The
blog, web log or web diary is not really new – people recorded their opinions and events in
their lives on web sites from the start of wide access to the Internet.
The dramatic increase in numbers and the much higher public profile of blogging is because of
the arrival of many new software programs and services that make it easy, even for inexperienced people without any sort of technical background,
to do their own blog. Even the
most humble personal computer has enough power and storage space to produce and store our scribbles.
The blog is a close relative of the ordinary web site. Businesses of any size can only benefit from having their own blog and their own web site to communicate with their current customers and attract new ones.
The truth is that blogs and web sites are easy to produce and maintain. Many web designers
and Internet marketing consultants wrap their methods in jargon and hype but anyone that can;
√ interact with other people,
√ write a letter,
√ maintain records
√ Use a computer and surf the Internet
…. has the resources and ability to produce their own blog and make money with it!
Major Players are Active in the Blogging Landscape
A good indication of the potential is the active involvement of major Internet players. Just a couple of weeks before
‘Blog Biz for Beginners’ was published, Google released a new tag (which its Search engine spiders would recognize) to help combat the blog-related problem of comment spam which I’ll tell you about later.
Google had the full cooperation of its biggest rivals, MSN and Yahoo, which shows that the big players are very supportive of the increasing use of Blogs.
There are other advantages for anyone that sets up a Blog, whether it’s business oriented or not. The popularity and ease of this type of communication helps people to improve the way that they
express themselves; presenting their thoughts, opinions, experiences and advice in interesting and useful ways to their readers.
But the huge potential benefits for small and large businesses are little understood and ignored. I still hear people say that
× “it’s too expensive”,
× “the Internet is full of crooks” and
× “we haven’t got enough spare time!”.
The truth is that;
- much of the software is free or very low cost,
- the resources needed to set up and maintain one or more blogs is small.
- blogs are less formal so you don’t need to be a professional writer
× your competitors may already be getting the benefits of having their own blog!
