If you think a blog is just too complicated to put together yourself, think again. It`s not a difficult thing to do and even if you don`t have the time or inclination, there are people you can hire for a fairly low fee to do it for you. When done right and promoted correctly, a business blog can easily pay for itself.

Marketing takes many forms and now that the internet is so widely used, blogs are a very popular form of being present online. When blogging is used in combination with social networking and article marketing, you`ll find that your business really benefits.

Blogging can help your business grow rapidly and since blogs are so much preferred by search engines because of the constantly updated material, this is an excellent method of promotion that anyone can do. As long as you make sure the the information presented is relevent to your topic, it should draw people.

If you don`t yet have a blog, what are you waiting for? It`s time to start increasing business!

You won`t always have great ideas to write about on your business blog. Part of blogging is coming up with ideas on a steady basis, but it`s not always easy, let me tell you!

• Reviews. Why not publish a review of a product that works with yours or with your services?
• Testimonial. Pull out one of those emails where your clients ooh and ahh over your work and publish it.
• List. A list of 5-10 ways you can use your product, including not-so-obvious things, will really help your readers and gives you something to write about.
• Tutorial. Show your readers step by step how to go about doing something. This usually works best with photos or even video.

Each of these ideas can be pulled out when you`re at a loss for what to be blogging about. They all can be used repeatedly, though you definitely want to include some good informative articles in between. Writer`s block doesn`t have to apply to blogging!

It`s unfortunate that many small business owners are hesitant to start blogging because they find that they can`t write quickly or even find a series of topics to work on. So, today, I`m going to show you how to write a week`s worth of posts in just a couple of hours.

Step One: Come up with ideas
Obviously, the idea is the most important part of blogging. You can keep a notepad handy and write down ideas as they come to you throughout the week, but if you are just sitting down to do this right now, you`ll need to brainstorm a bit. Think about the most common questions people ask you about your business and write these down.

Step Two: Write the basic points
Your next step is to break the answer to each question into three parts. Write down three points to answer each question. These should only be one sentence long.

Step Three: Flesh it out
Write 3-4 sentences elaborating on each of the three points you just made. This is the step that will take the longest. If you want to speed things up, just do it all assembly line style and work on topics that you know.

Step Four: Add an intro and an ending
This is just a couple more sentences at the beginning and end of the blog post to introduce it and to complete the post. And there you have it . . . 5 quick blog posts. It shouldn`t even take you a full 2 hours.

There`s no reason not to start blogging to promote your website. In fact, if you haven`t yet begun, now is the perfect time!

In short, the answer is yes. However, for many small businesses, a blog seems like a time consuming way to promote your business. That doesn`t have to be the case, though.

Blogging for business is something that every business can do with virtually no budget and it will bring in potential clients. And it really isn`t as hard as you might think!

Blog posts don`t have to be long. In fact, many blogs get away with just 100 -200 words. You can say a lot in that little bit, if you word it right. No time to write? Then you can hire a ghostwriter who will not only write the posts for you, making them search engine friendly, but will even post them for you for a nominal fee.

By making good use of the articles that are written on your blog, you can catch the attention of the search engines, which will help boost traffic. Also, you can do article marketing, which is completely free, to gain more attention for your blog, and comment on other blogs. It works very well and there`s really no reason why a business shouldn`t try blogging.

Need links? Here are three link building techniques that work like a charm:

• Directory Submissions - You can’t get by online without directory submissions. We’ll find all the right directories for your niche and submit your site to those, plus you’ll get a site submission to every general directory we can find. Great links.
• Relevant Links From Sites Like Yours - There is no better place to start your link building campaign that with sites just like yours. All you have to do is ask. You might have to link to them in return, but that’s OK. You are looking for traffic. And other sites like yours is a good place to get it.
• A Blog - A blog can get you inbound links in one of two ways. Put the blog on your website and write every day. Trackback to other blogs on the same topic and you’ll get links to your site from theirs. Plus, many bloggers will write about topics you cover and link back to you. The other way to make a blog work for you is to put it on a separate domain name and link to your website from the blog every day. By being on a separate IP block and on a separate domain name, the search engines won’t care if it is owned by the same person. It’s relevant and it links. That’s all that matters.
• Article Marketing - Write frequent articles and submit them to article directories. When those articles are picked up by publishers then you’ll be building links to your website.
• Social Bookmarking - Traffic building on steroids. Get your blog or website known by more people in a shorter period of time. Some social bookmarking sites will actually give you link juice.

So what are you waiting for? Start your link building today.

By now you know that you should have some kind of presence online in order to be effective at small business marketing. But what kind of online marketing should you be doing?

There are different methods of online marketing and not all of them necessarily apply to your business, but one method of Internet marketing that I think definitely applies to every business is blogging. If you have a company website then you should also have a blog. But there are two types of blogs that can help you.

Onsite blog - Your onsite blog can serve as your company blog to promote your business, products, and services, and to cover customer service type issues.

Offsite blog - An offsite blog is best used to drive traffic and build links to your website. It is a very effective marketing tool but its purpose is slightly different than the onsite blog, which is good for adding fresh, daily content to your website.

Which blog is right for you depends on your goals. But you should post to your blog every day. You can read more about why at Small Business Mavericks. Suffice it to say, though, you need a blog of some sort if you are going to do business online.