There is a smart, cheap, best, easy and fast solution. It’s called a business blog.

Some of the immediate advantages a blog offers businesses over regular, static web sites, are a smarter content publishing and management platform, more direct involvement with their customers, built-in capabilities like RSS feeds and search engine notification, and greater control and flexibility over the way content is managed.

Plus, it is way easier to promote and grow your business online using a blog, than it is using a website if you know how. Not to mention the fact that your promotional efforts can have a longer lifetime and give you greater exposure than traditional advertising media like newspaper or radio ads. (In fact, you can combine these, for example, making your current promotion be the home page of your blog, then sending radio or print ad visitors to your blog.)

What’s the difference between a business blog and a business website?

You can make a business blog look and feel exactly like a website – in fact, many of the sites you are visiting right now are probably powered by blogging platforms like WordPress, instead of popular web design HTML applications like Frontpage or Dreamweaver. A significant difference, is that you don’t need to know web site coding language like HTML to run a business blog, or add and modify content on your site. You simply add content and publish. This makes business blogs a perfect online marketing tool for business owners.

Another important difference is that blogs allow you to have “conversations” and build interactive relationships with other people, where static web sites tend to be more of a “one-way” vehicle for presenting information to visitors.

What if you already have a web site?

If you currently have a website that requires you to contact your web developer, web designer, web master or an IT savvy friend, nephew, niece or neighbor every time you want to make a change to your site, then you definitely need to consider adding a blog to your site. Simply install the blog in a subdirectory of your domain (e.g. yourdomain.com/blog), then promote your business using the blog and link your posts back to your site for more information about your products or services, to purchase, etc …

If you don’t have a website yet, then save yourself money on costly web development and a lot of hassle and just use a blog. With a blog, you can easily promote your business by adding regular posts and articles about a variety of different topics.

Here are just some ideas for things you can write about your business, then post on your business blog:

Product recalls Customer service information (e.g. how to ship product back, refund policies, etc.) FAQs Profiling customers Information your customers would find useful, educational, informative, entertaining, etc.New things coming soon to your business Profiling members of your team News about your industry Top 10 lists Product / Service tips (how to spot quality, how to avoid paying too much or being ripped off, etc ..)News about your own business Product / Service benefits

As you can see, there’s no shortage of content to write about when it comes to promoting your business.

Now … just getting a blog up and running is not really going to help you. You need to know how to configure it properly if you want to achieve the best results with the least effort.

Fortunately, there is a great resource I recommend you research in more detail if you are interested in knowing more about the benefits and advantages of using a business blog to help you promote your business and sell your products and services smarter. A company called SelfPublishWebcom offers two ways to help you set up a blog for your business that will not only get your site pages quickly indexed in Google and other major search engines (usually in as little as 2-3 days), but they show you how to fully configure it so that it becomes a powerful marketing tool for your business, with many automated built-in promotional features that you don’t even need to think about.

You just write about your business and the automated system running silently in the background goes to work for you.

SelfPublishWebcom offers two options: They can fully install, set up and configure your business site / business blog for you and you’re then ready to go in as little as 4-5 working days, or, if you want to save several hundred dollars, you can purchase their complete ‘step-by-step’ DIY video training tutorials package, which is done in a completely non-technical way so that anyone with basic computer skills (like the ability to cut and paste) can just watch over their shoulder and follow along as they show you how to get your own business blog up and running in 2 days or less.

I’ve had a chance to fully review their offers and I thoroughly recommend the step-by-step video training tutorials they offer as a DIY cheaper alternative. You get access to a private Member’s Area where you can watch all of the training videos and download all of the materials, plus ongoing support. The videos are excellent and make everything really easy to follow, and the information is never overwhelming. You are only given what you need to know in order to get the next task done. Additional resources are provided in the member’s area, plus you get training emails, and access to a member’s forum.

In my opinion, the smartest option is to purchase the step-by-step video training tutorials (selling for less than $100 last time I checked), then assign the task of installing, setting up and configuring the site to somebody in your team if you don’t want to go through the tutorials yourself. Like I said earlier, the instructions and video tutorials are really easy to follow, so anyone can do it.