There are 600+ corporate bloggers at Microsoft. They use blogging as one of their greatest marketing assets, generating an astonishing amount of online and offline word of mouth interaction. Microsoft takes blogging seriously and these blogs are all linked to the corporate site. They help put a human face on the corporation by injecting individual’s passion for the company. What they are really involved in is building relationships on behalf of Microsoft.

A blog or ‘weblog’ is a regularly updated internet journal of organized personal thoughts made usually by an individual. In the business world this may be either as an official corporate blog or in an unofficial capacity. Business blogs usually incorporate news, issues, and ideas and speak to customers, vendors and employees. What makes blogs unique is that they link with other blogs and websites and solicit comments making them the ideal platform for an ongoing dialogue. Blogs are inexpensive, easy to set up and use, and require no technical skills such as HTML. The collective term for blogs is the blogosphere.

The blogosphere continues to grow. Technorati the leading web search engine is currently tracking 19.6 million blogs. About 70,000 new blogs are tracked every day. The total number of blogs continues to double every 5 months or so. There are between 700,000 and 1.3 million blog posts made every day. Both Google and Yahoo are introducing blogs search engines. Yahoo is currently showing a beta version of blog search results alongside their news results.

News travels fast through the blogosphere. In times of disaster such as Hurricane Katrina or the London terrorist attacks, blogs were instrumental in getting news, photos and opinions out at a remarkably fast rate. They often beat journalists for the scoop on news or scandals. In fact you can be sure that these days journalists keep a close eye on blogs and use them as a source for stories.

What does this growth in blogging mean for your business? It means that you should give serious consideration to adding a blog to your business. However you should also consider whether a blog would fit in with your business objectives. Because of the different tactics that blogs can be used for you may want to weigh up the options as to what benefits it can offer you and your business.

Increase your Web Presence
If you have an established online business you can add another vehicle to communicate your message and pass information on to your clients. Because blogs continually have new content they are indexed regularly by the search engines. It is another way to get your name and your products out into the search engine space. You can also use your blog to target additional keyword phrases.

Interactions with Customers
Your blog can be used to build stronger ties with your customer base. The opportunity to exchange information and expertise is one of the main reasons that explain why corporate blogs have grown in popularity in recent years. Corporations have recognized their customers are using blogs to self publish their opinions about products and services. This has led to customers getting actively involved in business situations such as product development.

Branding Tool
Use your blog as a branding tool for your business. It’s an effective way to get your brand message out there. Your brand represents an exchange of ideas between you and your audience. It is a relationship. Brands exist in the mind of your customer therefore brands that aren’t in touch with their customers miss out on innovation opportunities.

Corporate Communications
You can use your blog to speak directly with the media. There has been an ongoing debate as to whether blogs should replace the press release as the main corporate communications vehicle. As far as I am concerned both will do a good job and each has their own unique value.

Business Marketing
Blogs are being utilized more and more as a business marketing tool. And this is creeping into more and more business areas. Word of mouth advertising and independent testimonials are two major benefits of running a marketing focused blog. This is a great alternative to advertising. Blogs can also attract and develop a regular audience for your message and foster an atmosphere of trust.

CEO Blogs
A CEO blog is a way to speak directly to customers and vendors. And it can be used to advance industry issues. There are pitfalls of course. Saying something controversial may be picked up and reproduced in many locations. However some controversy is good as it gets people engaged.

A blog does require a commitment from you. Remember that writing and maintaining a blog take time. You should really have an interest in writing and communicating with your readers. A blog also requires an injection of personality.

Blogs are a increasingly common way to communicate about your business. As Businessweek magazine said in their article on business blogs catch up or catch you later.

Unless you’re very new to the internet or you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last year, you already know about blogs.

You know that:

Blog is short for weblog.

They should be updated frequently.

You can have 1 or more for free - no domain name or hosting account required.

You can use them for almost anything - including marketing.

You can get them indexed by the major search engines for free.

With all that going for them, many still have trouble getting traffic to their blog.

Why?

The answer is obvious…

There are thousands of blogs and getting traffic to a blog requires (Do I dare say it?) promoting it.

Now I almost said, promoting it just like a website but didn’t because blogs have 3 additional ways to be promoted that websites don’t offer:

Blog only traffic exchanges

While many website traffic exchanges will allow you use your blog to get visitors, there are also new traffic exchanges designed for blogs only. And even though  update my blog as often as I need to, I still get traffic to it by using my own Internet marketing program.

Blog directories

There are directories set up just for blogs. I must admit that I haven’t researched this fully but do know that if you go to a search engine like Google and search on “blog directory” you’ll get more than 8,000,000 results. I visited the top 2 listings and found that both allowed free submission, had high Google page ranks and good Alexa traffic ranking.

Blog and Ping

Ever wonder what pinging meant?

Pinging is an old computer term that meant sending a request to another computer or server over a network or the Internet to see if the remote computer was responding and it was used for verifying that all computers on a network were set up properly and for troubleshooting problems.

The use of the pinging technology has now been expanded to include a method of informing others that your blog exists and also to let them know when a new post has been made. Most free blog sites are set up to ping at least 1 update service so make sure you have your blog settings set properly and are using that feature.

In addition you may want to use a free service to quickly ping several places. Here’s the one I  use: http://autopinger.com/

Like websites, blogs must be created properly and be promoted. You must:

pick an “appropriate” name

use keywords properly

get links pointing to it

drive traffic to it

Unlike websites, you can get advertisement-free blog space and there are 3 additional free ways to promote them.

Almost five to seven  years ago - We used to keep in touch with our customers using phone calls, email messages, and face to face meetings. Today the world has altered. Clients require even more continual updates, yet it’s almost impractical to meet with every business contact on a routine basis.

Thankfully, Blogging has appeared to the salvation. Setting up a Blog on your web site - and having a comparable RSS feed - means you will be able to keep in continual touch with your clients and possible customers. Moreover you don’t have to contact them and they can get your most recent news without having to visit your web site.

Consequently how does this all operate? A Blog is really a fancy name for a web page that gets updated continually. It’s nothing special. There are various methods concerning writing ‘Blogs’, however they are nothing more than computer programs which allow you to easily update a web page. Far and away the simplest way to set up a Blog is with a website-titled blogger.com.

Nevertheless, for keeping in touch with your customers, RSS is the key. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What this means is that your Blog be able to be automatically delivered to clients who want to read it - you don’t need to send it to them and neither do they have to come and pick it up. All they need is the address of your RSS Feed and their RSS Newsreader can do the assignment for them. There are many RSS readers available and new web browsers combine the capacity to read RSS feeds and keep them updated.

Any time you add new content to your Blog, the RSS Feed automatically gets updated in everyone’s Reader program or web browser. Which means you are guaranteed to stay in contact with clients and prospects. You don’t have to do anything other than show the content. Likewise, you don’t face the problems of email filters and anti-Spam programs blocking your email. However, people tend to read RSS Feeds because they have subscribed to them whereas they tend to ignore non-urgent emails.

At the same time you can recognise, there are certain advantages to Blogs and RSS Feeds. But it doesn’t stop there. Search engines love them. That’s because Blogs supply fresh and new content - Exactly what searchers are looking for. Consequently the search engines are actively driving Blogs higher up in the search engine ranking. This means if you don’t have a Blog for your business, you are severely shortening your chances of a high search engine ranking. You need a Blog nowadays to get noticed by the search engines.

Hence, Blogging is required. Not only does it help improve your web presence; it also means you can keep in contact with clients and prospects more smoothly. And all the marketing research you can find will inform you that keeping in normal touch with your customers is a significant part in gaining additional business. So get ready to Blog!

According to Google, Google’s Blog Search is “Google search technology focused on blogs”. It includes search engine results specific to blogs not just in the Blogger.com community, but across the blogosphere at large.

What the Big Deal Is

A lot of people have probably heard about this extra version of search Google has added and are greeting it with a big yawn, particularly since it’s still in Beta. So what is the big deal, anyway?

The big deal is that the top search engine in the world, which was already paying particular attention to blogs in regular search results, seems to make a subtle statement with the introduction of blog-specific searches.

Blogs are important enough to warrant their own special level of search, and not just as an advanced search option, but in their own search engine.

If search engines are paying attention to blogging that closely, you should be too — if you want better search engine results.

Current fans of blogs will be able to search the freshest results so that they can see what is being discussed right now - information that is often as fresh as the news, and draws upon sources that the media-at-large either doesn’t have ready access to, or interest in.

So to those with even the most obscure interests or hobbies, a blog search powered by a top search engine gives ready access to fresh information on any subject that someone can blog about.

And if a blog doesn’t yet exist on these narrow themes? You can be the one to start the discussion.

Why It Matters to Your Business

Speaking of the media, this is likely to become one of the many tools that a journalist in the know would use in order to research a story, or to find out more information about a company, directly from the people who use its products or services.

Technorati, is at present, arguably a better tool, but it’s just not as well known as the Google brand. If you’re a power searcher, you already know what Technorati is. But the key thing to understand is that most consumers - even B2B consumers - aren’t as deeply involved in the internet.

But even those folks know what Google is.

There’s an even more obvious advantage to this specialized search.

Google Blog search has the unprecedented potential to bring the mainstream surfer into blogging, even more than Yahoo’s RSS Headlines pioneered the start of making RSS mainstream about a year ago. Why?

While many of your clients will fall instantly in love with RSS, it’s more fair to them to present its possibilities in a format that’s easier for them to digest. It’s not as hard to explain a blog - and if you can’t you can simply tell them it’s a more frequently updated part of your existing site.

When Google’s Blog Search is brought more to the front in coming months, if your site gets into position to be visible when more of the internet population becomes blog-happy, then the traffic potential for your site may prove to be enormous.

The proper use of one RSS feed in one of my content management systems doubled my traffic, with most of the new users coming from Yahoo, this time last year. Another feed increased my daily traffic another 75%, and brought me additional return traffic as well.

At the time the margin between Yahoo and Google was wider than it is today — so the potential increase from being in Google boggles the mind.

How to Get Listed

According to the Blog Search Help Page:

“If your blog publishes a site feed in any format and automatically pings an updating service (such as Weblogs.com), we should be able to find and list it. Also, we will soon be providing a form that you can use to manually add your blog to our index, in case we haven’t picked it up automatically. Stay tuned for more information on this.”

This means that if you’re already blogging - and responsibly pinging, you’re probably already listed.

If you haven’t been blogging, you’re in luck. This special brand of Google search is still in Beta, so if you get moving now, you still have enough time to start getting into position. And since the search currently seems to be focused on freshness and relevance, if you keep up the blogging once you start, and you keep your theme narrow, you could still dominate your niche.

Do It Today

The mantra for blogging before was that, proper blogging is a sure fire way to increase traffic, as well as build stronger ties to your end users or clients, not to mention that it is the simplest of the many implementations of RSS.

Now, with all three major search engines paying more attention to both RSS and Blogging, you can get spidered more frequently, get more of your pages indexed more deeply, and be included in more searches.

You have absolutely no time to waste - if you’re not blogging already, you need to get started quickly. Many webmasters are hesitating because they haven’t been able to find a blog system that fits well with their site, or find the most popular tools too sophisticated for their needs.

There are literally dozens of free resources to help you decide between the standard systems that were originally built for the personal blogger, and the more robust solutions that are aimed at the medium-sized or corporate company - but that’s another article.

Whatever you chose, the important thing is to get started blogging today. You’ll be missing out on targeted traffic from the most dominant search engine, from the most sophisticated surfers today, and sooner than you know it, the mainstream web.

It is important to realize that your choice of a niche can have a significant influence on the success or failure of your new blog.

Deciding on a theme can be a daunting task. What exactly are you going to write about? Your niche needs to be a popular topic that many people are interested in.

If you are going to blog about yourself, then you better have a very interesting life, or you will have difficulty keeping your readers coming back for more. You should choose a topic that will make it comparatively easy to grow your readership and build a strong following.

Since many bloggers write about their favorite subjects, it’s not a bad idea to start brainstorming by writing down a list of your hobbies, interests, and any areas of professional expertise. Now try to determine a niche you can target within one of those areas.

Should you blog about automobiles in general, or the latest sports cars? If you choose too narrow a theme then you may struggle to come up with regular, fresh content. And if you choose a topic that’s too general your readers may be confused by a jumble of seemingly unrelated posts.

You might consider niches within the following general topic areas which have proven to be popular for blogging:

¢ Automobiles
¢ Computers & Information Technology
¢ Digital Cameras
¢ Gadgets
¢ Music
¢ News
¢ Photography
¢ Politics
¢ Shopping

If you plan to use Pay-Per-Click advertising to get traffic to your blog, then remember also that the hottest topics might have the highest pay-per-click fees.

You can sometimes get great niche ideas by browsing at Blog directories and sites like Google Blog Search: http://blogsearch.google.com

Since it is so time-consuming trying to come up with the perfect niche idea, many bloggers and webmasters have turned to specialized niche discovery tools. I particularly recommend NicheBot.

NicheBot is quite handy in a different way. You get to use some great research that’s already been completed by an expert. Read more about NicheBot: http://www.nichebot.com/

The tools above are not free but consider for a moment. If you are planning or would even like - to make some money from your blog, then it will be worthwhile to start off with a well-researched niche.

If a particular tool uncovers a good niche that pays an additional $5 a day, it will pay for itself inside the first month!

Don’t forget, it will be very difficult to change the theme and niche of your blog later. So invest some time wisely during your planning stage.

You will be off to a strong start in building a successful blog.

A very hot Internet driven business initiative right now is a company blog; politicians to consultants, homebased business to Fortune 500 corporations, all are involved in blogging. You may not have a very clear picture of what a blog is and how it can be a useful communications tool for businesses.

Developed from web-based technology, blogs (short for web log) encourage second party communication from a specific audience on specific topics. Many people think of blogs as opinion forums but there are valid business applications as well. Whether you use it to communicate internally to your own employees or externally to your clients, blogs establish a different arena for sharing information and soliciting responses. Company blogs are an emerging trend and are predicted to be a normal communication method within just a few years.

Our company started a blog earlier this year as another tool for external communication. By posting New Projects we show what we’re working on; by posting questions and asking for response we hope to learn about issues relevant to our industry that concern clients and the services they find valuable. Maybe that seems like self-promotion, but we think it offers existing clients and potential clients the opportunity to talk with us in a completely neutral setting.

Used for internal communication, a blog gives you another forum to offer the company perspective on a broad range of topics and solicit feedback from your associates. A blog is not a chat room and it isn’t another method to take a survey. It can encourage thoughtful response, new ideas or brainstorming among collaborative teams. Say, for instance, that your IT team has an idea for a new software application but they have no idea if it is saleable. The folks that know what new products your clients might buy are in Sales. We all know that Sales hates meetings because that’s time not spent selling (and making money). What if IT could post their new idea on the company website via a blog that is accessible to employees only and Sales could comment, ask questions, brainstorm and offer possible client uses for the new software. Feedback from lots of sources meeting free collaboration.

Believe it or not, there are over 46 million blogs on the Internet covering every conceivable subject. More than 5000 companies maintain their own blog for internal and/or external audiences. Whatever your interest or occupation, I guarantee there are hundreds maybe thousands of blogs that apply to you. The easiest way to better understand blogs is to actually start blogging. Go to an Internet search engine, like Google, and enter a subject that interests you. Then just surf through a few sites and see what others are saying. You’ll be amazed!

The growth and popularity of blogs in general has been phenomenal within a very short period of time. Blogs or web logs as they were previously called is where all the action on the World Wide Web is, right now.

It is amazing how quickly web sites have been relegated to the back seat. Actually the role of web sites is rapidly being re-defined but it is clear blogs will be the place where all the traffic will be congregating for a long time to come. What some thought was a passing fad is clearly here to stay and is a permanent development that has already had far reaching effects on communications and the way we transmit and receive information.

Yet most entrepreneurs who have quickly jumped onto the blog bandwagon do not seem to fully understand and appreciate what blogs are really all about. Worse still, many of those who have remained away have no idea what all the fuss is about.

A clearer understanding of blogs is bound to benefit any e-commerce business owner or online entrepreneur.

Everybody can be a publisher or media owner
Probably the most significant impact of blogs is the fact that it is rapidly changing mass media, as we have known it since the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Powerful media companies have been in the hands of a few people who have carefully controlled what we see in our media. Sometimes deliberately to achieve their corporate goals and objectives. Blogs are effectively transferring that power back to the people and away from the hands of a few.

This era of blogs means that anybody can be a publisher or media owner and effectively transmit whatever information they want and push whatever cause is dear to their hearts. The impact of blogs in politics for example has been a clear demonstration of the power of blogging. We have some blogs covering politics that have a couple hundred thousand visitors on a daily basis.

This may be a scary development to many folks including media owners but it presents a number of excellent opportunities for entrepreneurs to reach huge audiences with their messages at a tiny fraction of what their budgets used to be in the days when blogs did not exist.

Breaking news, courtesy of the blog community
Further power of blogs to handle breaking news in real time, complete with photographs and video clips, has clearly been evident in real time. For example during the Tsunami tragedy in December 2006. Footage of the damage being caused by the giant waves was seen in blogs long before the traditional media channels got wind of what was going on.

This opens up a whole range of new opportunities that can be tried out in the years to come. Not many entrepreneurs have realized this yet.

Anybody who didn’t have a site can own a successful blog
Blogs are so easy to set up, maintain and run that a new breed of online entrepreneurs is on the rise. It consists of many individuals who for one reason or another were unable to set up and maintain heir web sites.

We are now in an era where an online entrepreneur needs little else other than lots of creativity, there is actually so much that he or she can do without a single cent in capital.

Distinct advantages of having a blog
Blogs tend to get lots of traffic. Lots more than websites do. Besides search engines seem to love them. Blogs are also able to build up links much more easily than web sites. Thus it is no longer surprising for a nobody-novice to suddenly shoot up in stardom and recognition.

No entrepreneur can afford to be left behind
The benefits of a business having in it’s stable a blog or two that is capable of attracting huge traffic, is very important and can be extremely useful in helping a business to achieve its’ marketing goals and objectives.

Any entrepreneur whether online or offline who does not have a blog to help promote their business is making a very serious mistake that they will definitely live to deeply regret. In fact even playing catch-up with a blog that already exists will continue to be more and more difficult.

There are a number of advantages that blogs have which will continue to be extremely useful to entrepreneurs and webmasters. One of them is the fact that they easily allow for customer comment and anybody can be able to post a comment at your site. In a way this is a form of research and sampling because it enables the business to get feedback and thus be able to gauge the sort of response they will receive when they finally roll out their product or service into the market.

Start using your blog more carefully and watch your traffic and revenues steadily climb as a result.

Most of the local business owners, who I know, still don’t have a web presence -for a combination of reasons. Many business owners are from my age group and don’t feel comfortable setting up a website. So, they pay somebody else to do it or it never gets done. There are a multitude of reasons to avoid launching your business on the web, and all of them are lame excuses.

As days go by, I get to hear all the excuses. I’m too old, our business isn’t the Internet type, and  don’t know HTML. You can tell everybody else those excuses, but do you want to grow your business or not? The vast majority of small businesses fail, and the Internet is the cheapest form of advertising available.

If haven’t launched a website or Blog, you are delaying business marketing progress for nothing. Take a computer class, learn from your kids, or learn from your grandchildren, but start as soon as possible. Perhaps, your grandchild can earn some money teaching you how to make even more money.

Blogs are easy to start with, since you don’t need to have any HTML knowledge. You can also go to Blogger, and get a free Blog. It might take you 10 to 15 minutes to set up and start posting information right away.

Some website hosts work like that too, but let’s assume you have a site of some kind. Did you know your website host might have a Blog feature built in, at no extra charge? If you have this feature, you can easily build a commercial Blog.

For a small business, with a website and commercial Blog, you should be able to establish your natural search engine rankings. Sometimes, these are called, organic rankings and you don’t have to pay a penny for them. It may take a few months or more to establish yourself, and you should make regular posts.

For optimum results, your regular posts can be daily, a few times per week, or once a week. More postings are much better and will have significant impact on your rankings. Search engines love frequent posts, such as those found in Blogs.

Instead of worrying about Google algorithms, and SEO (search engine optimization) theories, go back to the basics and boost your rankings with content. Most of us have heard, Content is King, and it is totally true.

So what do you say about your business? Tell your established customers and prospects about your service and products. Explain what your unique selling proposition (USP) is. This is what makes you different from similar businesses in your town.

When you have new products, or are looking for feedback about new product development, a Blog is extremely useful. Your customers and prospects can leave you feedback, so marketing research is very easy.

Lastly, don’t shy away from a œgold mine. Free advertising is too valuable to ignore. Blogs are the advertising bargain of the decade and possibly, of the 21st century.

One of the reasons successful business blogging is working for small business is because of many of its direct and in-direct effects. In this series of articles, I’ll be talking about some of these effects and how they occur, including increases in traffic, better search engine results, and the enhancement of online company brands.

One of the other side-effects of successful blogging can be, and often is, an increase in sales. This occurs for a myriad of reasons, four of which I’ve listed below.

First, as you begin to consistently give your prospects information they can use, they return for updates on a regular basis. As they begin to see you as an authority on your topic matter, in their minds it seems less of a risk to buy from you as they begin to trust you more, and rightfully so.

The logic is that if you know enough to be able to blog effectively about your subject, then you’re knowledgeable in your field - which means that your product likely addresses a solution they’d be interested in purchasing.

Second, it illustrates that there is a human, approachable presence at your site. By blogging, you’re showing that someone is in fact “at home”, and that your web property is presently being maintained and updated, giving a prospective buyer more security as they weigh their options and approach a buying decision.

Third, the conversations that occur through blogging build a bridge of trust and loyalty. It’s human nature to tend towards the familiar, and to trust it. When you blog frequently, your return visitors see you as the familiar.

Once they become buyers, this trust can elevate to loyalty. They’ll begin to come to you repeatedly for information and when given the choice, will want to buy from you, the known, rather from someone else they don’t know.

Fourth, if you take care to configure your blog in a way that takes advantage of its inherent search engine friendly architecture, your blog can help your site show up for searches for more terms, bringing you both readers who are generally interested in your topic matter, and those who are looking for a solution and are ready to buy.

Many blog systems have some of the necessary tools that can help you optimize your blog for better search engine placement by manually configuring settings in the template or modifying the code to make it more compatible. But if you’re not a techie, or are a busy professional, you’ll want to find a system that incorporates all the most needed tools for you already.

An increase in sales is just one of the reasons blogs are working for business online, from the small business to larger corporations. With Google embracing blogs with the Google Reader and Blog search, and Yahoo including blogs as sources in the Yahoo News section, business blogging is no longer seen as a theoretical test for increased exposure. They are an essential component to your online marketing strategy.