Blogging  and social media networking are big news, and recent studies have shown that some 12% of on-line businesses are now including a blog into their marketing strategy.

The idea is that blogs offer a great platform for customers to comment about the company and to get their message across to the business.

Business blogging, unlike mass marketing, should be informational rather than promotional so that customers get the feeling that your company is more human. Blogging helps people to feel as though they are speaking human to human, and as such it will make your company appear more easily accessible.

Blogs are also claimed to be a more “trusted” form of communication for consumers, mainly because they are open and feel unsolicited. If you are lucky your blog readers could become some of your most devoted and passionate word-of-mouth ambassadors.

Added to this, search engines love blogs because they are content-heavy and the copy tends to be newer. It’s claimed that some results can be seen in search engines within minutes of a blog post going live.

Blogs also reduce the need for e-mail campaigns and the problems of getting around over cautious spam filters. In general, people become blog fans because the content is interesting, informative and frequently updated. If you can get people to sign up to your RSS feeds then all the better.

And just think about this: If you’re planning a new product launch or campaign then just post the details on your blog. Then everyone who has access to your blog will read all about it. It’s as simple as that.