I am often asked about blogging for business. We all hear about bloggers. News people don’t like them, unless they are one. They claim that they are illegitimate deliverers of news because they offer more opinion than news. Politicians claim that bloggers work for their opponents. They are both wrong. If you watch network TV news or read a newspaper you know that opinion is the majority of their content. News is when a reporter tells you facts about a current event. Opinion is when a reporter uses phrases like "might have", "could be", or "I think". Those words start exposing an opinion of that reporter. Politicians are usually wrong but in the case of bloggers, both sides have support of bloggers.

So what does this have to do with business? In the beginning, blogs were online web logs. Most of them were boring accounts of daily thoughts and activities. In fact, the majority of blogs are still boring and seldom seen by anyone. Today, the good blogs anyway, are filled with information and ideas. Almost every subject is covered and there are many blog directories that make the information available to individuals through searches or RSS syndication.

I realize that the previous paragraph may stimulate other questions and could use elaboration but this is about blogging for your business. You should be blogging. If you could stand on a box in the middle of a trade show and tell people about your company, your industry, and your products or services, would you? If you could write a series of articles for any of the magazines in your industry, would you? Do you understand the value that these activities have to your business? Do you put out a newsletter for your business?

Blogging is much like these activities. It gives you the ability to casually speak to whoever is interested in your products or services. Think of blogging like a newsletter without the forced filler that they all have. You can tell everyone about where your business is and where it’s going. You can boast of accomplishments or explain how you are dealings with difficulties. You can write as a brief paragraph or a story with lots of pictures. You can introduce a new product or a new hire in your blog. You can be as brief or verbose as you desire. Just be your interesting self.

Blogging capabilities are built into many content management applications that are used to build web sites. There are a few web empires that offer free blogging, Google for example. This article is a blog. I have blogging capability built into this web site. As I publish it to the web, the system automatically sets up the proper information for "feeds" to blogging directories and notifies those same directories that there is a new addition to my blog. If you have any questions about blogging or would like to start blogging for your business, click on "feedback" and let me know.

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