Why on Earth aren’t you blogging away?

Widespread love at first sight is rarely on the cards when it comes to new technologies and blogs are no exception. If you know what a blog is, have read a few, but have no idea why you should set one up for your business, you’re not alone!

As Bredin Business Information reveals in a recent study of small and medium-sized businesses, only 14% of those surveyed believe that blogs are important and will be in the future. Surprised? Or shocked even? Don’t be!

The exact same thing happened with the Web, 10 years ago or so.

You definitely remember the time when few businesses had a website and most of those that did just made do with something hastily cobbled together in a night. Today, if your flashy, dancing and singing website that can almost make you coffee is down for anything approaching half an hour you’re already thinking in terms of ´productivity downtime’ and ´lost revenue’ as you jump onto the phone to complain to your web hosting company! And the same thing will happen with blogs soon enough!

Brent Leary points out a few reasons why so many businesses are slow on the uptake when it comes to the using the Internet to encourage two-way communication between companies and their clients - the so-called Web 2.0 services that include blogs, wikis (think of a small version of Wikipedia specifically about your products or services), forums and so on.

Besides, in the case of blogs, many blogging businesses simply use their blog to trumpet out marketing talk rather than as a medium for two-way communication. If you’re doing that, you’re totally missing out on the opportunities blogs give you to listen to feedback from your clients and learn valuable information about the outside perspective towards your company.

The thing is this: Web 2.0, and blogs in particular, are technologies that you simply cannot afford to ignore. You’ll probably end up having a blog one day anyway (just like you have a website now), so why not take the lead and start reaping the benefits right away?

After all, the best way to discover what blogs can do for you is to embrace the technology and get involved. Start a blog, get used to posting in it regularly and watch it grow into a valuable resource for your readers/clients and also a way you can learn from them just what they want and expect through the comments they post back. It’s as easy as that and there’s also a host of other benefits to be had including better search engine visibility as we discuss in this blog post that does not only apply to estate agents (despite the title).

Even short blog posts that take you just a few minutes each are great if you manage to pack in some juicy information or spark off interesting discussions among your readers!

And while you’re at it, take a look at other aspects of Web 2.0 (including social networks like LinkedIn). They will help you build a strong readership for your blog, which will in turn give more power to your other networking efforts.

Welcome to the future - it’s a very exciting time indeed!