Blogging is great fun! Yes, blogging can be great fun. Just open you posting window and go for it without the restrictions of corporate style guides and other impediments to creativity. Got something to say? Just say it. The other fun aspect of blogging is that people can post comments about your blog posts. You posts plus reader comments all become valuable food for the search engines .

Blogging is dirt cheap. The most powerful blogging systems are free. WordPress seems to be the blogging standard and now comes standard with many cheap web hosting packages. For less than $100 per year anyone can get their own domain with blogging included. I wouldn’t use one of the free blogging services unless you are really desperate. You can’t be sure if they will always remain free and your posts will be building up someone else’s asset rather than your own. (Caymanhost Ed’s note – not sure we entirely agree: a free WordPress or Blogger blog is often a good way to get started – if you decide it’s for you you can always move your blog later – if it doesn’t work out, you’ve not wasted any money. Both will soon see you appearing in search engines if you post regularly too – there are some very highly ranked WordPress.com blogs as well as Blogger.com – Google owns Blogger remember. Eventually however, you will want to host your own blog as the author says. If you already have a hosting account, fair enough, you may as well host your blog there, but if you don’t and don’t feel ready for the move, blog for free as a starting point).

Blogging is fast and easy. If you can use notepad you can blog. The user interface is very intuitive and allows you to add and edit, text, pictures, videos, whatever you want. Want to change the look and layout of your blog? There’s literally hundreds of themes available that take less than a minute to upload and install.

Blogging gives you products and services personality. People like to do business with people they like. By blogging you show your target market that there is a real person behind the company you represent. By reading you blog posts thet get an idea of what you’re all about – warts and all. The personal aspect of blogging is one of it’s most powerful characteristics.

Your blog becomes another Internet asset. Some blog sites get thousands and thousands of readers each day. This traffic can be converted to hard, cold cash through Google Adsense advertising, affiliate programs and straight advertising space sale. Once you blog increases it’s Google PageRank, you also get the benefit of linking out from your blog site to other web sites you want to promote.

Search engines just love blogs. It is said in many SEO forums that Google staff are great bloggers and subsequently Google spiders and indexes blogs more frequently that normal web sites. This may just be a rumour, but I have found it to be true in my case. If you blog every day there’s a good chance Google and the other major search engines will spider your blog every day looking for that new content. Convinced? Give blogging a try. There’s stacks of free resources listed in article directories like this one that will help you get into blogging.

————————————–