As a medium of communication, blogging has taken the world by storm. The question on the lips of most media savvy communities is whether our traditional media will survive the onslaught. Will blogs eventually kill conventional websites and newspapers? As a social Media Marketing tool, blogging provides endless opportunities at the least cost.



Suffice to say blogs are cool; they are a techie thing. You have to be in it. They are vogue. Blogs are, quite simply, the next wave. So if you are thinking about setting up a site, find out if a blog is the alternative that you have overlooked. So are conventional websites no longer necessary? Maybe.

Blogs are cheap, easy, efficient, wildly easy to find on the Net, super marketing-friendly, and just plain fun. Today with so many scripts, you can download install and create several pages of complete web sites within a couple of hours. Unlike traditional web pages, they are a walk in the park. Easy. Of course if our Sunday papers cease, there will be a gaping hole; at least psychologically.

In reality the picture is different. News prints are for people who read and consume information. These same people, in an ideal situation, will be web savvy already. So if they can read the paper online, why would you print the paper for them? Most people don't read the newspaper in the morning. Actually for those who stay late, they read the paper around 11 before they go to bed. Workers no longer read papers over lunch break like they did in the 1990s, they read news bites at their desk while working.

So if newsprint is good for advertisers, online advertising is even cheaper and prettier. The only way newsprint can survive is by sabotaging the spread of broadband Internet connection. This way they will have a pocket of readers who have no access to cheap Internet round the clock-at work and at home. The only place that fits that description is the developing world.

Ironically, the majority who read papers are concentrated in urban places. Here Internet is available albeit expensive in comparative terms. More bad news. Even in poor Sub-Saharan Africa, there are advance plans to link the continent using the coveted under-sea fiber optic cables.

Business Blogs

Blogs have been embraced by businesses as a new and very powerful marketing tool that has allowed them to communicate with their customers. It has helped bridge the feed back gap that has existed between clients and the service providers. It is a kind of dialogue with them; a close yet distant rapport.

Customers feel like they are being heard while businesses feel like they are showing that they indeed value their clients' opinions and concerns. Today all major companies and individual companies have blogs and forums for the clients to vent their anger and to give them accolades for rolling out new products.

Personal Blogs

Blogs start, essentially as personal diaries or scrapbook, which can be great fun to both read and write. A personal blog is generally set up to allow the author to discuss their views on anything and everything, so the topics change with each post according to mood, skills, interests, age et cetera. Bloggers are not your average eccentrics with bohemian urges to be different. Some have genuine reasons to whine about their niggling thoughts anonymously, or otherwise, without being edited. Only personal censorship and reason is the limit. Blogs give people a license to whine about how life is unfair and how you think outside the box.

There are now tools which are freely available to allow anyone to set up a personal blog quickly and simply - while these are not advised for a Business Blog simply because they offer less control over a tool which will become key to your business. There is wordpress, blogger from Google and other smaller but powerful software that you can download and get going.

Remember no technical knowledge is required to blog, readers can leave comments as well as read other people's comments. Blog scripts come with the ability to automatically organise information into categories and archive what you don't need. Blogs are the best Search Engine magnets if you are concerned about pulling traffic to your web site for sales purposes. Blogs are content rich because of Multiple Authorships.Blogging can make you famous and can earn you money.

It is important to note that blogs have the enviable Internal and External Links which through the viral effect-interlink related information. Lastly, blogs have permalinks another great feature for the Search Engines.