Chat rooms, electronic mail and instant messengers were all introduced so that the process of communication becomes more easy and convenient. The innovations of today are making way for new opportunities when it comes to interacting with one another. The technological landscape of the Internet is gradually altering the requirement for a personalized and human touch of the online communities.
"Weblogs" or blogging as it is referred to, is the latest development in internet technology that is changing the nature of interactions all over the world. Blogs are nothing but snippets from the personal life of the writer and updated posts and entries from everything that is regular to the absolute bizarre. In other words, it is an unedited and personal diary which is written with an intention to share with others in an online community.
These blogs can be used to publish just about anything ranging from photos to comments to feelings to thoughts and experiences. It can also be called an online journal that consists of videos, opinions, documents, newsletters and links on topic that might interest the writer of the blog.
The main purpose of the creation of blogs was to encourage people to express their opinions and feelings. Hence, blogs are written in an informal manner.
A blog that is formal and intimidating is sure to kill the interest of the readers. The basics of blogging suggest that a conversational tone is ideal in order to reach out to the readers.
The main purpose of blogging is to help an individual communicate his feelings to other individuals. The various other advantages of blogging are:
• Freedom of Expression: a blog is the perfect option for people who want to be heard and wish to communicate their opinions with others.
• Networking benefits: when a marketer of a product creates a blog, he creates a platform where he can communicate with consumers and share ideas regarding the product. This gives the marketer a clear picture and a genuine opinion regarding the product.
• Efficient advertising platform: blogging provides the marketers as well as the audience with a refreshing change from the conventional advertising means. It is also more cost effective compared to the others.
• Weighing the opinion of public regarding products and services: blogs which have interesting and intelligent titles are sure to attract continuous and positive responses from the readers. Blogs are the perfect place where the seller as well as the consumer can exchange their ideas and suggestions. Hence, it enables the seller to understand the views of the public with regards to not only products and services but also politics and business.
• Assists internal communication: having a blog helps the company to create a knowledge-based community wherein the employees of the company can build cordial relations with each other and human resource problems, if any, can be tackled well in time.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) benefits: SEO facilities over the internet can help in making the seller visible on the internet to a large audience, allowing a good amount of exposure to his products and services.
There is a sea of blog hosting services that are available over the internet today. Hence, it becomes increasingly important to decide which one of them is going to prove to be worthy of starting the business blog program? Most often, businessmen are not updated with the technological advancements that they can make use of in order to increase their marketing potentials to the optimum level. Such people should first gain knowledge about the services that are being offered by the various blog hosts. Choosing an ineffective business blogging program can cause serious damage to the marketing opportunities of the seller.
Regarding the blog hosting service, a company can make any of the following choices:
1. Host a blog service of their own.
2. Pay another blog host to provide their services.
3. Create a "blog aggregator page" and let the employees select the blog hosting services individually. As far as individuals are concerned, they have an option of choosing amongst paid and free services.
It is important for business blogs to incorporate the latest blogging features so that they can maximize their marketing operations and improve their public relations an SEO options.
The basic essentials of a blog can be listed down as:
COMMENTS:
Inviting comments from visitors creates dialogue on the blog which provide the business enterprises with valuable consumer feedback which in turn facilitates good consumer relations. Blogging is a perfect way for sellers to inculcate loyalty and trust in their customers and converse with them efficiently.
TRACKBACK:
This service is instrumental in increasing the exposure of the company as well as the product. Through this, the customers can get in touch without having to locate you all over again if they need additional updates and posts. If the blog attains popularity on any online community, the links that go to your blog are likely to be on other blogs, other websites as well as other blog sites.
CATEGORIES AND TAGS:
Both these features assist the visitors in classifying blog searches and make navigation very easy. the category can be compared to a library as it distributes the posts into different sections depending on their subject matter like business, online auctions, distance learning and so on. Tags play an important part in this distribution, especially in the case of Technorati, the blog search engine. Potential customers can conveniently find blogs related to their topics of interest by clicking on these tags.
RSS FEED:
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication which is a feed sent from the seller's blog to the internet and received by the many newsreaders and aggregators.
When a company plans to undertake a business blogging program, the hosting companies should provide them with a good amount of options with respect to the services. The popular free blog hosting companies are not advisable for business blogging as they are more suitable for individual online journals. The paid blog hosting services offer unlimited packages which are ideal for the needs of any company. Before selecting the host, it is necessary to check out some of the blogs use the services of the host. a good evaluation of their technical support, design and layout is also important.
Once the host has been chosen, a team should be formed to plan the structure and design on the blog. The tasks to be undertaken by the team are:
• creating a style on the basis of the requirements of the audience.
• establishing a tone that is open and credible.
• schedule the blog weekly or a few times a week for better results.
• incorporate web links of other blogs and websites.
• address blog posts in "first person."
• keep the focus on the objective of the business blog.
• keep a conversational quality that is honest and engaging.
A company must keep in mind that the look, style, design and content that is on the blog is the mirror image of the business and its employees.
Peter Fitzgerald has been involved in online, affiliate and internet marketing for over seven years with various projects. He freely admits that he was knocking his head against the wall for the first three years. Success came to him some five years ago after taking a six month break in order to study the subject of online marketing with some of the leading authorities on the subject. Peter says: "Investing in my self to improve my worth to others is the most profitable thing I ever did." Peter, who knows how to create a blog has spent a lot of his time writing blogs for money. He also enjoys article marketing, finds both activities compliment each other.
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