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Small Business Solopreneurs: What's the up-side of being laid off from someone else's company? How can you start up a business you're passionate about on a shoe-string budget? How can search engine optimization (SEO), dynamic content, blogging and social marketing help bring attention to your enterprise?

Current Status: I am not a techie. I am a writer/editor. I am setting up a couple of business blogs for a holistic medical practice, and it turns out you need to be a bit of a techie -- someone who knows coding -- to work with WordPress. Unlike Blogger, which anyone can lay out and add widgets to, WordPress presents the newbie with an endless bog of indecipherable blog documentation useless to a non-techie, non-Web designer. So I have been struggling for over a week to get to the part I know how to do: the blog posting itself. 

Tips for Business Bloggers: Here's the thing -- blogging can work for you, or it can be a big, blogging disappointment. It's easy to fail: just set up a blog and never use it. For it to be effective at making your Web site dynamic, you need to get a fresh blog posted every other day. How are you going to make that happen? 

• First, if you have a Web designer, feel free to use WordPress, which has some distinct advantages over Blogger -- it looks more professional, for one. But if you are going to do it yourself and do not have Web design/HTML experience, I recommend Blogger, which is backed by Google and is easy to set up in a short time. 

• Second, take the time to organize your thoughts about what you want your readers/customers to understand. List some topics that will provide accessible information, and add to it as you go so that you'll always be a couple of topic ideas ahead. 

• Third, know yourself. If you really aren't going to maintain your blog every other day, then hire an experienced content writer. A good choice is someone who already knows something about your product or service area, who has published writing samples to show you, and who listens carefully to what you want to accomplish with your blog. 

• Finally, be patient. It takes time to develop a following. Blogging isn't the only form of Internet marketing, it's just one piece of a marketing strategy. If you provide value for your target customers -- and post often -- your blog will provide a good return on a modest investment. 

Soap Box: Web 2.0 marketing is neither agressive nor expensive. Its best value is that it continues to grow -- unlike a traditional marketing campaign that has a launch date, a large expense and an end point. To make it work for you, you must be patient...and diligent.