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By Amy R. Derr
While websites are still a mainstay of the Internet, websites have never really enjoyed the kind of popularity that blogs have recently gotten. Blogging has become a real social phenomenon over the past few years and for good reason too.
Blogging makes it extremely easy for anyone to become an online publisher with its easy to use publishing platforms. This means, no more messing around with HTML coding, software problems or web design issues. There’s no technical know-how needed to publish a blog. If you have something to say, or a story to tell, just login to your blog platform and post your blog entry. It’s then that the magic happens. Anyone who’s subscribed to your blog, will then be immediately alerted to your latest posting. How? It’s called RSS.
RSS, short for Really Simple Syndication, is what makes blogs really useful and unique. RSS makes it easy for anyone on the Internet to read your blog without even having to visit your blog site. All your readers require is a blog reader and your blog posts are automatically delivered to your subscribers’ blog readers via RSS, for them to read at their leisure. This is important if your blog subscribers are busy professionals with very limited time on their hands. Instead of having to visit numerous sites to get their information, they only have to fire up their blog reader.
Here are 10 reasons why blogging is important and really useful to you beyond tomorrow:
- Blogging is an easy way to express yourself
- Blogging connects yourself with like-minded people
- Blogging platforms are really easy-to-use content management systems
- Blogging enables you to easily establish yourself as an expert in your field of interest
- Blogging makes use of word-of-mouth marketing and viral marketing to promote your products, or services far more efficiently than many other marketing methods can
- Blogging will eventually lead to your blog becoming an authority site, which will rank well in search engines
- Blogging makes your site sticky because of fresh, dynamic content
- Blogging builds communities
- Blogging can evolve into a large site where it can become a one-stop resource for your readers to conduct personal research
- Blogging will expand your network of friends, business associates and clients
But, where blogging really shines is in the business world. Marketers and entrepreneurs have witnessed first hand the usefulness of blogging as a very powerful marketing tool. There are home-based entrepreneurs who do nothing but blog and earn a very decent income from it. In fact, blogging has become a necessary business strategy for marketers and entrepreneurs who seek to boost their business growth. Because blogs allow readers to interact with blog publishers by posting their comments within the blog itself, blogs have become a very popular medium for garnering feedback and researching consumers’ opinions.
Besides being a great customer service tool, its ability to rank highly in search engines, attract swarms of traffic, create advertising revenue, promote services and generate sales has led to the growing importance of blogs as a business tool. But, that’s not all. Web 2.0’s love affair with social networking has driven bloggers to build communities around their blog topics. Indeed, the culture of communities has been around for eons, but it has only recently come of age on the Internet, thanks once again to the power of blogging.
It’s for these very reasons that corporations are quickly jumping on board the blogging train too. Think about it, consumers are usually wary when corporations send out press releases, as most of them have wised up to the fact that these are usually well-disguised advertisements. Corporate blogs on the other hand, tend to diffuse this cynicism as it puts a human face to otherwise, faceless corporations. Corporations can use blogs as a CRM strategy, engaging consumers in ways that were never before possible with press releases, or billboards.
The beauty about blogging is that anyone, from a Fortune 500 company to a high school kid can do it to make a difference in society. If a child has something to say about saving the environment and making the world a better place, he now can do it through blogging and draw the attention of an audience the size of the entire planet.
If you have yet to start a blog, it’s never too late to get started. There’s really no excuse why you shouldn't start one today, whether it’s a business, corporate, or a personal blog. Somewhere out there, someone is waiting to hear from you.
About the Author:
Amy Derr seeks to help business owners and organizations market themselves effectively online. She is a Professional Web Designer who owns and operates Insiteful Web Design (http://www.insitefulwebdesign.com), a full-service web design firm.
This article may be reprinted as long as the "About the Author" blurb stays in place.
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