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The plethora of blogs to choose from is amazing!  We can post blogs about dog training, health care remedies, shoe trends, business advice and pretty much anything you can imagine.

Blogs are great for keeping up on the latest and greatest in the world and can also be beneficial for link building and driving traffic to your website. Regularly posting accurate and interesting subjects to your blog is the key to having a healthy blog life.  Once you create and generate readers you are bound to succeed.

Blogs can be created and utilized by anyone.  If you know how to turn on your computer and search via the engines online you can create a blog.  Very little technical knowledge is needed which is great for small business owners to large business owners or you and your friends.

Here are a few links to some user-friendly, free blog sites to help you get started:

• WordPress
• Blogger
• blog.com
• thoughts.com

If you’re new to the whole blogging craze and just aren’t quite ready for your own blog, you can start by posting on other people’s blogs. Find a blog that’s related to your business in some way, but that’s not a competitor, and start by replying and commenting on its posts.

Remember the most challenging part of a blog is posting creative and accurate information to capture an audience.  If you know who your audience is, what they like and what their interests are, then you are set.  If you are unsure you may want to do a little research or test market your idea’s before you start the posting process.

Turn your business on and start blogging.

Ha! I had to start this post with a laugh because its been roughly one month since this blogs initial launch and the comment spam is already rolling in. What kills me though, is that many of the spam comments we receive are from Internet marketing companies from around the net. I’m always left wondering how successful these companies are, because it must do something for them to be able to keep doing it.

In any regards, i labeled this post “Super Blog Blast 3000″ because there are many software programs available that will scour the net to make comments on thousands of blogs. I’ve never truly understood this, as the real blogging community frowns upon illegitimate users that are simply trying to get a free link from their site. In addition, most blogging platforms put a “no-follow” attribute automatically on the link from your comment, making it a non worthwhile linking tactic in Google’s eyes. Plus, even if they don’t use a no-follow, influential bloggers whom know the industry they serve, also know when they get automated comment spam. Therefore, the links you will likely get wont be any good.

Nevertheless, automated comment spam and trackbacks are continuing to be a growing problem and are not showing any signs of slowing down. However, there are a few options to check and limit blog spam:

1. Follow the link- there is obviously going to be comments and trackbacks that shout ‘I’M SPAM.” However some “black hats” can be sneaky. If you’re not entirely sure if the comment is legit, first start by following the link back to the poster in question. Are they a SEO company? Are they selling products that are questionable? If so, the best course of action is just to delete or mark it as spam. Even though it may be legitamate, its better to be selective to who you link to than approve a link to a bad neighborhood.

2. Add a captcha- A captcha is a box that a human user needs to enter in numbers or letters (sometimes a combination of both) before they can click submit. Chances are you have seen this on another blog or website. If you are haven’t see one, just check out our get started page and scroll down to the bottom to see the box. Although it may not look the pretties, it does save a lot of labor in moderating comment spam. Most blog platforms will have plugins that you can install that will to do this for you or your blog platform may already have it.

3. Review your comment rules- most blogging platforms have options on how to deal with comments. For instance, WordPress allows you to set how many links to look for in a post. I usually set this to 1, because most users don’t put links in their signature. (Especially legitimate SEO’s)

Blogging is a great tool and its unfortunate that a small bunch of abusers continue to look for ways to break the barrier. However, if you are a blogger, employing these simple tactics will help ensure that your community remains spam free. Lastly, if you are still in search for a quality link, check out our business blogging directory…and if you think you are worthy enough, submit your link for review.

A new study of business blogging by Forrester Research revealed which the Wall Street Journal recapped is that most businesses aren’t reaping the rewards from blogging. In fact, they concluded that most business blogs are “dull, drab, and don’t stimulate discussion.” As a major advocate of business blogging and co-founder of the largest business blogging portal on the net, I wanted reflect on this study and share with you some insight.

First, here are the raw numbers:
70% of corporate blogs stick to business or technical topics
74% rarely get comments
56% simply regurgitate press releases or other already-public news
53% of B2B marketers say that blogging has little or no significance

As I’ve been following business blogs for the last 3 years, i can say with a good degree of confidence, that I agree with the above study. Most of the blogs that have been submitted to us for review (which i can honestly say that i personally have seen over 20K myself) resemble the above statistics. However, most of the time, these blog owners aren’t using their blog in the typical way a real blogger would, in that they are looking for a fast buck and not focusing on content, But whats truly interesting from this particular study, is that nearly 20% of the blogs surveyed were from fortune 500 companies with likely the “deepest pockets” to formulate solid strategies. Although this may seem unfortunate for the business blogging community at first, it’s what I believe to be really a function of the disparity between high-level management and understanding how this social media is used.

To put it short, its easy for larger companies to jump at the opportunity to participate in high-buzz technologies with little understanding of how the technology is used. Why? Because high-level management are the ship steerer’s and not the technology strategists. They understand the general importance of these new media’s and want to partake. After all, who wouldn’t want to be on the leading edge?

The general problem however, lies within the overall execution. Upper management is used to providing the macro strategic direction, but lacks the expertise to leverage the medium.

Whats to do then?
First, there are a ton of positive reasons to blog including a hefty ROI. So don’t get discouraged from the above numbers. Secondly, if you really serious about how to use a business blog for your company, there are a couple of options:

1. Hire an expert business blogger in your industry. Chances are, these guys already exist, since our directory alone has near 500 industries that it tracks
2. Hire an online marketing agency (like ours….wink…wink) to work with your marketing department and formulate your blogging strategy for success
3. Encourage & motivate your marketing department to “champion” social media (because this is likely just the tip of the iceberg)

I was once told that “when companies or individuals are faced with issues that they don’t know how to handle, they do what they know how to do,” which usually isn’t the best solution. So I purposefully left out the “spruce up the old blog trick” out of the above equation because unless you have a significant knowledgeable on-board resource to do so, this strategy will likely fail. Thus, i highly recommend employing one of the above solutions as this will significantly increase your chance for success.