There are certain benefits that you can measure easily and clearly. Then there are those which you cannot really quantify but you KNOW that they do exist. The same goes with blogging – there are those benefits which you can place figures to while there are those which just makes you know you are gaining somehow.

I came to this realization when I read Rachael Herrscher’s post on “Another Reason To Start Your Own Blog.” At the beginning, I was thinking – oh great, here is another post on why we all should blog. Do we really need another post like that?

I really appreciate how she put things in perspective, though:

But blogging for your business or blogging about your industry gives you opportunities and a level of credibility with others that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. It also gives you access to a whole new network of people whom you would have had no excuse to talk to before. And of course, for those of you searching for someone to talk about you and your business, blogs are a vast new outlet to receive online coverage of your business.

I’m a small fish in a big sea of bloggers, but my various blogs never cease to serve up great contacts for me. Even on a person-to-person level (the real-life stuff), I’m able to meet people because of my blog. We have blogger dinners in our community, local blog networks and, of course, the huge network of bloggers available on the World Wide Web.

So if you’ve been putting off starting your business blog or blogging about a niche in your industry you are passionate about–it’s time.

You hit the nail right on the head with that post, Rachael!

One of the most important aspects of a business is its public relations. Wikipedia defines this as “the managing of outside communication of an organization to create and maintain a positive image. Public relations involve popularizing successes, downplaying failures, announcing changes, and many other activities.” In other words, PR includes all the activities that you engage in in order to present your business to the rest of the world the way you want it to be seen. Naturally, any business owner would want good PR.

One way to have good PR – no, a killer PR, actually – is to build up that business blog of yours. You may be a small business entity as compared to Microsoft or Sony, but that does not mean that you cannot establish yourself as an authority in your own field. No matter what your business may be about, you can always find ways to bring yourself to the forefront of your niche – and blogging is one of the ways to do this.

Nowadays, journalists and researchers turn to the Web for a lot of material. When they create write ups, they would probably include a Google search in their prep work. Now, if you have a good online presence, then you would most likely be discovered by these people, who, in turn would probably quote you (from your blog) in their piece of work. Now isn’t that killer PR? You do not even have to solicit the local newspaper’s attention – they would find you on their own because of your business blog. Ask Rich Brooks, who has had ample enough experience in this respect.

If the article that Report On Business published over the weekend is to be believed, blogging indeed adds a certain something to being a good CEO. However, statistics show that only a small minority of CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies have taken up blogging. Socialtext lists only 54 Fortune 500 CEOs who are blogging.

So why should CEOs blog? Take Jim Estill, CEO of a Canadian company. His company was taken over by Synnex Canada Ltd several years ago. At that time, he felt (and rightly so) that he was merely a name to his new employees. They knew nothing about their new boss. So he took it upon himself to take steps to change that and he chose blogging as the medium. Beginning with that simple reason, Estill started blogging and is now, perhaps, one of the most popular CEO bloggers in the country. What started out as a means to reach out to his new employees is now something that reaches out beyond his company. His employees, customers, vendors, and people not even remotely linked to him are now his readers.

Jim Estill is not alone. There are many CEOs out there who are into blogging. And they all say that they are better CEOs for it. However, if this is really the case, why aren’t all CEOs blogging? I suppose there are many issues, one being legal concerns. Another thing is that it takes time – something which not many CEOs have. The bottom line – understand what blogging can do to make you a better CEO and better your company as well. Then decide if it is for you.

I recently read a blog post about blogs and how they can increase search engine visibility. I have to admit that the content was something that I have encountered before but the way it was presented by Dan Patterson was very simple and easy to understand. Though the entry was posted last year, the content is still relevant and I thought I’d share it with you.

He focuses on two main points – changing content and link building. Let’s look at changing content. This is a very important aspect when it comes to search engines. Remember that they use spiders to crawl web pages and these spiders want fresh content. That is the main reason they will come back to a web page even if they have already visited it before. So if your page has fresh content all the time, that means that spiders will keep coming back. Now common sense will tell you that your blog would be more likely to have new content than a static web page. Posting on a regular basis is a simple thing to do, with lots of benefits in terms of search engine visibility.

Link building, on the other hand, is also a huge part of blogging. If you have been blogging for quite some time, you probably are into the habit of linking out to other blogs and relevant sites. Though your business blog may have one overall topic, you can still relate to other sub topics, giving you more links. Of course, by doing so, you also encourage other sites to link to your blog. This, once again, is a good thing for search engine visibility (as long as the links are real and relevant).

I never really thought that I would be thinking of business models when it comes to blogging. As such, I found this particular post detailing the different blog business models quite interesting – even thought provoking. Bryan, on OneMansGoal outlines three different types of business models which can help you make money through your blog (or blogs for that matter).

The Superblogger
He calls this group “super” because the people behind these kinds of blogs run a big operation. They may focus on only one or two blogs but their idea is to operate in the long run and haul in income while they are at it. The majority of their time is spent on constantly improving their blogs, marketing them, and establishing brand awareness.

The Niche Blogger
This blogger type is a bit different from the previous one in that the focus is on more blogs. As such, the effort and activity are not centered on one or two main blogs but more spread out on a network of blogs. The main concept behind niche blogging is to set up the blogs in such a way that they can attract a lot of readers and then not spend too much time in maintaining them.

The Blog Broker
The blog broker works behind the scenes – he sets up blogs or even purchases them. He then develops them in such a way that they can earn money. Here’s the money making point – he then sells the blogs for more than what he paid for them or more than what he spent on them.

So which business model do you fall under?

Everyone recognizes this name brand – Marks and Spencer is a high street retailer that has been around even before the Internet changed the models of many businesses. They have made it big and they know it. Yet the people behind this successful business are not content in resting on their laurels. In fact, they are open to the realization that times change and that with it, they could also make some adjustments.

Take for example what they did early last year – they focused their energies and creativity into strengthening their web presence. They may be a big business entity but they still gave huge importance to the strengthening of their online presence. It is true that they did not really focus on using a blog to do this, but the idea is similar – they restructured their already existing web site in order to increase sales.

What prompted them do work on this project? According to their figures, their online sales increased more than four times above their shop sales! Now this sort of increase cannot be ignored, no matter how big your business is. They, therefore decided to put more effort into online presence as it would translate into more sales for them.

How is this relevant to you? Whatever the size of your business may be, the guiding principles are the same. You want to increase your sales and hopefully one day become like Marks and Spencer. It is always good to look into what the big businesses are doing and learn from them.

Not convinced yet? Well here are more reasons you should work on improving your business’s online presence.

Gather feedback conveniently
Feedback from customers is one of the most important things in running a business. How would you know if you are satisfying your customers or if there are some aspects that you need to work on? One of the most effective ways of achieving this is to hear directly from the users of your product or service. Having a web site or a blog wherein customers can directly voice out their opinions – whether positive or negative is a cost effective way of doing this.

Make extra income
Maintaining a web site or a blog is not all expenditure on your part. In fact, business models have been changing a lot in the past years because of the Internet. You can even earn extra money through your web site or blog through affiliate marketing and ads. Of course, you have to do this right in order to avoid senseless ads that might only annoy your customers.

Educate your customers
An important thing regarding advertising and marketing is the dissemination of accurate information – both to existing and potential clients. Your web site or blog is an effective way of doing this. You can upload all the relevant information to your blog and have it there for the whole world to read.

Again, all these things can be done with much less cost than traditional methods.

Here are some more compelling reasons to improve your online presence.

Save money on printing and distribution costs.
If you are operating “offline,” the chances are that you spend a considerable sum on printing and distribution costs. This is because the traditional method of marketing involves paper and then physical distribution – either through post or manual distribution. Either way, you have to shell out money to get the job done. This happens with each issue of a newsletter or a flyer.

When you decide to maintain a web site or a blog, though, you would considerably lessen these costs. How so? Of course, you would have to spend some money on the setting up of the site as well as the maintenance. The cost is much lower than the traditional method, though. With a blog, you need only to post entries and make use of the existing technology to distribute your new entries without having to spend a lot.

Get wider exposure for less cost.
Information on the Internet is available to anyone anywhere in the world. Think of your blog as a “free” means of getting the publicity that you need and want. All you need to do is work on your blog and make sure that you reach as many people as you want to. This means crossing physical boundaries – the potential is limitless!

Operate 24/7.
Business hours offer limitations but they are necessary. You can open a hotline which customers can reach 24 hours a day, 7 days a week but the costs may be beyond your reach. With a web site or a blog, however, customers can seek the information they need anytime they need it.

Decision paralysis is something that should be avoided at all costs when it comes to business. This is the situation wherein a manager, or any person in a position, finds himself unable to make a decision at a crucial time. This can happen to anyone, anytime, at least once in his life. No one is totally exempt from such an occurrence - even the most competent of managers may find himself paralyzed when faced something of big import.

So what do you do when this happens in the business sense? Perhaps before this can be answered, it would be better to take a look into the reason behind the paralysis. More often than not, decision paralysis arises from the fact that something negative had occurred in the past - a decision gone bad.

The result is understandable, of course, but it is not an excuse to permanently stay in that crippled state. There are things that could be done for the better. Believe it or not, your business blog can help you out when it comes to making decisions and you feel that you are incapable of making them!

Think about it, what is your business blog for? Some reasons may be:

-to get the word out about your company and your products or services
-to communicate with your customers
-get feedback regarding your company and your products or services
-create a network
-others.

What do you need to make decisions? For every situation, there will always be something different but I do believe that one thing that your blog can help you with is information. You can go back to previous posts and comments and garner information that can be very helpful in making your decisions. More so, you can even gain some confidence when you see what you have written in your blog and what your readers have written as well.

In the last post, we talked about how important it is to befriend other bloggers. We talked about the importance of building your own social network of bloggers. For this post, let’s look at some details on how you can achieve this.

Communication
This is important in most any undertaking, but most especially when it comes to building your own social network. Bloggers always welcome comments. When you do get comments, however, do not just sit there and enjoy them. Make sure that you reply to these comments. You can do this in two ways – either e-mail or reply to the comment through the blog. You can even go one step further by writing a post on the comment. The important thing is that you make your readers know that you appreciate and value their comments.

Link, link, link
I am sure you browse other blogs a lot. If you stumble upon a blog that catches your interest and is, at the same, relevant to your own business blog, link! This will encourage to link to your blog as well.

List ‘em down
Actively look for blogs that are relevant to your own business blog. Do this on purpose – aimlessly surfing the Net is not the way to do it. Search for specific topics and then list down the blogs that you want to link up with. Make sure you visit them regularly and be active as well. Post comments, interact with the bloggers, and build relationships.