The Biggest Reason To Start A Blog...
(and it's not what you think!)
Copyright 2004, Steve Robichaud
Even people who don't own a computer know what blogging
is. Everyone is talking about it. Heck, even the Doonesbury comic
strip ran a few panels on the subject. Anna Kournikova even has a
blog for crying out loud!
But did you know that there is a secret benefit to
blogging that has NOTHING to do with the subject matter? In fact,
you could blog on about the sex life of the Tasmanian fruit fly and
still reap big rewards.
Yep, just like nearly everything else on the Internet,
there's money to be made with blogging IF you know the secret...
OK, OK. I'll tell you, but first let's take a quick
ride in the wayback machine and see how blogging came to be as popular
as it is today.
Back at the dawn of the World Wide Web, new web sites
were a rarity. Geekie guys and girls struggled with the new technology
and the launch of a new page, A new web site was practically a media
event. In the early days of the Internet, each new page was a cause
for celebration.
In 1992, Tim Berners-Lee, the scientist generally
credit with inventing the World Wide Web (and you thought it was Al
Gore, I'll bet), created the first What's New page. Later, another
Internet legend, Marc Andreesen, put up his own page. Both of these
men created hot links to all of the new pages springing up on the
net.
As the World Wide Web came into its own, a new breed
of programmer, called a Web Master (because they had mastered the
World Wide Web) created their own pages that contained suggestions
on cool web sites to visit. Because they didn't list every single
new web site, just the ones that they thought were interesting, they
were said to have filtered the net. In 1998, Jorn Barger, a bit of
an odd duck, even by Internet pioneer standards, first used the term
'weblog' to describe his blog called 'Robot Wisdom'.
As bloggers banded together to form communities, people
sought easier and faster ways to create blogs. As a result, automated
and easy to use blogging programs such as Blog-In-A-Box were developed
so that even a half-dazed wallabie can put up a blog in between munching
on stalks of grass.
But why in the world would you WANT to run a blog
if you have an income-generating site?
Surely your customer isn't interested in reading about
your trials and tribulations of the daily business grind, right? Probably
not. However, if you can build a blog that catches their attention,
such as where the fish are biting if you sell fishing supplies, they
WILL come. And so will the surprise that I mentioned earlier.
You see, among your visitors to your blog will be
a software program known as a spider. Not just any spider, mind you,
but the granddaddy of all search engine spiders -- the Google spider.
You see, Google LOVES to index blogs. Yep, it's true. And that, as
soon-to-be inmate Martha would say, is a good thing.
In a nutshell, Google loves pages that have links
to other pages. Blogs link to all kinds of stuff. Google loves pages
that are linked FROM other pages. A good blog gets lots of links to
it as loyal readers tell everyone they know to put links to their
favorite blog on their web site.
Finally, Google loves fresh content. An active blog's
content can change minute by minute, but at least it's almost guaranteed
to change daily.
So, if you can find a decent subject to blog about,
and you can get a blog up and running quickly and easily, you just
might be amazed at what happens to your site's page rank in a few
weeks or more.
Listen, with tools like Blog-In-A-Box available to
get you going, there really is no reason NOT to get blogging!
Good luck from a couple of fellow bloggers.
Steve Robichaud and Andrew Wroblewski have been involved
in online sales and marketing since 1996. To get help on starting
your own blog, visit: http://blogging.help-for-me.com
email: admin @ blogging.help-for-me.com
