ForConstructionPros.com

Doug Mitchell

You've heard of them. Perhaps you read them. You might even be one of the 50-plus million people that have created one. But it's not likely that you've drawn a clear connection between blogs (short for WeB-LOGs) and your rental business. In this article, I will shed some light on business blogging, the often misunderstood marketing tool, and provide some reasons why it might make sense for your rental business. (HINT: Blogging can be the most powerful weapon in your marketing arsenal … and it's free!)

Background on blogs
When all of the hoopla is stripped away, blogs are simply websites that make it easy for non-technical folks like you and me to show the world what we think in words and pictures. Disappointed? Don't be. The simplicity of blogs and the tools used to create them have spawned an entire industry focused on providing tools enabling the rest of us to make very professional looking blogs that complement our corporate websites.

Also, blogging is not just about writing, it's about reading. Although I won't focus on reading blogs in this article, using the power of RSS feeds (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication) and feed readers, your company can search once and subscribe to feeds delivering real-time news and information on your industry and your competition. At least equally important, you can subscribe to what the industry and others are saying about your company, so you can answer.

But I already have a website!
If you ask 100 people on the street where they go first to look up a business, 80 percent will likely say, "I Google it." Have you spent some time searching for your own website using common key words? If you don't come up in the first page and your competitors do, don't feel lonely. Most corporate websites are put up with great intentions and many look great. However, they quickly become stale and stagnate.

Often, business owners are held hostage by the webmaster or design company that created the site. Want to put up a new event, press release, or product information section? Get out your wallet. As a result, most sites transition from "web" to "cob web" in less than six months. Stale websites do not impress search engines.