There's no doubt about it, business blogs are hot!

With their interactivity and their ability to position even micro-business owners as niche experts, blogs are the "it" marketing trend [see BusinessWeek Online, 5/22/06, "Into the Wild Blog Yonder"]. There are more than 59 million blogs in existence and 75,000 new blogs being created every day, according to Technorati, a resource Web site with a search engine that covers the universe of blogs, known as the blogosphere.

In contrast to a newsletter or static Web site that conveys one-way information. Bloggers are free to write about anything and everything, from the personal to the professional, and the successful ones attract very loyal communities of readers.

Business owners sometimes establish blogs alongside their existing Web sites, but blogs can also substitute for Web sites, says author and blogger Patricia Gundry. "A blog will give you a Web presence that is much more reader- and user-friendly than any ordinary Web site can be. It will also be much less expensive for you to create and maintain," she says. "It will do almost everything a regular Web site can do, and more, and one of the best things is that it can create a more personal relationship with your customer." And guess what? Search Engines LOVE BLOGS!

                                                       

Blogger Susan Kitchens, a technical writer, agrees: "It's a way of sharing yourself as yourself -- a human, not a marketing droid. You establish trust and build a relationship with an audience." As a blog catches on, it can develop a wider audience and potential customer base for your business. But first you must have something to say. What are the issues surrounding your business that are worth discussing? "If yours is a swiftly-changing business -- like technology -- then your blog can follow the trends," Kitchens notes.

A business blogger could also review industry-specific books, conferences, and organizations and point out relevant articles and Web sites -- a service that engenders gratitude and loyalty. "The more you send them away, the more they come back," Kitchens says [see BW Online, 4/14/06, "Want to Keep Customers? Set Them Free"].

TIME INVESTMENT.

Many people will start off establishing their own simple blogs, and quickly recognize their potential as marketing vehicles. But it can take a time investment - That's when business owners contact a writing/marketing firm and invest a small amount of money to take their blogs to the next level in terms of professional appearance and regular content, as well as PR for the blog and networking.

Blogs must be updated frequently -- several times a week, if not daily or even several times a day -- in order to hold readers' attention and show up frequently in search engines. Depending on the situation, small-business owners either have no time because they're constantly working on their businesses, or it's the only resource they have since there are no hard dollars associated with it.

If you decide to start a blog, you'll probably have to deal with naysayers who don't understand the concept, They think blogs are mostly online journals where people talk about their dogs and their knitting. They aren't. Blogs are much, much more.

In the coming next year it will be mandatory that business's have blogs. Just like they have a phone and an e-mail account, if they don't, they're going to look foolish and be left standing in the dust. The bottom line – blogs can bring you new business.