How important are blogs? Try comparing it to Johannes Gutenberg's Invention, the printing press, unveiled in 1440. It sparked a publishing boom and an information revolution. Some say it led to the Protestant Reformation and Western democracy. Along the way, societies established the rights and rules of the game for the privileged few who could afford to buy printing presses and grind forests into paper.

Read also: Formula for a Successful Blog Post

The printing press set the model for mass media. A lucky handful owns the publishing machinery and controls the information. Whether at newspapers or global manufacturing giants, they decide what the masses will learn. This elite still holds sway at most companies. You know them. They generally park in sheltered spaces, have longer rides on elevators, and avoid the cafeteria. They keep the secrets safe and coif the company's message. Then they distribute it -- usually on a need-to-know basis -- to customers, employees, investors, and the press.


Sure, most blogs are painfully primitive. That's not the point. They represent power. Look at it this way: In the age of mass media, publications like ours print the news. Sources try to get quoted, but the decision is ours. Ditto with letters to the editor. Now instead of just speaking through us, they can blog. And if they master the ins and outs of this new art -- like how to get other bloggers to link to them -- they reach a huge audience.

Read also: The First 30 Days of Blogging

This is just the beginning. Many of the same folks who developed blogs are busy adding features so that bloggers can start up music and video channels and team up on editorial projects. The divide between the publishers and the public is collapsing. This turns mass media upside down. It creates media of the masses.

How does business change when everyone is a potential publisher? A vast new stretch of the information world opens up. For now, it's a digital hinterland. The laws and norms covering fairness, advertising, and libel? They don't exist, not yet anyway. But one thing is clear: Companies over the past few centuries have gotten used to shaping their message. Now they're losing control of it.

Read also: Spider Posts: How to write efficiently on your real estate blog: make one blog post last for a week

Want to get it back? You never will, not entirely. But for a look at what you're facing, come along for a tour of the blogosphere.

Yes, we know that Blogging does take some effort. Investing in your future is what you are really doing. What is it that a blog will do for you? A blog willgenerate traffic from search engines, raise your position in the search engine results (SERPs) and build your credibility as a local expert. Basically, a blog is everything that a website isn't... a real automated marketing tool.

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Working long hours is the sure way to burnout. Its great if you are being really productive. As Americans, we work more hours than anyone, take fewer vacations and have developed the live to work mentality.

Hold on a minute. Although we work more hours, we are 6th in productivity.

Working Hard isn't necessarily working smart. We have all heard this. But what does it mean? Well after spending a small fortune over the past year getting coached on this very subject, I think it is easier to explain that it is to do.

Systems are the key. But again what the hell does that mean?

To put it simply, it means begin with the end in mind. What is your vision for your company? Your business goals and actionable goals/objectives will fall from your vision.

Take your goals and develop them into systems. To do lists will fall from processes. What is a process? Well if you are an online do it yourselfes. How do you blog? How do you create content? Where do you get it from? Simply put,1 leads to 2 which leads to 3 that leads to the desired result. You may even have a spot at point 2 that is an if then scenario. A good example of this would be to have a fall back person for the task, I.E. If your content writer becomes sick, someone has to do it. I would liken it to your business cell phone, It is a part of your life that you depend on. You wouldn't try to run your business without a cell phone now would you?


But this is how to build a business. The old adage still holds true, " If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." My point is in order to enjoy your business life it is crucial to have a life. Live to work vs work to live.

When we all started out we all promised ourselves we would one day be the boss, along the way we had bosses that we hated, and we vowed never to be that boss, always saying to ourselves that since we have been on the otherside we would be different.

That quote started me on the path to systematized. You can think of it this way. If you died today, would your business survive without you? If your answer is no then you are running a promotion and not a business.

The way you can prepare for this is to build your real estate business up so it suitable enough to sell. Even if it is not your goal to for sell it, could you sell your business? How are your books? Why would they want to buy your business? Is it a bunch of computers or a well organized sales and marketing system that will continue to be successful and grow?

If you have ever tried to delegate and it did not work this is why. You can hire an office manager , but if you do not give them a job description of processes that he or she does, then they will end up being as crazy as you.

If it takes you 9000 visitors to your website to get 900 leads. And it takes 900 leads to get to 9 appointments. Then 3000 visitors is 3 appointments. So if you need 6 appointments then you need 6000 visitors.

Whatever process flow you choose make sure that the results are duplicatable. If it works well for you then stick with it.

Blogs Will Change Your Business

Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Lead, Follow or get out of the way.

It's time for a straight talk. And no, it won't wait. We know, we know: Most of you are sick to death of blogs. Don't even want to hear about these millions of online journals that link together into a vast network. And yes, there's plenty out there not to like. Self-obsession, politics of hate, and the same hunger for fame that has people lining up to trade punches on The talk show circuits. Name just about anything that's happening in our society today, and it is being blogged about.

Go ahead complain about blogs. Let it out. With that being said, you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they're going to shake up just about every business -- including yours. It doesn't matter whether you're shipping soft drinks, snacks, or videos, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They're a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)

There's a little problem, though. Many of you don't visit blogs -- or haven't since blogs became a sensation in last year's Presidential race. According to a Pew Research Center Survey, only 27% of Internet users in America now bother to read them. So we're going to take you into the world of blogs by delivering this story -- call it Bloging for businesses -- in the style of a blog. This all may make for a strange experience, but it's the closest we can come to reaching out from the page, grabbing you by the collar, and forcing you to react.

First, a few numbers. There are some 9 million blogs out there, with 40,000 new ones popping up each day. Some discuss poetry, others constitutional law. And, yes, many are plain silly. "My cat tells me what to do. ," . Let's assume that 99.9% are equally off point. So what? That leaves some 40 new ones every day that could be talking about your business, engaging your employees, or leaking those merger discussions you thought were hush-hush.

Give the paranoids their due. The overwhelming majority of the information the world spews out every day is digital -- photos from camera phones, PowerPoint presentations, government filings, billions and billions of e-mails, even digital phone messages. With a couple of clicks, every one of these items can be broadcast into the blogosphere by anyone with an Internet hookup -- or even a cell phone. If it's scandalous, a poisonous e-mail from a CEO, for example, or torture pictures from a prison camp, others link to it in a flash. And here's the killer: Blog posts linger on the Web forever.

Yet not all the news is scary. Ideas circulate as fast as scandal. Potential customers are out there, sniffing around for deals and partners. While you may be putting it off, you can bet that your competitors are exploring ways to harvest new ideas from blogs, sprinkle ads into them, and yes, find out what you and other competitors are up to.

Stay tuned for my next article.

Starting your company blog. Here are a few guidelines to start it, and keep it going- Remember if you don't blog you lose ground to your competitors!


Train Your Bloggers
Who's on your communications team? It used to be a small group, but now everyone who blogs at the company is spreading the message. And it's important that these people be trained.

If a company blogger spills financial information, it can get you in hot water with regulators. Other leaks could help competitors or lead to embarrassing revelations about top executives or the workplace. No wonder many companies are worried about blogging.

The natural instinct is to restrict employee blogging. But that can be shortsighted. Every employee who blogs can be making contacts with potential customers and enhancing the company brand.

If bloggers become part of a company's communications effort, what does the old PR department do? Increasingly, it'll train and coordinate the bloggers.

Be Careful with Fake Blogs
Companies are eager to establish one-to-one links with customers, but they're often reluctant to plunge blindly into the blogosphere. So they set up fake blogs. These are blogs that are created by corporate marketing departments to promote a service, product, or brand using a fake character or name.

These pseudo-blogs are risky because many of the most passionate bloggers view them as an affront to their community, and each one stands out like a billboard in Yosemite. When the blogosphere gets hold of a fake, it can turn it into a public roasting of the company.

So should companies avoid fake blogs altogether? That's hard to say, because sometimes the buzz is welcome, even if it's negative.

The upshot: Your choice on fakes, but the risks are high.

Track Blogs
This is the easiest and most important step. First, poke around online and find the most influential bloggers following your company. Read them every day. Then do automated tracking of discussions.


Why is it important to do different kinds of tracking? Postings even from small-time bloggers can get picked up by a search engine, amplified by a top blogger, and eventually break into the mainstream.

PR Truly Means Public Relations
Blogs knock down the barriers between a company and its customers. Businesses need to take that into account and adapt.


Netflix figured this lesson out after a rocky start. A fan named Mike Kaltschnee started a blog called Hacking Netflix that was full of news about online movie-rental company's services. Kaltschnee asked for a closer relationship with Netflix, including access to executives and briefings on news releases. Netflix didn't pay attention to him -- until he wrote about his frustrations on his blog last June. The posting was picked up and spread quickly through the blogosphere. Talk about bad PR.

At about the same time, Netflix hired Michele Turner as vice-president for product marketing. She promptly reached a working arrangement with Kaltschnee, whose blog attracts 100,000 visitors a month. The two speak regularly, and Kaltschnee provides Netflix with insights that he's hearing from readers.

Kaltschnee's suggestions have helped lead to a new service called Profiles. Launched in January, Profiles allows customers to create up to five separate lists of requested films per subscription. So, a family with a subscription could have separate lists for the children and the parents.

Be Transparent
No hard and fast rules for navigating the worlds of blogging and marketing exist. Still, a few principles are emerging, including the importance of full disclosure. Being open about the kind of marketing you're doing is critical.

Ask Stephen King, the president and CEO of Marqui, a Web-services marketing company. Late last year, King and consultant Marc Canter cooked up the notion of paying bloggers to market King's company. The key to the venture's success was being completely open about it.


Here's how Marqui ensures openness. Everything about Marqui's blog program is up on its site, including the contract, a list of the bloggers working for Marqui, and background material Marqui sends to bloggers. The bloggers have total control over what they write. They can criticize the software or write at length about it. The only requirement was they have to mention Marqui once a week.

Yet Marqui benefited from the buzz about the novelty of what it was attempting. The number of people who visited Marqui's site rose from 2,000 in November to 150,000 in December. And the company decided to continue the program after the first three-month period ended.

Rethink Your Corporate Secrets
Consider one secret you have under lock and key at your company. Maybe it's a list of projects for next year or details of the unbelievable bill from the latest software licenesing fee. There are all kinds of things you're trained not to leak to competitors.

But what's the value of a locked up secret? In the world of blogs, you may find more value in sharing what you used to think of as secrets. Blogs are certain to make you rethink what should be locked away, because companies are increasingly sharing such information to win new partners and harvest fresh ideas. This doesn't mean they don't keep secrets or that you shouldn't -- only that you should reevaluate whether you can get more out of sharing information or keeping a lock on it.

Traditionally, branding is associated with physical products and consumer packaged goods. But branding has become a crucial part of business for the service industry, which today employs more people than all other industries combined. And mergers and acquisitions in combination with global deregulation has seen the rise of many powerful global brands in the service industry. Financial services has been in the forefront of this development and four of the 30 most valuable brands (according to Interbrand) in the world are financial services brands (Citibank, American Express, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch).

Branding is increasingly important for professional services companies for several reasons. You cannot store a service, it is consumed at the same time as it is produced. If you are going to buy a new computer you can go to the store and look at it, feel it and try it out before you buy. You can