In the personal landscape, MySpace has them and lots of people use others for their own (often amusing) daily rants. In the business landscape, it is one of the leading ways to turn speeches into conversations.

How would you like to turn your colleagues into people who constantly have you on the top of their brains?

Or perhaps - how about turning your prospects into big fans?

Blogs make this and much more happen.

Pros:

• less formatting necessary
• informal, typically easier to read
• subscribable, much like a newsletter
• committment-free in terms of delivery schedules
• Easy to navigate with archiving
• integrated into your site with CMS, it’s absurdly easy to add to
• fun to use
• AND MOST IMPORTANTLY - encourages comments (read: conversation)- unlike newsletters!

Cons:

• Sadly, there are some people still in the dark about blogging, and even more sad - computers (Dad, best wishes in finding the power button - Godspeed)
• Some of your audience may be a bit behind you technologically (silver lining - they will catch up eventually)
• You really should keep up with it - people want new content or they get bored
• Sometimes you run out of stuff to say

Scenario: Mark B writes a blog - tells everyone under the sun about it that he knows. He encourages them all to subscribe to his blog and because they like him, 80% do (the other 20 either never got to it, forgot, don’t want email, or just don’t understand blogging). Now Mark has a change to pretty much post a bulletin to these people whenever he wants, and they get it in their email. Since Mark is an interesting guy when not restricted by formats like newsletters (good for some, not for free-flowing interesting right-brained Mark!), he piques people’s interests and one by one, they all start paying attention to his sporatic comments and when he asks for replies, he gets them. In turn, he can reply. …and so it begins.

The benefits

• He sees who is paying attention
• He can stay on top of how people REALLY feel

He gains valuable (free) exposure for his small business

• He can keep in touch with is prospects/colleagues/friends better
• Top of mind = top of sales
• His web site now has continually updated content that people now more frequently see, thus returning more
• He gets better search engine ranking organically - why? More relevant content = better ranking.

To me, it’s clear that blogs are great and most certainly, the effective communication vehicle of the present and future. Can you think of some businesses that would benefit?

CMS = Content Management System.

Did you know that FrontPage is being phased out? Bad news for all the FP dependent, theoretically. The CMS solves that problem. There are a bunch of solutions out there; we use WordPress.

Imagine… being able to log into a nice tidy little web site and being able to manage your very own (completely custom) site, and having it be largely intuitive so you don’t have to learn a thing… sounds nice, doesn’t it? Good news - it’s not a dream, it’s reality. It’s what we build every day. It’s where the future of web sites is going. Blogs, RSS feeds, Calendars, etc - they’re all do-able with these fabulous tools. Once the pros build the tools (us), the amateurs (you) can easily maintain the site from your back yard if you wanted to, in a way that will ensure that you can’t make a mistake.

Some of the finer points/advantages of CMSs include….

• Ideal for multiple authors/contributors
• Can run in tandem or as part of a blog
• You can control who can edit/contribute
• Bypasses the need for programming language knowledge
• Faster publish time
• Purer code and classification for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes)
• Can facilitate better content security on networks
• Perfect for an abundance of content/pages
• No checking in/checking out
• SIMPLE SIMPLE SIMPLE

Not a bad thing to consider as you move forward in your marketing endeavors. Remember, with every day that passes, your web site becomes all that much more critical to the success of your business!

One last juicy tidbit: If you doubt the power of the CMS and question it’s limitations (none), just look at the Vision Advertising web site. It’s 100% WordPress and takes 1% of the time to maintain that it used to before we saw the light and switched. Also visit the Cold Laser Therapy Network and Infusion Hand Spa web sites.