A column in today’s USA Today notes the value that blogs have for small businesses, including:

•Strengthen relationships: Online it is far harder to get your personality across than it is in the real world. But because a blog allows you to wax poetic about subjects of your choice in your voice, it allows customers and potential customers to get to know you better.

And because blogs can also be used to solicit feedback from customers (not just talk to them), it can be a valuable way to increase interaction. For instance, asking for feedback via your blog may be a great way to get immediate reactions to your business, a sale, a promotion or whatever.

•Build your brand: Your blog is your voice and your words. It allows you to directly convey the image you want people to have of your business without having to go through the cost and diffusion that advertising and marketing require. The values that define your business and brand can, and should, be incorporated into your business blog.

•Improve customer service: You can use your blog to keep customers informed of important events, sales, deadlines, and so forth. You can answer customers’ questions or provide valuable links to related products and services.

• Increase employee awareness: An internal blog can be used to post schedules, make announcements, crack a joke, etc.

•Build your reputation: Blogging is an inexpensive marketing tool that permits you to position yourself as an expert in your field. If your blog provides cutting-edge analysis or information for people in your industry, your reputation grows in direct proportion to that.

•Bump your search engine rankings: Blogs that allow reader responses (and many do) create Web pages with valuable key words. This in turn can increase your search engine rankings.