I was just contact by the local newspaper (star) about Blogging and it’s effects on Business
The main questions were,

“[do you] feel that having the blog gives you an
edge in finding clients/customers and others. Does it build contacts? Trust?

My response was yes, yes and yes.

What I said,

Finding clients:
Blogging is probably the best tool that you can use to find clients or promote a business.

1. From a web designers standpoint, a blog shows off their skills and will most likely attract more business because they see your skill and what you are capable of doing…Other clients will trust in your work because of the quality of what you put into your own site(s) and blog(s).
2. It also helps when you release your design for free for others to use. I’ve released 3 or 4 themes and have had 5 thousand new visitors to my blog this last week alone just because of a new theme. More traffic means more of an advertisement for my business. With some stat tracking software I noticed that 90% of my visitors to ScatteredMedia.com are coming from my blog at Dancameron.org.
3. Releasing themes and plugins for others not only helps exposure in the blogging community but helps in pagerank…
4. Linking and posting about your company or projects helps tremendously. Not only does it get the word out but it makes search engines notice siteX a little more.

Contacts and trust:
…I could see that people reading my blog and seeing something personal could attract them…but some posts can be taken out of context or even be blatantly upsetting or disturbing to a potential client.

I never really thought this out before today, but I really think blogging is the best thing to promote business, yours or someone elses.