If you listen to the online gurus and social media experts out there, many of them will tell you that your business should have not only have a website, but it should also have a social aspect to it. They’ll tell you that using Twitter, Facebook, and other social media avenues is a great way to attract new customers and to engage with a demographic that may not necessarily be reachable through conventional marketing techniques.

Further still, they’ll also remind you of the value of having a company blog. We have a company blog here on BlueFur that is related to the web hosting business, but it is not here explicitly to increase sales. It’s here to engage with the online community, sharing thoughts and exchanging ideas. If you’re not much of a blogger yourself, you can hire a freelance writer to do some of the work. Another great alternative is to use the company blog as an organic portfolio of what your company is doing.

That’s what Jenn Best is doing with her professional photography business. She mostly focuses on wedding photography and the main website tells you about the services she offers, how to contact her, and so on. Having a blog about photography may sound like a natural fit, but Jenn has taken perhaps a more useful approach by using her blog as an ongoing portfolio of projects.

She needs to get the permission of her clients first, of course, but the Jenn Best Photography blog is a great place to see what she can do. This is much more powerful than a static portfolio, because it shows her most recent work on an ongoing basis. Most recently, she went on an engagement shoot with a couple of long-time friends. By using a blog, she can also feature unpaid work that may otherwise be forgotten and ignored.

This will depend on the nature of your business, but consider adding a portfolio-style blog to your company website. This dynamic approach is not only good for attracting new customers; it’s also great for SEO purposes.