With an increasing number of people reading, writing, and commenting on blogs, the way we use the web is shifting in a fundamental way. Instead of being passive consumers of information, more and more Internet users are becoming active participants.

A weblog, or blog, is a personal journal on the web. Weblogs express as many different subjects and opinions as there are people writing them. Some blogs are highly influential and have enormous readership while others are primarily intended for a close circle of family and friends.

The blogging phenomenon
A few years ago, web search was revolutionized by a simple but profound idea — that the relevance of a site can be determined by the number of other sites that link to it, and thus consider it ‘important.’ In the world of blogs, hyperlinks are even more significant, since bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, which creates the sense of timeliness and connectedness one would have in a conversation.

The power of weblogs is that they allow millions of people to easily publish their ideas, and millions more to comment on them. Blogs are a fluid, dynamic medium, more akin to a ‘conversation’ than to a library — which is how the Web has often been described in the past.

The benefits of blogging
Your favourite thing about having a blog may be that they naturally attract search engine traffic. Blogs already have optimized site architecture. Most are set up with a clear navigation, where every page is set up to link back to the other main pages. They also have the inherent potential to be well-linked.

Increasingly, savvy companies are turning to blogs to complement their communications arsenal of press releases, sustainability reports and investor conference calls. What’s more, some start-up companies are forgoing press releases altogether in favour of blogs.

For a business, blogs also:

• Build your profile as blogging demonstrates expertise
• Allows you to shares information with customers
• Informs people about other things your business is doing
• Generate powerful referral networks
• Creates an opportunity to network and share information with people from around the world
• Permits the kind of conversations that are necessary to truly connect with modern customers
• Creates an opportunity to build relationships with your customers
• Search engines are attuned to finding blogs

How to blog
Starting a blog is easy. Several companies, such wordpress.com offer free blogging tools.

You don’t need to a technical whiz, they are take care of everything. It does take a little time to do the initial set up but once you have done that all you need is the story ideas and away you go.

What you write is up to you, but try to spark discussion and share experiences, ideas and relevant information. To build traffic, read other blogs and comment so that it links back to your own blog.

Monitoring crisis situations through blogs
From a PR perspective it may be very important for you to see who is commenting on your business or your products. Certainly if you are managing a crisis situation you will need to monitor it, not only through the media, but now through blogs.

Tracking company, Technorati tracks the number of links, and the perceived relevance of blogs, as well as the real-time nature of blogging.Technorati automatically receives notification from weblogs as soon as they are updated, it can track the thousands of updates per hour that occur in the blogosphere, and monitor the communities (who’s linking to whom) underlying these conversations.

According to Technorati data, there are about 75,000 new blogs a day. Bloggers update their weblogs regularly; there are about 1.2 million posts daily, or about 50,000 blog updates an hour.

To search for comments in blogs, go to www.technorati.com and type your search terms

Sydney Public Relations Agency, CP Communications provides specialist media, traditional and online PR strategies that get amazing results. Contact us today. For more PR tips see www.PublicRelationsSydney.com.au