When I first heard of blogging, I said to myself –that looks silly and time consuming and how the heck could it help my business? And I buried my head in the sand for a couple of years. And then, one of my coaches started nudging me and showed me some practical reasons to blog. And now I’m hooked. Today I ‘m going to share with you the top reasons to blog and how to get started.

1. Internet interaction is here in a big way and is here to stay. With the advent of social media (linked in, facebook, twitter) and smart phones, people now expect to be able to interact with you online. Your website is a one way street. You give out content. Your readers receive it. With a blog, people can comment on what you post and a dialogue occurs.

This is great because it builds relationships AND it’s great for driving traffic. Search engines and blog directories are notified of your updates and they love that!

2. Google Loves New Content. In the past, google would find your web pages and if they hadn’t been around for 9 months or so, it was considered too “new” to land high on the search engines list. Now, fresh content is queen. Google loves it. I use “google alerts” to keep an eye on several keywords I’m tracking. Don’t know what I’m talking about? I’ll explain!

Go to google and type in "google alerts". You will be taken to a google tool that allows you to put in words you want to track that are being picked up on the internet. For example, I track Ann Ronan, @anncoach (my twitter address), self employment, and Providence, RI (to get new content for my www.providencelover.com site and to see when that site is mentioned).

Each day, google sends me a list of websites and blogs that have used one of my articles, or mentioned my name or keywords. Often when I post a blog, google picks up the content the very next day. It’s not so quick at finding my website content. This is powerful for bringing readers to your website/blog.

3. It’s Easy To Upload Content. For years, I had to rely on others who were expert at html language (don’t ask!) to update my website content. Now, I can easily type in what I’m thinking and click a button and it’s done! I recommend using WordPress (it’s free and powerful).

I also recommend having an integrated website/blog –don’t worry... I didn’t want to learn the technical aspects...and if you don’t either, I have a resource for you. If you want resources to help you start your own blog, post a comment on my Authentic Life Institute blog and I’ll get back to you.