I just got a Google Alert about a great article published Aug. 24 in USA Today about the fact that blogs may well be a big fad, but you shouldn’t ignore that they are still a great tool for building your business and getting clients.

(Does anyone else get these Alerts a week later, or is it just me?) I see Denise Wakeman has already written about this on Aug. 24 over at the Build a Better Blog site, but this article makes some very good points, as follows:

Steve Strauss in his Ask The Expert column expounds on the benefits of blogs for small business.   There are 7 reasons a blog can be good from your business.:

• Build your brand: Your blog is your voice and your words. It allows you to directly convey the image you want people to have of your business without having to go through the cost and diffusion that advertising and marketing require. The values that define your business and brand can, and should, be incorporated into your business blog.

• Improve customer service: You can use your blog to keep customers informed of important events, sales, deadlines, and so forth. You can answer customers’ questions or provide valuable links to related products and services.

• Increase employee awareness: An internal blog can be used to post schedules, make announcements, crack a joke, etc.

• Build your reputation: Blogging is an inexpensive marketing tool that permits you to position yourself as an expert in your field. If your blog provides cutting-edge analysis or information for people in your industry, your reputation grows in direct proportion to that.

• Bump your search engine rankings: Blogs that allow reader responses (and many do) create Web pages with valuable key words. This in turn can increase your search engine rankings.

Let’s see. Is that it? No? Oh, right. There is one more benefit to blogging:

• Make money: You could sell ad space next to your blog. You could tap into affiliate programs and get paid for that.

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If you’re still wondering if blogging is for you, give me a call or an email and we can weigh the pros and cons. About the only reason I see to NOT do a blog is if you don’t want any more business.

And, yes, it does require some writing, about 10-20 minutes each time you post once you get the hang of it. But you probably spend that much time writing individual emails that contain good information you should be sharing to a larger audience (like, the World Wide Web, for example!)

Stay tuned for a blogging intensive 6-week teletraining coming up in September. Our ebook The Build a Better Blog System Revised Edition will be included in the tuition and you will be walked hand in hand through Blogdom by the Blog Squad gals, yours truly and Denise Wakeman, along with Adam Urbanski, the Marketing Mentor guy.

Beware of breeches of Blog Etiquette or best practices…the Blog Squad is roaming the Blogosphere and your blog could be the next designated "loser blog!"

The Blog Squad (Denise Wakeman and myself, Patsi Krakoff) has officially launched their blog improvement program today; you can read the press release here.

Suzanne Falter-Barns with her characteristic good humor and savoir-faire for publicity is undergoing a blog makeover month during August. She has even put up the Blog Squad ‘loser blog’ logo on her Painless Self Promotion Blog.

You can visit her blog and read about her blog improvement progress all month. Will she pass the Blog Squad inspection? Will she earn the right to display the Blog Squad Seal of Approval? Stay tuned…

Rather than repeat what Denise Wakeman has posted over at Build a Better Blog, just go there and read the three-part article we wrote on the 17 Mistakes Professionals Make with Their Blogs…

The New York Times has another article about authors using blogs during the writing process of their books.

Instead of simply being a relief from writerly solitude, these blogs have turned into part of the process. Mr. Battelle (an author) said that he was surprised by the number of people who read his journal and offered feedback, correcting mistakes, making suggestions of people to interview or articles to read and contributing ideas that are finding their way into his finished manuscript.

Authors’ blogs also change the solitary mission of writing into something more closely resembling open-source software. Mistakes are corrected before they are eternalized in printed pages, and readers can take satisfaction that they contributed to a book’s creation.

Which all reinforces the fact that Denise Wakeman and I are on the right track with our Blog to Book Project. Already 30 potential authors have joined this project and are busy writing pages of their books onto their blogs.

Blogs offer a way to organize content, experiment with style, get reader feedback, and create marketing buzz even before the book is even complete.

The Blog to Book Project is an ongoing, open enrollment program delivered through a private tutorial blog with monthly support meetings and weekly telephone conferences with book publishing experts.

To get more information or to register, go to www.blogtobook.com.

Clearly, if you can write a newsletter or ezine, or a blog, you can develop material for a book that can then be used as a marketing tool for your professional services. Your competitors are already doing it. When will you take the leap and give it a shot?

Do you dare?

Several of the successful bloggers we interviewed for our ebook The Build a Better Blog System ebook were honored in Marketing Sherpas annual awards.

Best Marketing Blogs of 2005

Marketing Serpa holds annual Readers’ Choice Awards for Best Marketing Blogs. This year’s winners include several people who were interviewed in our Build a Better Blog System ebook.  Congrats go out to all winners, especially our friends who helped us create a wonderful resource guide for bloggers.

Michele Miller of WonderBranding for Best Blog on Niche Marketing

Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends for Best Blog on Small Business Marketing (honorable mention)

Yvonne DiVita of Lipsticking for Best Blog on Niche Marketing (honorable mention)

Andy Wibbels of EasyBake Weblogs, who will be a featured expert on podcasting on our Conversations with Experts teleseries July 13, got the Reader’s Choice in the write-in category, further proof of his popularity.

All the winning blogs are worth reading and reviewing to see what makes them excellent.  Plus you’ll learn a thing or two!

Ezine or blog? Which do you prefer? Since blogs are so easy to use, why not just blog and forget about the hassles of putting together an ezine? No, no, no, says Christopher Knight of Ezine Universe:

"Ever since chicken little said the sky is falling and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) would replace Email, there have been a very vocal group of bloggers (term given to people who write or maintain a blog) that think blogging will replace or exceed ezines in value. They are wrong and I’ll tell you why." 

To read his post, go here.

I agree with Christopher. Besides the fact that he really knows ezines and email marketing, his points are all good.

Here’s an interesting point: he sends out his Ezine Tips to 12,000 readers, expects that 2500 of them will open and read the Tips within 36 hours, of which 250 will click through to his site. That’s a 20% open rate, which sounds really low… Still, he has high numbers that make up for it.

I still vote for doing both an ezine AND a blog. And if that seems like a lot of tasks to take care of when you’re running a busy professional practice, you can always outsource.

P.S. I just happen to provide ezine services, article content, and blog set up services! Email me if I can help you out!

Patsi