Are You The Last Blog Virgin?

It’s a little like those kick-ass new commercials for Burger King’s Whopper Virgins: How far do you have to travel to find that singular soul who has never blogged?

According to a recent survey from popular blog network BlogHer, 36.2 million women actively participate in the blogosphere every week. Another survey lists 885,000 small-business blogs worldwide.  And the world of micro-blogging is exploding, with Twitter usage up 343% in the past year.

So what’s stopping you? Are you determined to be the last hold-out? Didn’t you know that BLOG actually stands for Better Listings On Google?

Now for the obligatory quiz:

Choose the statements you consider to be TRUE.

• I want to be viewed as an authority or expert in my field.
• Although I am no Stephenie Meyer, I like to write and love Spellcheck.
• I want to expand the reach of my business to a national and even a global audience.
• I’m all about authenticity. I want to cut through the marketing hype and be real.
• I’m reasonably tech-savvy, am online at least once a day and in general, am comfortable using the Internet.
• I’m frustrated with spam and email filters; I can’t get info through to my peeps.
• I am willing to commit to writing a new content-rich blog at least once a week.
• I want to be able to easily and frequently test new ideas for my business.
• Feedback is a good tool to improve my business. Bring it on!
• I know what blogs are and have a few favorite I read regularly, not just lolcats.com.
• I don’t want to have to ask my graphic or web designer every time I want to change or add something to my site.
• I want to build more traffic to my website. I built it; they didn’t come. Help!
• I want to build a media empire, one post at a time.

If you choose 3 or more as True, it may be time to bid adieu to your blog virginity.

The 5 Bogus Reasons You Haven’t Built Your Blog.

You know you need to get your business up and blogging. You know the buzzy b-word is one of the most important tools in your brand building toolkit, the one that can quickly turbocharge your online presence. You probably even know that 175,000 new blogs are being built everyday. So somebody’s getting around to it. Why not you?

Here are just a smattering of the excuses I’m used to hearing from clients:

But I’m not a writer.

Not only is it not necessary to be a star writer, I sometimes think it’s actually a disadvantage. Too often we professionals wordsmith a phrase or header to death, substitute pretty prose for pithy bulletins and slave over posts so long they’re no longer timely. That doesn’t mean you should publish sloppy posts, skip spell-check or let your syntax be eligible for the next edition of the Grammar Nazi. But increasingly, we live in a world of pings, posts and texts; paragraph after paragraph of literary genius does not a blog make. Short but sweet rules. Lists rock.

But I’m not a geek.

Today, thanks to the wonders of Web 2.0 technology, everybody qualifies to celebrate National Pi Day and to build and maintain a thriving blog. Blogging sites like wordpress, typepad, livejournal and blogger offer simple templates that let you create a basic site in mere minutes. You can easily upload your business’ brand identity materials like logos, etc. Most of the blogging sites feature easy plug-ins that let you add everything from Contact Me forms to Tag Clouds with a mere drag-and-drop.

But I don’t have time.

You don’t have time if you consider your blog to be a series of articles or essays. But instead, if you understand that the origin of blogging came from the phrase web-log — and that these early blogs were simply a series of links with personal comments — then you can visualize your blogs as newsy updates or quick posts with a point-of-view. Even better, most blog sites let you update your blog from your mobile phone. Check out author and marketing genius Seth Godin’s blog, which perpetually ranks at the top of most lists. His posts are often just a couple of brief paragraphs, with lots of easy-on-the-eye white space.

But I don’t know a thing about all that Search Engine stuff.

In addition to dramatically boosting sales of Excedrin Migraine tablets, the term “search engine optimization” or SEO, describes the process of increasing both the quality and quantity of traffic to your website or blog. SEO is actually a variety of techniques that make your content easier to find for search engines like Google and distant runners-up Yahoo, MSN Search and Ask.com. And while, yes, SEO is a science of sorts, the truth is that all the fancy keyword bots and optimization programs typically aren’t any more effective than these three simple things:

• Post often, post regularly
• Post quality content about your business, using descriptive titles on your post and SEO keywords early on in your post
• Do the basics, like listing your site in Yahoo!, Google, DMOZ, and claiming it in Technorati.com.

Guru’s Note: I always tell clients that it takes a good 60 days to get your blog ready for the search engines. You’re going to want to make sure that everything from your domain name to your blog’s graphic look and feel to ‘populating’ each category with keyword-rich posts is up and running smoothly. Then and only then, do you tackle additional SEO, beyond what you’ve already built into your blog. (Check back for: The Top 8 Mistakes Newbie Bloggers Make’)

But will it really help my business?

There’s a good reason some people think BLOG really stands for: Better Listings On Google. There’s nothing like fresh, frequently updated, high quality content to improve your business blog’s ranking with the search engines, especially with Google, which now has almost 70% of the U.S. search market share. Blogs are inherently more search-engine friendly than even the most robust websites. Websites seldom get updated, but remain as fixed ‘corporate brochures’ while most bloggers post new content frequently. (Especially if they hire The Guru to do the Blog Refresh!)

But there’s another benefit to blogging, beyond the inevitable desire to generate traffic. Your blog is a primo opportunity to express — and extend — your brand’s personality. Your blog is the place to be authentic, to be human, to hone the many facets of your brand. This where you can magnetize a new audience, maybe that secondary psychographic you’ve wanted to reach. This is where you can experiment. Want to leverage the equity in that popular product of yours? Play market researcher and ask your readers what they think. Blogs — and their close relatives on Facebook, Ning, Linkedin and MySpace, are powerful tools for testing ideas, content, and new marketing campaigns. And cost-effective, too.

Okay, folks. Any excuses left? Get blogging!