Blogging for Business…

In reading the news online these days, I happened to stop by CNN.com on my usual journeys across the information superhighway and there was this article about Michael Arrington and his blogging that has led him to become famous and apparently successful…all through blogging.

He’s one of the more prominent and well-known individuals out of Silicon Valley and all of it is due to his blog about technologies and emerging companies. How intriguing…so I went to his website and it’s quite remarkable. I guess it shows that blogs are becoming more business-oriented than a place for you to pour out your heart and soul about the latest movie or your break-up with your significant other. In the Business 2.0 article on CNN.com, Boing Boing — a directory of all things wonderful — and they’re on track to make $1 million in ad revenue this year. Wow! That’s amazing. Now, more or less, a lot of blogs out there are ranting about something, but it takes a determined individual or set of individuals to sit down and put together a blog that will be something of substance. Unless you’re looking for a de facto blogger who knows all about how they’re not passing their science test and about the drama in their lives, then chances are that you won’t look into those personal blogs.

It all makes sense though. Even some real companies are choosing to blog and they have links to it off of their websites. It’s a great way to be noticed and if you google searches on company blogs, you’ll be interested to know that some major companies are on the bandwagon (is this a recent thing? I don’t know…). Some interesting companies to bookmark: Novell, TIVO, Google (obviously), Cisco, and AboutWeb.

Cheap, easy to update and setup, and less work to advertise…these are all factors that helped to contribute to the rapid population of blogs. In a mixed twist, just reading the Business 2.0 CNN article, it opened my eyes to something remarkable. If you’re registered through Blogger, then the only primary ad revenue a common folk would receive would be through Google AdSense. However, in order to receive that $1 million annual revenue that Boing Boing is targeted to reach this year, you will need to make sure that you have the traffic to support having advertisers notice you. If you don’t actively promote your site and be a constant presence online, then chances are that you won’t attract the web traffic needed to garner you such high income.

However, bloggers are definitely turning into a new area of interest for marketers. Imagine when a new product or issue arises…advertisers will not only propose to their clients to do traditional advertisements, but ideas on how to reach out via the Internet — websites, e-mail/direct marketing, online advertising, and having others blog about it. This digital version of “word of mouth” is quite powerful and with over 50 million blogs out and 2 popping up quite literally every day (according to CNN.com), it’s no wonder why it’s becoming quite strong.

These “social networking” type sites have become the latest community on the Internet to facilitate commerce in the world. MySpace, blogging, and YouTube are all key players in this brand new world and is definitely here to stay. Blog away!

Read the Business 2.0 CNN.com article here.

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