Reason #1 Your Markets Are Getting Smarter, Faster, And More Organized
With all the attention blogs and RSS has gotten in 2004 it is a sure bet that blogs will be even bigger news in 2005 as we move forward with defining more effective business uses for blogs. This one thing is for sure, thousands of blogs are created every day. The last statistic I've seen quoted by Technorati.com is that 23,000 blogs a day are created which is equal to about 1 blog every 3 seconds that joins the World Live Web.

This means that more and more people in your markets have blogs and there is no faster way of sharing ideas than with blogs and RSS. This represents a growing community of discourse among your customers and prospects that desire to talk with you. Additionally, this means that learning how to blog means learning how to create blogs that reach your markets along the lines of the discourse that is currently taking place there.

What are the current trends in your markets? How does your product meet or exceed your markets expectations? What specialized knowledge and expertise can you deliver to your market? What challenges and issues does your market currently contend with? How about demonstrating your awareness of these issue and give your perspective of suggested improvements. How about demonstrating your market leading knowledge and know-how?

You need to understand that your markets know more and more about what products and services are doing and should do. Your markets are monitoring trends, they are monitoring and comparing competing products (comparison means choice and best value decisions), they are getting information faster and they not only organizaing their knowledge but the networks by which they transfer their ideas and opinions faster...namely the blog and RSS.

You need to be the in trenches with your market exercising some influence on them by demonstrating that you know your market, you care about your market and that you contribute willingly to your markets and not just out of need to see a profit.

Reason #2 You Must Deliver Genuine Knowledge
Reason #2 picks up where Reason #1 leaves off. Once you create a blog, you have to deliver high value content. What is high value content? How do you identify it? This is content that consists of a genuine knowledge about your chosen subject matter and also meets and exceeds the "need to know requirements" of your audience.

Only you know what you know. Your challenge is to inject your markets with your quality knowledge and attract them to you. Let them know what you know by answering to them and provide them with answers to what they want to know more about.

Reason #2(a) How To Communicate Effectively With Your Audience Through Your Blog And Deliver Your Genuine Knowledge
1. Summarize. Analyze and then summarize your markets need to "need to know requirements". You want to know what it is your market wants to know. Do they want to know more about your company, your products, you? Do they want to know more about your industry, your expertise or latest developments? Etc. I'm not talking about what you already know about what and why your market needs to purchase from you. Blogs are not tools for direct marketing pieces, pure PR pieces, or web e-mail marketing pieces. You need to determine what type of dialogue will help drive a higher level of relationship and trust between you and them.
2. Initialize. Initialize or set your starting position based on what you understand regarding the discussion you could start within your markets. What type of information will you provide and what will be your discourse? Define the on-topic and near-topic discussions you have chosen to have through your blog.
3. Vocalize. Engage your market by clearly vocalizing your message. Establish a clear and authoritative voice. Stay focused and allow your market to clearly hear you and get a personalize sense of who you are as a business or enterprise.

Reason #3 Your Competition Is Using Blogs And RSS
Your competition is using blogs and RSS and so you must as well. If your market competitors are blogging they are reaching your customers and prospects more effectively, efficiently and quickly. They are willing to investigate the required discourse necessary for blogging success. Your competition will socialize and evangelize their message must faster than you. You cannot afford to let that happen. If you cannot justify a blog or establish a business case for blogging yet your competitor has a blog then you need a blog to. That is enough of a business case to start a business blog as a beginning.

Reason #4 Speed Of Business
Web content is now published instantly, continuously and in real-time. The web is more alive and active than ever before because of blogs and RSS. Real-time and near-time communications through blogging means that ideas and opinions are share instantly, exponentially and powerfully. The business advantage is that you can now update and inform your markets at the speed of growth and faster. You can publish information from your business and about your business at the speed of your business while keeping pace with the rate of information change and growth within your niche markets.

Reason #5 Blogs and RSS Represent Social Networking At Its' Most Powerful
Blogs are social networking tools that connect millions of people everyday. Blogs are link magnets, keyword rich social tools where your message can be evangelized very quickly while containing the specific semantics (your keywords, business language) necessary for getting you attention, traffic and readership for your blog.

Bloggers passionately promote each other and promote great content. Every blogger wants information to share with his or her audience and they want great references to share with their audience as well. Publishing great content that makes for great learning, informing and edification attracts links very, very quickly. Your blog can have several blogs all promoting your content and thus your message in mere moments after make your content public in your blog. This web-enabled word of mouth evangelizing can be an invaluable boost to your online business and blog success.

Why does this happen? Because for every market there are passionate bloggers who care about their topics and themes. These are A-listers and not A-listers alike. In addition to a passion for providing great content and great content sources for reference, bloggers diligently monitor their section and niche of the World Live Web. They subscribe to their market search terms with RSS, they subscribe to related blogs using RSS and they research consistently looking for great content to share and expand on. This means when you are publishing relevant content it will be found, referenced and linked to with little effort on your part!

Each individual blog is its own social network even it that blog has just one reader. So for every reference and link back to your blog content, there is always the possibility for exponential exposure for your content. For every blog linking to your blog there is an audience that itself has bloggers that also have an audience and well...you get the picture...the multiplication here is powerful.

Conclusion
Blogs are powerful social and communications tools. They should not be ignored because consumers are using blogs to influence and control marketing messages, your competition is using blogs to respond to consumer needs and now you must decide how a blog can be a part of your marketing mix for these reasons and more.

Your markets are getting faster, smarter and more organized. Marketing messages are consistently being scrutinized and consumers aren't taking it anymore. One part of this consumer control of marketing messages is the demand for personal dialogue and genuine knowledge transfer. They want to talk to you and trust you first. They want to believe in your product by first evaluating your non-commercial messages. They want to participate i the development of your products and service offerings through feedback and suggestions. Who Are You? What Are You About? Here Is What I Think...are some of dialogues taking place in your markets.

A blog allows you to deliver genuine knowledge to your markets in a personal real-time, two-way dialog and discussion. By summarizing what it is your markets want to know and talk about you can initialize effective discourse and vocalize your business clearly and effectively through content that delivers value and will pay you dividends many times over in the long term. Your competition is using blogs to reach out into the same markets that you are doing business in. The truth is that your message will have lost a competitive advantage if you do not start a blog to match the message of your competitor and meet the need of your hungry markets.

The Internet is an active and real-time communications medium. Blogs are types of web sites that now have the same characteristic of instant messaging and real-time communication. Static is out and active is in. This is powerful message for you because it allows you to keep your audience in tune with you at the speed of business and at the speed of market conversations.

Reaction times have to be almost instantaneous if not exactly instantaneous. Blogs and RSS give you that advantage. Also, because blogs are representative of social networks at their most powerful, your business messages can be shared and multiplied very quickly as your content is referenced and linked to. This creates visibility and reach for your content and your message that you could not even begin to undertake if you tried. All of this efficient, reach and relationship of blogs and RSS comes at a cost that is so negligible that it would be a serious oversight to not evaluate a business case for blogging.


© 2005
T. L. Pakii Pierce
Blog Publisher

How To Blog For Fun & Profits!
http://blogforfunandprofit.blogware.com
How To Blog, Create Blogs That Work For You!

Upgrade Your Mind
http://thinkblade.typepad.com
Daily Success Motivation and Positive Thinking for Powerful Life Change!