Internet marketing experts all agree on one thing. There is no point investing in a marketing plan for your internet based business if you aren’t going to have a blog. Doing so is literally throwing your hard earned money away.

Although there are lots of reasons why people keep a blog, owners of internet based businesses should do so with the idea that their blog provides them with an opportunity to increase the effectiveness and over all presence of their website.

Ideally, your blog should not only provide information about your website, but it should also compliment your marketing program.

There are three ways that a blog can enhance your marketing.

A well written, well thought out blog can be used to build your website. You don’t have to wait until your website is up and running before starting your blog. You can start writing about your thoughts and ideas as soon as you have them. By doing this you will start to generate interest in your website. You will also be able to get some help and suggestions from your blog readers.

The blog actually expands on all the marketing you have done or are going to do. The blog allows you to provide links to your website, determine what type of keywords and phrases best describe your business, and attracts the attention of other webmasters.

Publishing a blog is actually faster than publishing an ezine for your website. The people who read your blog will be privy to any information right away. You won’t have to worry that the online newsletter you have spent hours trying to compose has just gone to someone’s spam folder.

One of the best things about creating a blog and writing all about you internet based business is that it provides you with a way to slowly build up a following. If everything goes the way it should, by the time you have your website up and running you should have a huge following of blog readers who can’t wait to buy your products.

There are two really great things about blogs. The first is that they don’t cost you anything, there are several websites, including Blogger.com and LiveJournal.com that allow their members to create as many blogs as they like for free. The second really great thing about blogging is that it doesn’t take much time. You can set up your account and start blogging in less than five minutes. After you are set up, you can dedicate as much time as you want to blogging, the rule of thumb is that you can’t over blog.