Blogging may prove to be good for many small businesses as a method of promotion. Here is an article from Entrepreneur magazine that addresses this topic. “The elements of interactivity, community and collaboration will be key as growing businesses adopt blogs for customer relations, advertising, promotion and even internal communications.”
Dr Jeff Cornwall
Co-founder of The Entrepreneurial Mind, serial entrepreneur and professor of entrepreneurship.
I don’t think blogs will ever be much of a customer relations tool for small businesses. This is especially true becuase of technologies that will help small businesses have more immediate customer communications (there are even some projects using the alice chat bot (http://www.alicebot.org) to provide surprisingly accurate artificial inteligence customer support).
Blogs are primarily good for advertising due to their tendency to get very high placement in search results. However, with Google’s purchase of Blogger.com (http://www.blogger.com/about/blogger_google_faq.pyra) you can bet that will change.
However, I do think blogs can be a vital tool for small businesses. Blog provide a way for small businesses to demonstrate their expertise within their industry. Simply by sharing bits and pieces of expertise small businesses position themselces to be quoted, called upon, and followed. This is huge for small businesses. Eventually large corporations will catch on to this as well, but they will be slower to move.
-Jackson
Good points. In the right context, they might be helpful. I think professionals might find it a good way to keep their names visible through a resource/forum type blog. I agree that all of this is fluid and evolving rapidly. One friend thought that the blog technology could put life into his web-site and electronic newsletter, and allow for more feedback from clients and referral sources. Entrepreneurs thrive in change and chaos!!
jc