There are so many benefits to adding a blog to your website including increased content and online exposure, higher traffic, brand recognition, and building an online community.

With the emergence of Web 2.0, online communities are the new consumption. With a blog you have the opportunity to become a local expert and resource to your area. Create an online community and discuss topics such as restaurants, activities, and other businesses in your neighborhood. Encourage readers to participate by leaving comments to local reviews and develop an interactive format.

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Social Internet has become a new way of communicating, learning.

Wikipedia, Myspace, Forums, Blogs, RSS … all these words form and represent a new way of using the Internet, and has come to be known as Web 2.0. The web is no longer just about finding information, but also having the ability to influence it from a social perspective. Web 1.0 was about reading, advertising, companies, encyclopedias, home pages, and taxonomy. While Web 2.0 is about opinion, writing, word of mouth, communities, wikipedias, blogs, and folksonomy.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

As we take on this new way of learning and communicating, how does it affect the user’s experience? How can Web 2.0 be used to help make the experience a better one? As so many discussions about Web 2.0 focus on the technology and methods, it is often forgotten the most important part, usability, the experience of the user.

Web 2.0 has brought technologies that can be used to create a more interactive and better experience for the customer. Some of the technologies that have been developed include RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Ajax.

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Take advantage of the Social Internet with the variety of Blizzard’s existing plans, including Web 2.0. Blizzard Internet Marketing has developed two new products in addition to our existing Blizzard Live program.

Blizzard Live is an exciting service that involves the concept of Web 2.0 and word-of-mouth advertising. Blizzard Live Web 2.0 focuses on the social interaction and software platforms being shared by the masses such as youtube, flickr, TripAdvisor, and Blogging. Websites now have the ability to share social preferences, opinions, reviews, photos, videos and personal experiences while creating online relationships. Hospitality consumers are basing travel decisions on feedback they receive and reviews they read from these online resources and communities.

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If you have a blog, you need to let go of most of what you’ve learned about hording links and manipulating PageRank. Instead, you need to learn to link out freely to other blogs and websites in order to benefit from the blog karma that brings links back to you.

Learn why blog linking is different, and how you can get the most from it, in this article: Free Link Love-To Get It, Give It Up!

Mary Bowling - Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

Yes, you are reading a blog. However, there are still  people out there that don’t know what a blog is or understand the uses of one. Blogging goes hand in hand with our current concentration on Web 2.0 and it’s implications for online marketing.

A Weblog or Blog is basically an online journal. It is generally concentrated on one topic per forum. The topics range widely from travel, politics, music or sports to family news. An example would be this Blog about Glenwood Springs, Colorado. People write about events, places to see, things to do, businesses, history, trails, etc. Submitting to the journal is called Blogging.

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Check out Google’s top ten search phrases for the year 2006:

1. bebo
2. myspace
3. world cup
4. metacafe
5. radioblog
6. wikipedia
7. video
8. rebelde
9. mininova
10. wiki

What’s the common thread here? For starters, “bebo”, “myspace”, “metacafe”, “radioblog”, “wikipedia”, “mininova”, and “wiki” are all apart of the new generation of internet services, or what O’Reilly Media phrases as “Web 2.0“. Each of the above websites is known for effectively sharing and communicating information between users. Web 2.0 is all about becoming “social” online. It’s a collaboration of distributing just about anything you can think of …videos, music, articles, journals, critiques, advice, podcasts, blogs, and reviews to name just a few.

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Lee Odden is one of Search Engine Marketing’s major players. He has put together a list of Search Marketing Blogs that it never hurts to have around. Lee recently made headlines with his posts about being “banned” from Digg (through no fault of his own) and the process (or lack thereof) for re-inclusion.

The hardest thing about learning how and what to market is finding resources to read and learn from. The SEO team at Blizzard reads Lee’s “Online Marketing Blog” at least once a week – plus any of his articles we come across in other resources.

Check out his list as you may find some you didn’t know about. You can never have too much information.

Carrie Hill - Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.