The Power of the BLOG

Can a Blog earn you a prison sentence? Ask Mojtaba Saminejad. He is an Iranian whose Blog, published in the Farsi language, earned him a two-year prison sentence in June 2005.

The online community is fast waking up to the power of blogs which have spread across the internet like wild fire. If you are still grappling with the word BLOG, these are online websites which are diary-like in approach and people are free to publish news or their ideas and thoughts. Blogs are very popular as they are simple to use and in most cases, free.

However, professional bloggers (people who have a decent no. of hours of blogging to their credit) will admit that blogging is not as easy as waking up in the morning, checking out some posts and putting together a few witty lines before you brush your teeth. You do need to be knowledgeable about the subject you are writing on or you are likely to be torn apart by people who are.

Having a Blog has its own set of inherent advantages which are obvious and some which are not so obvious. The better known advantages are:

Freedom to express: If you like to build a chain of communication and use that as food for thought and for your existence, a BLOG is the best way to create this outlet. You can express your opinion openly and you just might be surprised by the number of people who would agree with you. Such communication channels also help build momentum for a particular line of thought.

Networking at its best: If you own a blog which has genuine exchange of ideas it can evolve onto a good platform to network and grow your business. It is easier to impress potential customers with a strong and valid point of view rather than a price quote.

Excellent advertising platform: The sheer size of community generated at a popular blog provides an excellent advertising platform for advertisers. With the hunger for new advertising platforms which is both innovative and cost effective, blogs seems like the next location for the big bucks of advertisers.

Gauging public opinion on products and services: Bloggers post comments at a fiery pace. It is not uncommon to see a couple of comments posted within a few minutes of the original post. The topic and title of the blog needs to be alluring enough to get such quick responses. Blogs thus become an excellent forum to gauge public opinion on products and services and even political and business events.

Useful tool for inter-company communication without the red tape: IBM recently started a blog for its employees on the intranet. Reason? Simple, to get employees interacting with each other and building up a knowledge based community for putting together new ideas as well as provide good human resource practices. More and more companies are ignoring the naysayers for blogs and going ahead with using this tool for fostering better employee relations within the company. The knowledge sharing is also excellent and HR personnel can monitor comments to get an idea about new policies or identify troublesome issues head on and well in advance.

Other benefits which are worth mentioning if you own a blog is search engine optimization due to the high volume of content featured here, updating yourself on the latest trend in the marketplace which subsequently helps you identify new opportunities which helps you stay ahead and allows you to be tech-savvy in your social and professional circle. The benefits outlined above should be enough to inspire you to start a blog at the earliest!

Matt Bacak, The Powerful Promoter and Entrepreneur Magazine e-Biz radio show host, became a "#1 Best Selling Author" in just a few short hours. He has helped a number of clients target his specialty, opt-in email direct marketing systems. The Powerful Promoter is not only a sought-after internet marketer but has also marketed for some of the world's top experts whose reputations would shrivel if their followers ever found out someone else coached them on their online marketing strategies.

For more information, visit Bacak's site at http://www.powerfulpromoter.com or sign up for his Powerful Promoting Tips at http://www.promotingtips.com

In The News:


Tips On Blogging For Dollars
Corsavoo.com, France - 1 hour ago
Use RSS feeds. This is a great way to encourage people to keep reading your blog, and will help you drive traffic with much less effort. ...

Appscout

Google says Goodbye to RSS, Hello to Followers
Appscout, NY - Aug 28, 2008
It mashes up blogging, RSS, and social networking without doing anything but changing the terminology. Blogger Buzz says eventually it will integrate with ...

E-Mail marketing and blogging provider iContact gets $5 million in ...
InternetRetailer.com, IL - Sep 4, 2008
"We have worked hard to bring the best e-mail marketing, blogging, and RSS feed web application in the world to our customers. It is our mission to be the ...

Lessons from the India USA Nuclear deal
indiainteracts.com, India - 20 hours ago
... September 6th, 2008 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. ...

9 Things To Think About When Planning An Executive Blog
Social Computing Magazine, NY - Sep 4, 2008
Perform a content audit that covers not only existing content that should be surfaced, but external content (RSS feeds,blogs,industry sites) that needs to ...

Getting Sucked Into Social Networking
Corsavoo.com, France - 12 hours ago
When you post blogs or files in your account, everyone from your network of friends will be informed of the update through RSS feeds. ...

Travel 2.0 marketing services for hotels launched
m-Travel.com - Sep 5, 2008
It combines blogging, RSS feed syndication, Twittering and email harvesting with hotel profiles on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, Photobucket, Squidoo, ...

Fast Talk Response -
Fast Company - Aug 20, 2008
... in the last year to 18 mos. is because it has all the benefits of blogging (RSS,commenting,sharing,tagging,bookmarking) but none of the hassles. ...

The Snags in Doing Business with Friends
Entrepreneur - Sep 5, 2008
Joanne shared all sorts of valuable information about how to drive traffic, target influencers and handle the process of blogging so that itwouldn’t ...

Pro-Blogger - How to have a Constant Stream of Blogging Ideas
PR CannaZine (press release), UK - Sep 2, 2008
Now, subscribe to RSS feeds on those topics, or printed magazines, newsletters - anything that has info on those subjects. ...
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