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We have all heard horror stories of hard drives crashing. Home computers can lose priceless family photos and videos, but what about your business computers?

What would happen if you lost the hard drive where all your billing and accounting records are kept? What about essential customer databases, or CRMs? What about all of your marketing and web files? Inventory? Everything?

OK, we don’t mean to get your pulse racing and your blood pressure to go up, but those are some scary scenarios. Whether you are a “computer person” or not, so much of our small business life is stored on computers.

That’s why we at Mid Columbia Webs love mozy.  Mozy is an online backup system that is super simple to use, and gives you the piece of mind to know that everything is securely backed up. If your computer or server decides to commit suicide (and 1 in 5 hard drives fail, that’s 20%!), you can relax, knowing that your data is nice and secure.

Mozy is really affordable and it works in the background, so you never have to remember to actually do the backing up. It does it all automatically, you can set it to backup as often as you like. You never have to think about it again, unless your hard drive is one of the 20% that fail, then you will be relieved knowing that your files are easily retrievable once you get a new hard drive.

The download and install of Mozy is so simple, just follow the instructions and your files will be backed up. The first time you run Mozy, is always the longest for the backup, after that, it will just be a few minutes a day, not that you will even notice, it all runs in the background.

With peace of mind like that, Mid Columbia Webs gives Mozy two thumbs up for all small business owners. We couldn’t sleep well at night without it! Check out mozy for yourself and see how easy it is.

P.S. Mozy is the kind of investment that is so worth it to small business owners, not a lot of money per month and it is there if you need it. See how Mozy can give you peace of mind today.

This is the tenth installment of our ten part series about the benefits of Small Business Blogging.

Part One – Small Business Blogging Allows Your Customers to Get to Know You
Part Two – Small Business Blogging Allows You To Get to Know Your Customers
Part Three – New Content means Google Love
Part Four – Brings in Website Traffic
Part Five – RSS and Subscribers
Part Six – Your Competitors Are Doing It, Do it Better
Part Seven – Answer Common Questions
Part Eight - Repurpose Content
Part Nine – Community and Collaboration

We are at the end of our series, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be blogging about small business blogging here anymore, don’t you worry!

The tenth reason you need to start your small business blog is the reason everyone loves, it is affordable!

A blog if affordable for many reasons. It doesn’t cost a lot of money to set up, especially when you use a professional, experienced company like Mid Columbia Webs. You are just paying to customize the blog to your specifics (appearance and functionality).

Blogging is very easy to do. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can use your blog. It does not require expensive training sessions or courses. You just some basic training to get you up and running and then you are on your way.

You do not have to hire a copywriter to do your blogging, it should sound personal not like corporate-speak. Almost anyone in your company can do it. In fact, you can take turns.

it is also easy to maintain in-house, unlike other complicated websites. Want to change the contact us page? No problem! No call to tech support needed. It is intuitive. Sure you might want to tweak it a couple times a year or get new graphics, but it is very easy to keep up from day to day.

Blogging is an affordable way to get the search engines (like Google and Bing) to visit your site often. And in Part Three we learned that search engine visits is a good thing, they “spider” your site for content about what to put in their results.

Why pay for an expensive survey or market research if your customers are already providing feedback on your blog? Blogging makes customer feedback so much more interactive and actionable.

Unlike most marketing strategies, blogging is an affordbale way to get your name out there, in the way that you want to be represented. And really, is there a price tag on that?

Stop putting it off, and call or email Mid Columbia Webs today, and start your small business blogging path with ease.

P.S. Call or email us today to see how we can get your small business website and/or blog online fast. Our SEO and keyword strategy will have your website loved by Google in no time!

This is the ninth installment of our ten part series about the benefits of Small Business Blogging.

Part One – Small Business Blogging Allows Your Customers to Get to Know You
Part Two – Small Business Blogging Allows You To Get to Know Your Customers
Part Three – New Content means Google Love
Part Four – Brings in Website Traffic
Part Five – RSS and Subscribers
Part Six – Your Competitors Are Doing It, Do it Better
Part Seven – Answer Common Questions
Part Eight - Repurpose Content

Now you have really learned the ins and outs of small business blogging, you can see why you need a blog to remain competitive, communicative and on the cutting edge. Now that you get that, we can talk about something that may sound a little flighty or flaky.

Blogging adds to the community. Not just actual physical community in which your business is situated in. There is a whole blogging community online, made up of lots of different types of blogs. People who blog full time, mommy bloggers, corporate and small business blogs.

Why would you want to interact with the community? Wouldn’t that just be distracting you from your job? Not at all, in fact it is a great way to get in front of more prospects. Community and collaboration are what makes the blogging world special.

Pretend you are a world class widget maker. You have a blog where you tell your customers all about your company and your fabulous widgets. Your friend who owns the widget cleaning solution factory also has fabulous blog. Of course not all of your customers are the same, so imagine if you did a guest post on each other’s blog.

Your guest post would be read by lots of people who like widgets, but are maybe not customers of yours, yet. But they like your post, they click through the link at the bottom and end up on your website. They read your blog and they like what they see.

Because the widget cleaner showed trust in you (by allowing you to guest post on her blog, aka collaborating), you now have more potential customers. And vice versa.

What if you did a guest post every month? Imagine the new targeted audience you would be introduced to over a year. People you would have never had the chance to be in front of, if you hadn’t guest blogged.

So yes, community and collaboration can be big, big, big for your small business. Call us to get your own blog up and running.

P.S. Call or email us today to see how we can get your small business website and/or blog online fast. Our SEO and keyword strategy will have your website loved by Google in no time!