4. Blogs are a very inexpensive medium—and they’re becoming increasingly popular.
Not everyone wants to be a publisher. Your effort and great writing will set you apart in a medium that is measurement-focused. The blog itself costs a few dollars a month—no more.
Blogging makes front-page news–regularly. And new technologies like blogs, wikis, social networking, and Real Simple Syndication (RSS) are changing the media and marketing landscape. Web2.0 is one step in the evolution of the Internet that is shaping our society and your industry. You have to know about this emerging field to remain competitive and grow.
Keeping your content dynamic will keep your customers coming back. Also, search engines like Google are “friendly” to sites that have fresh content. The path is opened to you through blog mining or RSS.
The more people comment, and the more key words you enter, the faster search engines react to the phenomenon that something’s up at your web site and the greater the visibility they give you in search results. That only attracts more visitors, and the virtuous cycle builds.
Some statistics: Technorati, a blog aggregator, listed 50 billion blogs as of July 2006. Of the respondents to a recent web poll, 59 per cent said they get business and technology information from blogs. Leading bloggers are receiving for $8.00 per 1,000 impressions as compared to Google AdWords ads that charges between $0.50-$2.00.
Blogs are a two-way medium—unlike most web sites. From Jason Fry of the Wall Street Journal, February, 2006:
Blog posts show up in search-engine results, get emailed and IM'ed around, and wind up in Google News and news aggregators…. Business will use them for updates and conversations with their own employees or customers.... But blogging will no longer be a phenomenon. When people talk about it, they'll often be referring to tools for putting up simple Web sites easily, or a certain style of Web publishing: brightly written, frequently updated and inviting reader conversation.