How can corporate blogging help your business to connect with consumers on a more personal level.

Corporate blogging and marketing blogs are fast becoming a powerful way to draw traffic and convince your audience that you have the strongest ideas and products in your marketplace. For business, blogs can help you build stronger relationships with important target groups such as clients, the media, the general public and/ or shareholders. Blogging has caused quite a buzz. From political activists to aspiring novelists, industry pros and avid hobbyists, everyone seems to be starting a blog. Recent articles in the BusinessWeek and Forbes demonstrate how even the mainstream media is taking notice of blogs' unprecedented growth and increasing effect on our society.

Corporate blogs are giving established companies and obscure brands alike the ability to connect with their audiences on a more personal level, build trust, collect valuable feedback and foster strengthened business relationships. More importantly, these companies are enjoying tangible returns in their blogging investment in the form of increased sales, partnerships, business opportunities, press coverage and lead generation.

Companies that employ a well thought-out blogging strategy encourage the strongest community goodwill, and that goodwill, in turn, promotes significant marketing and sales gains. It is said that success breeds success. This holds true for successful blogs. There is a chain reaction that begins with a real desire on the part of the blogger to provide value and to connect with their audience. The blogger shares useful and engaging content -- the latest information, help, discussion topics and ideas. The way the audience responds to that content is key.

When customers start commenting, posting or tracking back to a blogging community, it can have a viral effect -- spreading out across the blogosphere. In addition, companies that harness their customers' knowledge and ideas find better ways to satisfy their needs and wants, thus facilitating goodwill in the community. For example, it is a common practice in blogging to provide a link back to a thought originator, which is valuable because backlinks are a way that search engines distinguish the order of the editorial rankings. Higher search engine rankings translate into significantly higher website traffic and more sales leads. Thus, successful blogging breeds success in other marketing and sales initiatives.

Greater word-of-mouth buzz on- and offline, higher search engine rankings, increased press coverage and superior lead generation are just some of the potential benefits of blogging in a corporate setting.

According to technorati.com, a search engine dedicated to blogs, there are some 71 million blogs worldwide, including more than 250,000 in Australia, and 175,000 new blogs are being launched daily.

Here are some other ways blogs can be used:

• Simple, low cost PR. Blogs are a simple and fast way to put information online.
• Establish expertise. Position yourself and your company as the expert, and raise your visibility with your target market.
• Extend communications and customer relationships. Blogs enable companies to present a human face and voice to the public. Blogs allow you to join customer discussions, respond to concerns, provide tips and insights, or receive feedback.
• Build community. Use blogs to grow group support around a cause, political issue, technology or hobby related to your product.
• Test ideas or products. Because blogs are informal and conversational in nature, you can publish an idea and see if it generates any interest or buzz.
• Higher search engine rankings. Google and other search engines reward sites with a lot of content that is updated often and have many inbound links. Some example of business blogs that take advantage of these uses are major corporations such as Dell, McDonalds and Boeing.

Next week, we look at some tips to improve business blogging.

Gary Gopinathan is founder and director of G.S. Quantum Multimedia (GSQM).