The first thing you should really do, is to purchase your own domain. A domain is like a car registration plate. You buy the right to use that particular name, and you can apply it to any website you want.

You can buy a domain very quickly and easily from Network Solutions, one of the oldest and largest domain registrars on the Internet.

While many small businesses do this, many forget to do the all important next step - use their domain as their primary email address.

Nothing says "mom+pop" shop quicker than a fancy looking site, sitting proudly on their own domain, only to be let down with a @aol.com / @hotmail.com / @gmail.com email address. You've gone to the length of securing your own domain, but fail to use it in the one place it will be remembered the most: email!

There are many services that can run and host your domain orientated email for you. Google does a great service for small businesses that is free if you are a light user.

Blog-City recognizes this problem that small businesses experience which is why we offer free email forwarding with every business blog. Find out more here

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• Tip#3: Utilise a mailing list to keep people informed
• Tip#2: Check and answer emails timely
• Case Study: Carson & Trotter Accountants
• Tip#1: Publish small, publish often
• What we can do for you ...
• Top 5 reasons how a business blog differs from a normal site

Why? Are they embarrassed by their price? Are they charging too high? Do they not want their competitors to know?

How many times, as a potential customer, have you come across a site that has:

• Has a telephone number to find out a no-fuss no-obligation quote
• Ring for the latest prices
• Fill in a long form that is basically your contact details for a quote

What this tells the customer, is that your website is not updated often enough to reflect the current prices, which then tells them that maybe the product information is also out of date.

Don't be shy to shout about your prices. Your competitors will already know what you charge already, so what are you losing?

Depending on your product type, the majority of potential customers will be looking at your site out of hours, and will most likely not bother to contact you in the morning. They will instead buy from the site that has enabled them to make the informed decision there and then.

Do not make it hard for your clients to do business with you. You have gone to the trouble of providing them with a website full of information on your products. Do not deny them the one piece of information they desire the most: the price.

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• Tip#4: Be careful with colour
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• Tip#1: Publish small, publish often
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• Top 5 reasons how a business blog differs from a normal site

Too often, websites try to be too creative and fancy and utilize way too many colours, to the point where the content is in danger of getting lost to the rainbow of colours employed. Keep it simple. The classic background of white, has come back into fashion again, and it takes a very special combination of colours to pull off a non-white background.

Remember your sites main focus. Most likely you are not a design agency, or a graphics artist. Your main field of expertise is not in presentation. So don't try and compete. You're main currency is content. Your potential clients are coming to you for your information.

Pick a maximum of 3 colours; usually inspired from your company logo. These will be the basis of the your colour palette and move subtlety between them. For inspiration on how large publishing sites utilize minimized colour, take a look at the BBC News site. Note how they simply moved between a handful of colours and how that can make the site look very clean and sharp.

Blog-City business blogs has a wide range of pre-defined templates that allow you to concentrate on the information while the template takes care of the presentation. The templates will ensure you look modern and up to date, while you get on with the job of educating your readers.

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• Tip#6: Buy and Use your own domain
• Tip#5: Don't hide your prices
• Tip#3: Utilise a mailing list to keep people informed
• Tip#2: Check and answer emails timely
• Case Study: Carson & Trotter Accountants
• Tip#1: Publish small, publish often
• What we can do for you ...
• Top 5 reasons how a business blog differs from a normal site

But that doesn't stop you from asking for it.

The question you have to ask yourself is this: What is the business proposition in allowing my email address to be known to this site? You do not want to give up your email address if all it means is spam or unwanted email. You want to be kept informed of the latest and greatest news about the site in question.

Promote your mailing list on your site, inviting people to sign-up. They will receive a short email informing them when you have published new content, inviting them to come and read it.

A mailing list is a wonderful way to keep your company and product in peoples minds without forcing them to remember to come back to your site.

Each Blog-City business blog comes with a mailing list as part of the standard package. You can upload your existing email list there, that will invite everyone to join your new site list. You can see instantly how many people are on your list and you are free to alert them whenever you wish.

A mailing list is an effortless way to reach out to your existing and potentially new customers without having to worry about all the logistics.

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• Tip#6: Buy and Use your own domain
• Tip#5: Don't hide your prices
• Tip#4: Be careful with colour
• Tip#2: Check and answer emails timely
• Case Study: Carson & Trotter Accountants
• Tip#1: Publish small, publish often
• What we can do for you ...
• Top 5 reasons how a business blog differs from a normal site

More often than not, small businesses are guilty of not checking their email often enough. They sometimes leave it for days at a time, with some only ever checking it once a week. DON'T!

Check your email often, at least once a day, if not twice a day. A check in the morning and a check in the late afternoon will ensure you are never leaving any ones inquiry more than a working day.

Some emails require a little more effort to answer than others. But that doesn't mean you ignore it. Simply email the recipient back, detailing that you have received their email and will be looking into it as soon as possible. This simple act can make all the difference between winning and losing a customer.

If your site does not advertise product prices instead you have a "Available upon request" then it is of the utmost importance you keep on top of email. People using that facility do not want to wait for days for you to get reply. They will simply go to your competitor who are advertising their prices.

Communication - It's the key to a good customer relationship.

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• Tip#6: Buy and Use your own domain
• Tip#5: Don't hide your prices
• Tip#4: Be careful with colour
• Tip#3: Utilise a mailing list to keep people informed
• Case Study: Carson & Trotter Accountants
• Tip#1: Publish small, publish often
• What we can do for you ...
• Top 5 reasons how a business blog differs from a normal site

Blog-City has been in the blogging industry for over 5 years, specialising in high performance, high availability blogs. Setting the standards to which others follow, Blog-City embodies the true spirit of the Internet, bringing the power of self publishing to the masses.

Head quartered in Scotland, and servers in key locations all over the world, Blog-City offers a full serviced self-publishing blog-centric hosted solution.

TheBusinessBlog has been designed to educate the small business owner on how they can utilise the power of blogs to bring a whole new experience and raft of clients to their business. With our years of experience of providing blogs we offer no-nonsense advice on how best to utilise the world of blogs and how they are turning ordinary sites on their head.

Naturally we hope you will choose Blog-City as your site host, but if you don't then that is fine by us. We hope will learn something here and increase your profitability and find a new excitement and energy regarding your online strategy.

For more information on Blog-City visit here.

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• What we can do for you ...

They went the traditional route as they moved into the world of the Internet. They hired a local firm, that developed a typical website costing many thousands of pounds. The site wasn't anything spectular in today's terms, with very little interactive or reason for anyone to come back.

The site was typical "window dressing" - standard 'about us', usual client list, and a very basic contact form. The site was never destined to be a the top of any search results, and was never going to offer the reader a reason to ever come back. Once you had read it once, that was it.

Naturally they wanted more. Ironically they did have content they wanted published. Tax laws change, new products come up, they wanted to communicate this and reach not only existing clients but reach out to new clients. Problem was they didn't have anyone within the company that had any HTML knowledge and even had they managed to create a new page, no one had any experience in getting the page to their FTP server. All in all, their web site was locked up.

We approached them and offered our help. A blog solution was ideal for their site. Initially they were nervous, since they had this perception that a blog was just a diary /journal site used by journals. We simply countered this, by showing them some examples and asking if they could spot which one was the blog. They failed to identify the blog and abandoned their preconceptions of what a blog was.

We quickly converted their look'n'feel into the blog and created the usual standard pages. After that, they were on their own. We were no longer required to maintain or publish their site.

They quickly set about creating new entries, publishing all the data they wanted. Each week they published something new. They would tag their entries, and start to move forward with building out a more informative site. Now there was a reason to keep coming back.

Before they knew it, their RSS traffic started to increase. This was a big thing, since their historical site didn't offer any RSS subscriptions at all. Now they were reaching a whole new audience.

They started to race up the result pages within Google. Soon they were on the first page, ahead of their closest competitor. This made all the difference. The enquiries started to come in and just recently have they actually signed up their first new client found exclusively through their new site.

Now their website was actually in profit - for the first time in their own Internet history and as a new first, they were truly in control of their own online destiny.

Find out how Blog-City can help turn around your online pressence.

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• Tip#6: Buy and Use your own domain
• Tip#5: Don't hide your prices
• Tip#4: Be careful with colour
• Tip#3: Utilise a mailing list to keep people informed
• Tip#2: Check and answer emails timely
• Tip#1: Publish small, publish often
• What we can do for you ...
• Top 5 reasons how a business blog differs from a normal site

Think about your typical client and the sort of person they are. Then think about your own industry and fathom out what nugget, or interesting factoid you could impart.

Some ideas for publishing include

1. Any changes in the law, rules or regulations that may effect them
2. News regarding any big players in your industry
3. Changes in specifications or standards that they may find useful
4. Useful hints and tips that may be able to use
5. Interesting case studies
6. Special offers that you may introduce

Regular publishing will build up a readership, that will want to keep coming back week after week. Encourage everyone in your company to put forward ideas so you never run out of content to publish.

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• Tip#6: Buy and Use your own domain
• Tip#5: Don't hide your prices
• Tip#4: Be careful with colour
• Tip#3: Utilise a mailing list to keep people informed
• Tip#2: Check and answer emails timely
• Case Study: Carson & Trotter Accountants
• What we can do for you ...
• Top 5 reasons how a business blog differs from a normal site

We offer a full hosted service, with an SLA unrivaled by other content management systems.

1. Full Hosted Service

   No hassles of server setup, hardware or bandwidth management. You can be up and running within minutes.

2. Scalable Solution

   Whether your site pushes 100 hits a day or 1 million hits a day, we scale with you. With packages that grow with you, you will always be within your budget with complete confidence you never need to worry about becoming too successful.

3. Look'n'Feel Transplant

   Taking your current look'n'feel of your site, we can take it and convert it to a standard CSS layout that can easily be applied to your blog.

4. Custom Domain

   We encourage the use of your own domain and should you not have one we can easily and quickly advise the acquisition of one that will suit you. The usage of your domain for your blog comes part of the standard package.

5. Unlimited Email Forwarding

   We offer an unlimited email forwarding service for your domain and your blog. This lets you create as many different email addresses/aliases as you need and make it easier for your clients to reach and communicate with you.

6. Support

   Help is never far away. With full email and online chat support we are there to help you at every step of the way. Our support is second to none.

7. Feature Rich Experience

   We have literally hundreds of different features for you to empower your website. From a Wiki to a forum, to over 50 different widgets, unlimited entries and pages, we have all the tools you need to become successful.

We value your custom and are here to help you every step of the way. Whether you are looking to replace your existing web site, or supplement it with a blog, we can assist and advise at every step.

Contact us today for how we can help you.

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• Tip#6: Buy and Use your own domain
• Tip#5: Don't hide your prices
• Tip#4: Be careful with colour
• Tip#3: Utilise a mailing list to keep people informed
• Tip#2: Check and answer emails timely
• About Blog-City
• Case Study: Carson & Trotter Accountants
• Tip#1: Publish small, publish often
• Top 5 reasons how a business blog differs from a normal site

So why do they need a blog?

Here we will go through the Top 5 reasons that makes a business blog a lot different from a normal site.

1. Adding/Updating Content without HTML knowledge

   The biggest culprit with traditional sites is stale content. Everyone hits content that hasn't been updated for a while. It sends out all the wrong signal with reader not knowing if the owner has simply forgotton about it, or can't be bothered. This then begs the question if the owner will actually answer any email to them.

   The reason content becomes stale is that its a chore for the owner to update it. More than likely the site is arranged in fixed pages, with an FTP or some sort of upload procedure to go through. It's just too darn hard with too much risk of breaking something.

   A blog thinks in entries not pages. There is no HTML to learn and updating your blog is as easy as writing an email.

2. Higher Page Rankings in search engines

   If you want your site to be found, then it is key to get noticed in the search engines. This is where blogs excel. The primary reason for this, is that many of the algorithms employed by the likes of Google, Yahoo etc, will favor content from sites that have been updated recently. Again, no one likes stale content.

   With the blog site being easier to be updated, your site will remain fresh and have a higher chance to reach the top of the rankings.

   In addition to this, each time you publish or update an entry, the software at Blog-City will automatically alert Google (and many others) that your site has updated. This sends a signal to them to come and crawl you, instead of waiting for them to "remember" to come and check. This mechanism is one of the key tools in a good relationship with the search engines.

3. Automatic RSS Generation

   RSS is a technique for allowing people to keep uptodate with your site without having to visit it each time. An RSS client (like Outlook, Google Reader etc) can monitor your site for new content and alert them when you have published or updated an entry.

   Blogs come, out of the box, with all the necessary tools for the generation of RSS automatically. You don't even need to think about as it is done for you behind the scenes. The user can subscribe to your RSS feed for your complete site, or instead, subscribe for a given keyword.

   Did you know that RSS generates around 40% of all traffic to their site? That is a huge amount of traffic your normal web site is missing out on.

4. Rich User/Reader Experience

   Blogs don't just make it easy for you the content owner, but also for your reader. We've touched on the power that RSS offers them already, but there is so much more on offer. For example, they can easily forward any entry to another via email. They can also comment on any entry, should you allow that feature.

   Blogs are all about the content. To that end, the reader has a much richer way of finding the content through the use of tags, categories and automatic in-site searches.

   This makes finding content so much easier.

5. Web based Administration

   Gone are the days of wrestling around with FTP clients and ugly uploading pages. The modern day blog is all about the web administration, making it very quick to not only upload and publish new content, but also to make changes to the look'n'feel of the whole site.

   But the ease of adminstration doesn't stop there. Blog-City even lets you add new content to your site by simply emailing your site. How much easier can it be?

   In addition to this, you can see at any time the latest statistics for who and what is reading your site. All through a web browser. No matter where you are, the office or at home, you can always update and keep an eye on your site.

These are of course just the Top 5 as there are many many more differences between a traditional site and a blog. Discover the power of the blog.

Related Entries:

• Tip#6: Buy and Use your own domain
• Tip#5: Don't hide your prices
• Tip#4: Be careful with colour
• Tip#3: Utilise a mailing list to keep people informed
• Tip#2: Check and answer emails timely
• Case Study: Carson & Trotter Accountants
• Tip#1: Publish small, publish often
• What we can do for you ...