relationship with this person. Join their mailing list. Follow them on facebook. Buy their own products. This way you can see what they promote to their list and you can determine if your product is a good fit. Also always offer this person a review copy of the product. When people promote your product, they are putting their reputation on the line.
I personally would not object to someone that I had a relationship with asking me to promote their product. I would object if it were a complete and total stranger.

That’s my two cents on the issue. What do you think?

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I’ve added a forum to this blog! I had one over on ning, but I didn’t like the fact that I really didn’t have control over that forum. I mean if ning went away my forum would have been toast. Therefore, I decided to add a forum to this blog. It’s free to join and I welcome people of all levels of business to this forum. Whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned expert, you’re welcome! Everyone can contribute something! It’s brand new so get over there and start posting some content! To visit the forum go to http://www.learnsmallbusiness.com/forum

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I have an editorial calendar for this blog. Basically my editorial calendar helps keep me focused. If I didn’t have my editorial calendar, my blog would seem quite disjointed because I’d be writing about just whatever came into my head. I don’t think that’s very useful. Another great reason to have an editorial calendar is because it helps prevent writer’s block. It’s easier to come up with a topic to write about when the topics are already predefined. If you’re not already using an editorial calendar, I challenge you to take some time, sit down and create a schedule that fits your lifestyle.