If you have not already read part 1 of this study I recommend you check it out Managing Your Social Marketing Part 1 – A Store Owners Experience

If you have been in business for any amount of time you undoubtedly had to answer questions about the products or services you deliver. Chances are you had to answer the same exact questions over and over again. This is the way search engines work for people who use the web as their information source…which means pretty much everyone on the web. People have questions, they type them into their favorite search engine the results should have the answers. In comes the blog.

Think of a business blog as your repository for information about your business, industry, products and services. When you are in business you gain an intimate relationship with whatever you offer. You know how it functions, it’s quirks and you probably have insight into its future. This information is valuable to current and future customers alike. It builds consumer confidence in your business and leverages you as an authority figure in your field. Incidentally, this is one of the “assets” I talked about in Part 1 of this study. If you use other social media for marketing your business, having a blog(if used correctly) gives your more relevance and clout.

Having a blog is not for everyone. An empty or seldom updated blog is akin to having an e-commerce store where you sometimes if ever process orders. It is useless unless you fulfill its function. The business blogs function is to inform, educate and feed those looking for ever changing information. If you are not comfortable doing research and writing information you have two options. One option is to not have a blog. The second option is to start with small frequent blog posts until you are comfortable delving deeper into subjects. We will touch on this more in Part 3.

Start that blog! If you choose to get your blog rolling…blogroll: list of recommended blogs listed on the sidebar of a blog…you will either need a little technical know-how or someone that possesses the technical know-how. If you have the technical know-how then you will need web hosting that supports the blog software you wish to use. WordPress is a very popular blogging software and is one I recommend. There are hundreds of “skins” for WordPress that can take you from the normal “blah” layout of a standard install to completely sheik in a few clicks. After that you just need to familiarize yourself with the amazing administration portion of the software and you are ready to blog.

If you are not technically inclined there are companies that can help you get your blog off the ground. Solid Cactus is a great company that helps business owners develop their online presence. They take care of everything from e-commerce to search marketing to blogs to a number of other services.

Once you get your blog up and running there are some key things you should be conscious of when writing your posts. We will go over that in the next part of this study.

As a handmade craft store owner I am always looking for ways to get my products in front of people. My role in our family business is to program/manage our Etsy store
(http://beadsandquilts.etsy.com) and our Yahoo! store (http://www.beadsandquilts.com) along with managing our social presence in forums, Facebook, Beads and Quilts on Twitter and our Beads and Quilts blog. With so many facets, managing our social presence is the most time consuming part of my role. It is easy to get bogged down with replies to forum posts, writing blog posts, monitoring and writing Tweets, and on and on and on…

Many small web business owners do not have the time nor resources to manage a social marketing presence in addition to their daily tasks within their business. This and future articles will touch on some of the key online social marketing tools and how to manage them without getting dizzy every time you look at your computer screen.

Take a deep breath in and let it all out (continue breathing throughout the article )

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