Most of you will have heard of it by now, but for those that haven’t blogging is a growing phenomenon that has the government more than a little worried. In essence it is the facility for you to voice your ideas and thoughts online.

The reason that the government is worried is because most bloggers use their ‘Blog Space’ to criticise the government and its agenda or as Hazel Blears puts it “fuels a culture of cynicism and pessimism!”

The fact is – a blog can be a very powerful tool in your online marketing campaign.

I use blogging myself to draw attention to issues that are important to me and find it wonderfully therapeutic, while at the same time using it to insert the occasional keyword marketing reference to one of my websites.

In actuality, the more controversial and damning your blog is the more chance you have of being noticed. The more notice you attract, the more traffic you generate. The more traffic you generate, the more effective those little marketing links are that you included.

To all intents and purposes blogs are more effective if they are informative rather than just critical – the great thing about politics is that it gives the average blogger a soap box upon which to propound their views and opinions, which is not necessarily as effective as giving an informed statement.
Blogs are the diatribe of the new millennium.

So how do you create an effective blog? Quite simply like this one.

IF you are reading this then you are reading an informed piece by someone in the industry who has researched the effectiveness of blogs in search engine marketing. That makes this particular blog more effective.

To use blogs effectively as a marketing tool you need to do a lot more than create your blog and just wait for people to come and find it.

Like any website you need to market it and promote it.

So these are my five tips for you would be bloggers:
1. Give your blog a relevant title to your subject – just Maurice’s Blog will not be effective
2. Look for similar popular blogs and leave comments, including handy links back to your own
3. Follow blogs – there is a tradition that if you follow someone else’s blog they will reciprocate and follow yours
4. Promote your blog from your website – use the RSS feed feature to highlight your recent entries
5. Always make it informative and interesting not just an opinion

Bear in mind that apart from being a little time consuming well run blog campaigns can prove very profitable in the world of online marketing.