Blogs and Your Business

On Monday, BusinessWeek Online has a cover story titled, "Blogs Will Change Your Business."

If you are developing a business, whether online or traditional, you will want to read this article. I have had several conversations with individuals discussing a marketing strategy and medium to use as they start their respective businesses. I recently attended a seminar on SEO (Search engine optimization) and, not surprisingly, blogs were not even mentioned (except by me) during the entire course.

From the Business Week Online article:

Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they're going to shake up just about every business -- including yours. It doesn't matter whether you're shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They're a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)

Here are some stats from this article that may be surprising to many business owner/builders:

There are some 9 million blogs out there, with 40,000 new ones popping up each day. Some discuss poetry, others constitutional law. And, yes, many are plain silly. "Mommy tells me it may rain today. Oh Yucky Dee Doo," reads one April Posting. Let's assume that 99.9% are equally off point. So what? That leaves some 40 new ones every day that could be talking about your business, engaging your employees, or leaking those merger discussions you thought were hush-hush.

and

Yet not all the news is scary. Ideas circulate as fast as scandal. Potential customers are out there, sniffing around for deals and partners. While you may be putting it off, you can bet that your competitors are exploring ways to harvest new ideas from blogs, sprinkle ads into them, and yes, find out what you and other competitors are up to.

Ok. Now read that last quote again....slowly, if that will help it sink in.

I am hard pressed to think of ANY business that couldn't garner some benefit through the use of a blog. I believe that once you finish reading the article on BusinessWeek Online, you'll be busily putting one together for your business.

Thanks to Barry of Content Manager for this link.