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Smaller chunks of content are also more resuable. A single product might get pulled from a product catalog and featured in
sidebar of another page. One event of a corporate timeline might get randomized into a "related information" section on a products or services page.
Are More Likely To Be Updated: Well, maybe. ;) With a blog-based site there is really no excuse for not having up to date content - all you need to do is put a title and some body text into some fields, and click "Update". The site will handle all navigation changes, page additions, archiving, categorizing, etc. Posts can be smaller than typical web pages, so it doesn't matter how small your update or news item is, stick it on site.
Are More Affordable: Depending on what blogging tool you choose, $300 can buy you a software license and a year of hosting. And no, that's not limited by users or seats or CPU's. And yes, that includes email and server traffic reporting tools, etc. Try to beat that deal with any halfway capable commercial content management system.
Are More Search Engine Friendly: The blog development community keeps a closer eye on search engine optimization than page-based CMS developers. When Google announced their new sitemap program, there were add-ins for Moveable Type and ExpressionEngine available that day. URL structures, semantic markup, permalinks, RSS Feeds, other blogs linking to you...these all drive search engine positioning.
Blogging also offers advantage of building a site with a larger footprint. Imagine how large your site would be if you updated it weekly or daily with something new about your area of expertise? Google sees over 800 "pages" of content here on Boyink.com, a distinct competitive advantage over a similar company who puts a 12 page site online and never adds to it.
Are More Scalable: What would happen to your website if you actually started to add content daily? How long would current navigational model hold up? Would your menu bars be able to accomodate a new chunk of content every day?
Blog sites are designed, by nature to hold an ever-increasing amount of content. Many blogs add new content weekly or even daily. Blogs use date and category archives as scalable containers for this content.
Are More Likely to be Standards-Based: Blogging tools have appeared on scene in last 3-4 years, so don't have table-based legacy that older CMS systems have to work through. Blog designers also wanted their sites to be easily "skinnable" or personalized, and being based on CSS makes that easier to do.
Are History-Builders: By not deleting "old" content, blogs can build a corporate history. For some companies this is a requirement -- a corporate lawyer might need to know what was on your site two years ago as part of litigation. Do you have backups of your current site?
A searchable corporate history might also prove useful to new employees - giving them a sense for how company came to be where it is today.
Michael Boyink specializes in developing blog-based business websites, Internet Strategy and Information Architecture.
Find out how your company can 'Get Boyinked!' by visiting www.boyink.com.
