Why am I starting a Blog?

I'm certain that I'm not the first person to ask themselves this question?

There are many reasons why I'm starting a blog however my main motivations are probably guilt and curiousity! These probably don't sound like the best reasons for starting my first blog and may come across to some as a little shallow, although fortunately there are many more legitimate reasons which I will go into a little later on.
I have read many different articles, forums, blogs and websites which all discuss the benefits of owning, writing a well thought out, interesting (i can only try) and frequently updated blog. There is no doubt that a successful blog that is read by many people can be extremely rewarding both emotionally and potentially financially. Blogs can be incredibly effective marketing tools, this is because search engines seem to love them and I'm already getting the feeling that writing a blog is going to be fun.

I've found myself frequently telling clients how easy it is to start a blog (i've read it many times, so it must be true and it only took me five minutes to set this one up). I've also told them what a wonderful tool it can be to communicate with people (i actually think I used the words "potential customers") and to further market their ideas, website or small business quickly and easily. But, I've always felt a little bit of a fraud because I hadn't previously practised what I was preaching! But today that is all about to change, because when i push the "publish post" button all of this is about to change!

I've already got lots of ideas and goals for my blog, but the main goal has to be to encourage people to read it and hopefully enjoy it. It's also an opportunity for them to share their thoughts, feedback and opinions with me and (hopefully) the other readers. Personally, readers comments and feedback are one of the most appealing things to me about blogging and of course as an internet marketing and small business owner myself I want to find out how much traffic I can drive to this blog. I also want to see how long people spend reading my blog content. Content which I hope people will find interesting and usefully.
I am a strong believer in win / win relationships and I also believe that you have to give to receive. I intend to give my readers as much useful information about how to be successful in small business website and internet marketing as I possibly can. I will explain in more detail in my future blog entries why I am well placed to help you in these areas specifically however if you are curious at this stage then please visit my custom website design agency website where there is a little bit of information about me and what we do for our clients at High Impact.

So why start writing a blog today? Well, at the weekend I met a very interesting individual called Dr John Crippen, who whilst we were talking told me that he started a blog a couple of years ago. When we were very talking he didn't instantly come across as a person who would be actively involved on the internet. How wrong I was!

Because of my huge interest in successfully marketing websites I asked him if he new how many people visit his blog on a daily basis and I must say that I was really impressed when he told me that around 2000 doctors and medical professionals view his blog everyday, which you can see here. What an achievement, that is an impressive amount of traffic for someone who hasn't formally trained in in this field or had much externel assistance. His traffic seems to be the result of frequently, well written, and interesting content. I only hope that I can achieve something similar with my chosen target audience!! The next day I desided that before the week was out I would launch my first blog and today is that day!

So to bring my first entry to a close. I am writing this blog to hopefully show my current and future clients how straight forward it is to set up and write a blog. How it can benefit them and their small businesses. I am also writing this blog to share my knowledge and experience of custom website design and internet marketing. How I think it is best to design, market websites and make money on-line. Oh, and of course drive additional and targetted traffic to my websites. I hope that you will share my journey!