Small businesses failing to use blogs

The vast majority of businesses in Britain are failing to capitalise on blogs to drive business to their web sites.

In a survey of more than 2,000 small and medium-sized companies by hosting site Fasthosts, nearly half of them would like to use a blog to help increase traffic and sales on their sites but only a tiny 3 percent have plans to start one.

Fasthosts said that there are currently 53.9 million blogs in existence, with 75,000 new ones created daily - according to Technorati . The company said that blogs ensure that companies update their sites’ content regularly which is a key reason why people keep coming back.

In its research paper, Blogging For business’, Fasthosts found that 26% of respondents needed a blog to be updated daily to ensure they returned. However, just over one third of participants claimed that that as long as the blog was informative and interesting, regular updating was not as important.

“In today’s hyper-competitive market, blogs provide a fantastic way for small businesses to differentiate themselves through personalising their website and attracting more customers,” said Andrew Michael, CEO, Fasthosts. “The corporate blogs of large companies are bound by corporate guidelines and gate keepers, so for small businesses there is far greater opportunity for interesting comment and genuine dialogue with customers.”