Get your voice on the Internet! Blogging is a powerful proven business tool for your website letting you post your thoughts and photos on the net and interact with visitors to your online store or web site. Whether you're writing your own personal journal or looking to influence audiences, a blog is the must-have tool for your business. Search engines favor them.  If you have a business that sells to consumers, your customers will love them, too. A blog (or from the root word "weB LOG") is similar to an online journal. It is largely text-based, so it's surprisingly easy to update and maintain--even if you have no experience running a web site. Any type of information can be presented on a blog, but this article will assume you are interested in using one to grow your business with stories about personal development, recent jobs to in-depth commentary on your approach to serving your customers. In addition, most blogs allow visitors to post responses to blog articles or entries and leave feedback for the person running the site, known as a "blogger".  Blogs take space on your blog provider’s servers, so they are said to be “hosted”—much like a web site, only smaller and more manageable. Overall, a blog is a fast, easy and rewarding way to establish an online presence. The challenge to your business: getting your customers to know you, to like you, and to trust you. If you can do these three things, sales come much more easily.  Your blog will put a human face to your business to help your marketing efforts. For relatively little time and even less money, you can have your own hosted blog entertaining and informing your visitors. Search engines loooooove blogs! To paraphrase Rene Descarte, “I’m in Google, therefore I am.”  If Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and other search engines can’t find your business, you are almost invisible on the internet.  Search engines love online blogs (and articles such as this) due to their unique and informative content.  If you have a flash web site or an online store hosted by someone other than you, you’ve probably already noticed the search engines don’t “see” it.  Flash sites are treated as graphics and online stores don’t usually pass the bar of “unique content” for the search engines.  Adding a blog to your site is a very good strategy to become visible to the search engines. Cutting through the confusion to get your own blog.  Relax. There are many places you can get a blog, some places are free, but we suggest a professional approach if you are doing this for your business. Check out DownDoggy.com, they have a blog template starting around $3 bucks a month. Having a managed blog as opposed to a free blog means you got 24/7 support if something goes wrong.