Small businesses increase blogging in downturn

LOS ALTOS, USA: MerchantCircle, the largest social network of local business owners in the nation, released research data of merchant blog usage after showing a record amount of blogs posted for the month of January.

The study shows 15,676 blogs written by merchants on the network in January 2009, a 190 percent increase from the same time a year ago. The total number of blogs posted follows 12,872 written in December 2008, and 9,215 written in November of 2008. There were 5,383 blogs written in January 2008 and 2,623 written in January of 2007.

"I never heard of a blog until I came to MerchantCircle," says Ken Mapel, owner of The Glass Guy in Hastings, MN. "I went to the MerchantCircle forums and all the business owners were talking about the importance of blogging. I started blogging on MerchantCircle and have since found that they show up really well on the search engines through different keywords. It's important for my business to become more active on the web as the economy gets worse."

"Merchants are beginning to recognize the value of a business blog, which people within the internet community have known for a long time," says Darren Waddell, Vice-President of Marketing. "We're excited that we're at the cusp of what we think is a huge explosion in business blogging and that we've been able to provide such easy-to-use tools for them to blog."

The study also shows that a merchant who has written one blog sees an average of 30 percent more traffic to its website.

Other merchant statistics include:

* 700 topics posted in the forums (where business owners trade tips) each week, a 600 percent increase from last year.

* 15,000 coupons built a month.

* 30,000 local business pictures uploaded each month.

A blog is defined as a "Web log" or an online diary, which is increasingly being utilized by business owners to attract new customers through unique, business-related content that is indexed by search engines.