Cost : Free or low cost

You don’t have a ‘blog’ yet?  What are you waiting for?

Blogs (short for ‘weblogs’) aren’t just online diaries for teenagers. While it’s true that the youth market was the first to popularize this technology, more and more businesses have caught on to the value of blogs as dynamic content management tools.

A blog can be used to post announcements, updates, articles and more.

A large number of marketers use blogs as:

1.   An additional newsletter format

2.   A branding and relationship building tool

You can post your usual articles on a blog if you like, but there’s also a better option: using the blog to write on an even more personal and detailed level.

You can use your to blog to reach out to your subscribers.

Offer them your personal opinions on the latest traffic tactics, or a new information product. Give them a ’sneak’ peak into the average day in the life of an internet marketer.

Anything you would like to share with your subscribers, but normally don’t due to space limitations in your newsletter, can go onto a blog. This includes any links, affiliate or otherwise, to which you’d like to direct traffic.

In fact, using your personal opinions is a terrific way to get others interested in seeing your site just by reading what you are writing in your blog.

Unlike most business oriented sites, blogs allow for personality. And people like connecting with other people, even if it is mostly anonymous through the internet.

Again, you need to capture the interest of your blog readers in such a manner that they want to see what else it is you’re doing online, a la your web site. Whether they are upset about what you wrote, or really excited by it, both types of people will take a chance and travel on over to your main site, or wherever it is you are re-directing them.

Blogs fare well in the search engines, too, because they’re content heavy (although you do have to be careful about dynamic links – you can use built in link re-write functions in your blog software if you’re worried about your rankings getting penalized for this).

You can also pair up with other business blogger’s and create your own little mini-net for traffic exchange.

If you’re still new to the concept of blogs or simply don’t see how to employ one for a business purpose, I recommend you visit Jason Cain’s site at http://www.goldblogger.com. Jason has blogging-for-profit down to a science.

After you explore the world of blogs for a bit, you’ll notice a lot of overlap between this publishing technology and others like RSS.

A majority of the available blogging software has a content syndication tool (based on the RSS standard) built in. This works on the same principle as press releases: you publish an online press release and it gets syndicated across thousands of sites in the newsfeed network.

Bloggers have implemented this trick as well, but with a lot more freedom in terms of content.

Every new post made to a blog can be syndicated instantaneously, and it doesn’t have to follow someone else’s content guidelines. Other web site owners will either add your feed to their site or they won’t. There’s no ‘hoop jumping’ or pay-for-play here.

There is another little “secret weapon” tucked away to make the most of your blog. It’s a little thing called pinging.

The process of pinging is one in which there is a program that devises a “send” request to existing servers to try and drum up a response from them.

In other words, the program is trying to determine whether or not the servers  they are sending out requests to are actually functioning properly and have existing sites within them.

Originally, this was a process solely used by search engines to index web sites on their databases. Now, though, you can use this same “pinging” technique to let people know about your blog.

Blogs also prove especially suited to affiliate marketers. If you’ve thought about setting up a product review site, for example, the blog format is ideal for product and link promotion.

If you’re eager to get started after reading this, then visit the related URLs below. You’ll find several excellent content management solutions, as well as useful ‘how tos’ and examples.

Also, make sure you read the section on RSS & Content Syndication.

You’ll learn a bit more there on the importance this trend and its implications for traffic generation.

Related URL(s):

http://www.blogger.com

http://www.wordpress.org

http://www.goldblogger.com

http://www.typepad.com

http://googleblog.blogspot.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blog