Blogs are the hottest growing medium of communication for businesses and individuals. Based on Technorati research (blog search engines), there are almost 3 million blogs created every month and bloggers create over 1.6 million posts per day.

What are Blogs? Blogs are websites with content management systems that allow visitors to the site to add content. They are forums for organizations and individuals to exchange ideas and communicate with their partners, customers, employees, etc. You can create pages relevant for your business, post articles on different subjects, and offer a platform for others to write their comments or opinions on that post.

Weblogs Cumulative - March 2003 - March 2006

Blog Glossary As a first step towards understanding blogs, it is important to get familiarized with some key terms used in the blog world.

• Blogosphere - Community of bloggers

• Posts – Post is an article or a comment written on a blog

• Trackback – A method for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. Trackbacks enable authors to keep track of who they are linking to, or referring to their articles.

• RSS – Real Simple Syndication

• Web Syndication -Refers to making Web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary of the website's recently added content

• Content Syndication – Ability for others to subscribe to the content on your site (using RSS feeds)

• Socializing the blog – Promoting your blog by asking relevant bloggers to review your site by posting, commenting and linking.

Why Blog?

Due of the interactive nature and ability for readers to write their reactions and comments, blogs offers a solid platform for writer and readers to interact and develop a mutual understanding of the opinions of the either party. This allows managers in organizations to get a closer look at what their employees feel or for companies to understand what their customers think of their products.

In the business environment, we believe that blogs offer a solid interaction forum that can be used by companies to read into their customers' minds, resulting in a better understanding of customer requirements. This information can be used effectively by companies to tailor their product offerings to best meet the needs of those customers. Blogs can be used effectively by companies to establish credibility and trust, and provide insight into the company's "philosophy and personality."

Blogs and Search Engines

For an online marketer, blogs offer a powerful marketing platform. Not only do blogs enable marketers to gain a better understanding of their customers, but the content posted on blogs is much easier to find on search engines as well. Search engines love blogs because they love fresh content. Every time new content is posted on a blog, the blog site pings the search engines. This results in frequent search engine spider visits and hence much higher optimization and ranking.

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