I know many web designers and developers blog. But for those who don’t, here are couple reasons why you should.

1. Marketing

Ask most internet marketers and they’ll tell you that blogs are great for driving traffic.

If you’re a freelance worker, getting more traffic to your site can increase your leads and sales. Even if you’re working for a company, your blog can send more traffic to your company’s site. In this economy, you probably want your firm to have more business so that you can stay employed.

Blogs can get a lot of traffic for a couple of reasons.

First, they often do well on the search engines. Blog have lots of pages for the search engines to rank as opposed to static brochure-like sites that only have a few pages.

Second, blogs usually get more repeat visitors. Internet users are much more likely to bookmark a blog since they expect blogs to get updated and they want to check back for new content.

Third, blogs are usually better than other types of sites at attracting links. There seems to be a culture of “linking out” between bloggers that’s missing with other sites. Most bloggers are open to sharing their traffic by linking to other bloggers. Of course, if you want to share in this traffic, you’ll be expected to link out too. It’s a win-win for you, since you can point your readers to interesting blogs while receiving traffic back.

2. Learning

Blogs can be great learning tools.

You can create helpful posts for your industry. This is a great way to solidify in your mind the things you’ve learned.

You can use your blog as a reference guide. Think of it as your old school notebook where you kept important notes to help you do your homework and pass your tests. Your blog has an advantage over the notebook because it’s online. This means you can save useful links with ease. Also, other people give you useful information by leaving blog comments.

You can also use your blog as a work diary or journal. By keeping track of your work activities, you can look back at your posts and be encouraged by your progress. You might uncover unproductive trends that you need deal with and productive patterns that you need to focus on. Again, other web designers and developers can interact with you through the comment section. They may leave helpful information or just a general encouraging word.

As your blog grows in traffic, you can start using your blog to get valuable feedback. You can ask your readers to answer questions that you have about your industry. You’ll need a good amount of traffic to make this work since most readers don’t leave feedback.

3. Networking

I’ve hinted about this already, but it deserves its own section. Simply put, blogs are an effective and efficient way to build relationships with other web workers.

You’ll still need to make the direct contact possibly with email or a face-to-face meeting, but your blog showcases your personality to anyone who has an internet connection. Over time, your readers will know you pretty well.

If you want to network with someone, you can contact them and point them to your blog to learn more about you. You won’t have to keep telling your story to each person you network with. Instead, you can just link to the relevant posts on your blog.

If you’re looking for a job, new clients, a business partner, or even online friends in your industry, your blog functions as a “living” updated real-time resume.

Over to You

If you’re a blogger, why do you blog?