101 reasons for your small business to have a blog

1. tons of traffic
2. tons of repeat traffic
3. tons of content
4. Google will love you
5. promote products
6. advertise sales
7. ask for feedback
8. become an authority in your field
9. receive testimonials through the comments
10. answer common email questions so everyone can see them
11. syndication through RSS
12. syndication through automatic emails
13. never call a web designer to update your content
14. gets links from tons of other websites
15. get slashdotted
16. get dugg
17. taste del.icio.us
18. get indexed by Technorati
19. get searched by Google Blog Search
20. your posts can be emailed easily
21. trackback to other posts
22. other posts trackback to your post
23. tell a story
24. tell 1,000 stories
25. show your art/photos/sculptures/products
26. list your favorite sites
27. list your best written posts
28. list your most popular posts
29. make your company live and breath on the internet
30. create a virtual tour of your factory or showroom
31. create lists of the benefits of your products
32. post your packaging to see what people think
33. create a user poll
34. motivate yourself every day to do something worth writing about
35. it's dirt cheap
36. it's easy
37. it's fun
38. it will humble you
39. it will exhilarate you
40. you will become connected to your audience (ie your customers)
41. you will build relationships
42. you will stay on top of your industry's news
43. you will meet all kinds of people that share your interests
44. you can write a good blog in less than 15 minutes a day
45. you can attract the attention of major press outlets like USA Today
46. it will create a an archive of your company's history
47. it will keep your employees informed of company news
48. it will prove that you're a better photographer than you thought
49. it will annihilate buyer's remorse
50. your readers will be educated about you, your company, and your products
51. strangers will tell you to "have a good vacation," and mean it
52. you will count your visitors by the week, day, hour, minute
53. you will compare your circulation to that of newspapers
54. you will hear from friends you had forgotten
55. you will make your friends, family, coworkers, and strangers laugh
56. angry customers will leave comments, but
57. you will be able to respond publicly and fairly, and
58. other customers, good customers, will defend you
59. you will be asked to attend blogging conferences (as a celebrity)
60. you will reach an international audience
61. you can show off the crazy stuff your company does
62. show off the charitable stuff too
63. share your company philosophy
64. make your customers laugh laugh laugh
65. learn what your customers really think of you
66. convince readers to think better of you (even love you)
67. teach customers how to use your product with tutorials
68. you can explain to your readers why something is being done differently than before
69. recruit employees by posting your want ads
70. share the emotional moments (those will connect hardest with certain readers)
71. explain the process so your readers have a deeper appreciation
72. give away prizes for readers who participate the most and give you your best ideas and advice
73. build trust by respecting your readers
74. you will be reminded everyday that people "out there" care about what you do
75. divert a crisis by responding quickly and publicly
76. print entire interviews so the press can never misquote you again
77. use your blog posts as the basis for a book
78. a blog lets you reflect on the day's achievements
79. it challenges you to find news about your industry so that you can write a post about it
80. it creates a record for you to reread and realize you've missed a few things
81. you will be way ahead of your competition
82. you can respond instantly to negative press on other blogs or websites
83. blogging increases your appreciation of other blogs
84. list other blogs and websites that reinforce your writing to show you are open-minded and that you research, and that your #1 goal is to educate your readers
85. plan blog-reader-only sales and events only for people who read your blog
86. blog like a pirate on "national talk like a pirate day" (September 19...that's today!)
87. get a date at the supermarket with the line, "I own a business...and I blog about it."
88. your teenagers will be embarrassed that their parents "blog"
89. you'll have the satisfaction of explaining terms like blog, RSS, Technorati, Feeds, and tags instead of having them explained to you
90. you'll find ways to stay awake until you come up with 101 things for a list you've decided to write
91. you'll get support from an amazing group of people that will seem to materialize out of thin air
92. your company will be more transparent, more accountable, and more honest, and your customers will respond to that
93. you will never run out of things to write about, even if I have to suggest something personally
94. you can write an op-ed and it will actually be published somewhere
95. if it's good enough for Mark Cuban, it's good enough for you
96. you can start a blog and write your first post within twenty minutes
97. there is no downside to trying a blog other than a small time commitment
98. you won't know if it can be a real benefit until you actually try it
99. blogging is just starting to catch on in the corporate world so you are ahead of the curve
100. blogging makes you a much, much better writer
101. you might be featured as the Small Business Blog of the Day at Pajama Market!

If you have any questions about any of the reasons I have mentioned, please let me know in the comments and I will explain them in detail. And of course, feel free to add to this list in the comments.

Technorati : 101 reasons to blog, reasons to blog

Comments

[Wendy Piersall :: eMom]

LOL - what a GREAT list. I think #86 is my fave... AYE Matey!

[Chad Horenfeldt]

I like #79 - great list! To add to this, if you are the blogger for your company, it seperates you from others around you and gives you visibility within a large organization.

[Brian Brown]

Thanks. Wendy, I hope you saw my Small Business Blog of the Day post today. It was in the spirit of the "holiday."

Chad...nice one. That's definitely a good one to add.

[William Knight]

Getting an op-ed published somewhere is definitely my favourite. But surely "vanity" is a reason in itself.

[Char]

What a fun list! I definitely agree with #100.

[Brian Brown]

William...that's true. Blogs have a developed a stigma because so many early blogs were vane musings of really dull subjects (mostly written by teenagers). But that vanity is a driving force to keep posting. We love seeing our words out there for the whole world to see.

The trick is to not get too full of ourselves and write things that actually mean something to our audience. But I'll be the first to say that this blog is a definite ego boost for me and that is part of my motivation to write it.

Char...yes, unless you periodically write your posts at four in the morning after staying up all night.

[Dimitar Vesselinov]

Amazing list! Thanks!

[Terinea]

Great internet marketing post!

[Dawud Miracle]

Hey Brian. I've bookmarked this post to come back to later. Some good ideas here. Thanks.