Why not connect the blog to the business site. All it would take is adding a link in the main navigation of each.
Last year I wrote a post called
branding for small business and bloggers in order to explain what brand is, why it's important, and how small businesses and individuals can build their brand. Seems appropriate to the discussions.
My favorite definition about brand is one I found searching. It's from Steve McNamara, of AdCracker.Com
Quote:
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“A brand is the sum of all feelings, thoughts and recognitions - positive and negative - that people in the target audience have about a company, a product or service.”
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Brand has two components, one being the above feelings, thoughts, and recognitions, and the other being the reach of those same feelings, thoughts, and recognitions.
If you person knows you and sees you as an expert when it comes to computer support, then that's your brand (or at least part of it) to that one person. In order to continue to maintain that brand you'd want to do everything you could to prove to that one person you are indeed an authority when it comes to computer support.
If at some point that person asks you to come by and help them install and configure some software and you can't find the cd tray you hurt your brand with that person. If on the other hand you come in and while that person is looking for the cd you download the .exe file, install the program and have it configured by the time the person is back, you reinforce your brand.
If your brand is strong enough with the single person that person is always going to call you when they have a computer problem. You have a loyal customer.
You likely want more than one customer though, so you want to extend the reach of your brand by getting others to form those same thoughts and feelings as the person in the example above. I think reach is what most people call to mind when they think of brand as though it's all about getting known by as many people as possible. I think the part about the feelings and thoughts, the sum of all associations, is the more important part of brand.
How far your reach needs to extend depends on your business. Most small businesses do not need to reach everyone. Many service oriented businesses don't need a large number of clients to do well. Maybe it's 5, maybe it's 2 dozen. It's not on the order of thousands or millions. How many people do you really need to reach to convince 2 dozen that you're the one to hire. How far does our brand really need to reach in that case?
As your business grows and you hire employees or begin to offer products you'd want your reach to grow, but I think a lot of small business owners push into the reach without really understanding the sum of all associations component. I think that's what Rob is really talking about with reputation.