So what is a Blog?
A blog is a website where content is entered and displayed in chronological order, with most recent entries at the top of the page. A blog may include other medias such as images, videos and audio, or it may simply be text. People blog about all sorts of topics, both personal and business.

Why would you want a Blog?
Over the next few years you will see more and more savvy business owners getting involved with blogging and social networking as ways to grow their business.

A blog allows you to have a conversation with your target market, and allows your readers to comment on what you are writing about. Provided that you have relevant and interesting information then your blog will help to attract more prospects to your website. Also, an added bonus is that the search engines like Google and Yahoo love blogs because they are so full of content and keywords. It really is a great way to get yourself found more often on Google!

How do I get a Blog?
There are several options – host a blog on your own domain or get a free blog. Because this article is primarily for you as a business owner then I recommend hosting on your own domain as it provides greater stability and most certainly better branding for you.

I’ve used Wordpress in the past, it’s free blogging software! This blog that you are reading is a Wordpress blog. Wordpress is free and many hosts provide it ready to install with your hosting package. The hosting company that I use Hosting Bay offer Cpanel & Fantastico so I was able to log in to my cpanel account and install Wordpress simply and easily.

Another alternative blogging platform is Typepad, which bypasses your need to set up a hosting account elsewhere. You simply set up a Typepad account, customise the look of your blog and assign it to your domain name. For more information visit the Typepad website.