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Below are the top 9 reasons why companies should blog.

1. They the perfect public relations tool. Their personal nature gives you and your organization a unique voice online - a voice heard by the people who matter - your customers and clients, other bloggers and the media.

2. Blogs act as instant-feedback mechanisms. They allow readers to respond to your posts via the comments section or link to them on their own blogs using Trackback. These features provide near real-time feedback on ideas, opinions and issues that affect them, or highlight and address new or existing problems.

3. Blogs help to position you and your company as experts and leaders in your industry.

4. Their simplicity and addictive nature allow you to share more of your knowledge more often. Blogs are about sharing what you know, think and believe on an ongoing basis.

5. Search engines index your blog posts more often because of more frequently updated content. Your ongoing blog and knowledge sharing shows up in the search results, making it easier for your customers and prospects to find you.

6. You can have many conversations with many people at once - something nearly impossible in the brick and mortar world.

7. They?re automatic buzz-machines. Go ahead and try it. Blog about something new - a new product or service launch, an improvement to an existing product, or a newly appointed manager. See how fast the news spreads throughout the blogosphere.

8. They?re self promotional due to their RSS feeds being aggregated across the net almost instantly, exposing your knowledge to a growing number of potential company evangilists.

9. Companies who blog are considered early adopters, thought leaders and ?in. Blogging is cool and companies who blog are cool.

But the most important thing to remember when blogging is that you?re not a speaker talking to an audience, you are sharing and interacting. You are one more voice to be heard and how powerful that voice is depends on how much interacting you do. It?s the opposite of Advertising.

Paul Short is a veteran internet marketer, professional blogging consultant and owns the popular blog directory http://www.getblogs.com

For more information on blogging and marketing with blogs, check out Paul’s site at http://www.bloglogic.net

Unless you’re very new to the internet or you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last year, you already know about blogs.

You know that:

• Blog is short for weblog.

• They should be updated frequently.

• You can have 1 or more for free - no domain name or hosting account required.

• You can use them for almost anything - including marketing.

• You can get them indexed by the major search engines for free.

With all that going for them, many still have trouble getting traffic to their blog.

Why?

The answer is obvious…

There are thousands of blogs and getting traffic to a blog requires (Do I dare say it?) promoting it.

Now I almost said, promoting it just like a website but didn’t because blogs have 3 additional ways to be promoted that websites don’t offer:

Like websites, blogs must be created properly and be promoted. You must:

• pick an appropriate name

• use keywords properly

• get links pointing to it

• drive traffic to it

Unlike websites, you can get advertisement-free blog space and there are 3 additional free ways to promote them.

Susan Carroll owner of http://www.friendswhocare.us has formed a global community of online business people through her weekly newsletter.

Susan recently finished a free report about adding automatic content to your website that search engines can see. It’s available at: http://www.friendswhocare.us/content.htm

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.