People ask why I bother to blog (and why so infrequently) so I thought I would answer. Number 1, why so infrequently, well this year was a bad year. In addition to running a successful (if I must say so myself) company, I spent part of the year as a full-time caregiver. Trust me, not a job you want, and not conducive to blogging. At the end of the day you are just tired. I shared the duty with my sister and it was still exhausting. Number 2, why I blog, because it is a fun way to interact with the people who visit our site. I get e-mails from people who read my blog (really, I do), and they seem to enjoy what I have to say. It is also a creative outlet for me.

Blogging also serves a useful purpose that all my clients could benefit from, they can use their blogs to tell their clients, and their prospective clients about how they can better serve them. For an existing client who reads my blog it shows them that I keep up with technology (so they don’t have to!), and for prospective clients it can give them a feel for who I am and how I think.

There are bloggers who have a wide sphere of influence who corporations court to have their company or product mentioned in their blog. Blogging is now a really big business. Public Relations campaigns now include a “blogging” aspect, many vineyards now as a practice (take Rodney Strong for instance) send the top wine bloggers (Good Grape, Tom Wark’s Fermentation, Steve Heimoff, 1 Wine Dude, Bigger Than Your Head, etc.) free bottles of wine in hopes that they will blog (favorable of course) about the wine. While there is much discussion over whether or not the fact that the wine was provided free should be disclosed, the fact that these bloggers are deemed authorities give credence to their favorable reviews.

A blog can either be available on your site (hosted on your own domain) or use a “blog platform” just like using Microsoft Word to type a letter. Platforms include familiar names such as Google, Typepad and WordPress to ones you have never heard of. A blog can be just text and links (strictly a blog), photos (technically that would be a photoblog), video (vlog), audio (podcasting), or art (artlog). You should choose a format and a platform you feel comfortable with, and a topic that you can grow with. I tend to talk about technology, it is what I do everyday.

If your blog starts to gain a following, you to can become an authority that people will turn to for information. Note that on our site we archive the blogs so you can go back and review what I have written. And I plan to write more as the year goes on and I challenge you to as well. If you aren’t the type to write, we should develop a plan to get your product or service written about. Remember, “if you build it, they will come” only worked for Kevin Costner.