Wednesday, the 17th, I'll be heading over to Atlanta to attend the monthly meeting of the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association. The topic this month is, what else, business blogging.

They've entitled it Beyond the Blog Buzz, and the meeting features such notables as Anita Sharpe, Richard Turner, Brad Fallon, J.R. Mayhew, and Henry Copeland.

In addition, I finally get to meet my friend Toby Bloomberg of Bloomberg Marketing.

If blogging had a Bible, this article featuring Jeff Jarvis, president and creative director of Advance.net, would be a book in it. If you want to see the future, then read this prophecy. 

BTW, it's the first in a two-month series of articles on the future of digital media being conducted by Ernest Miller.

(This piece covers so much ground I had no clue as to how to even categorize it.)

Here are a couple of PDFs that would be good to download.

The first is a free guide called Writing for the Web - In Technicolor, published by BusinessLogs.com. It is a primer for blog writing.

The other is a Corporate Blogging Primer that covers the following:

• Corporate Blog - A Definition
• The Nature of Blogs
• Reasons for Corporate Blogging
• Six Types of Corporate Blogs
• 14 Steps to Your Business Blog
• What Corporate Bloggers Say

It's published by Fredrik Wackå, of the Corporate Blogging blog.

Both resources are free and well-worth your time.

I have an announcement to make. You may or may not have known that Radiant Marketing Group was not my full-time endeavor, at least in terms of it being my "day job." Well, as of today it is, and I couldn't be happier. I've been wanting to make this move for months.

I have a good friend, Michael Katz, who told me recently, "Leap and the net will appear." For weeks it has been appearing, with doors opening for opportunities I could not begin to imagine. However, due to my work schedule, I had little time to take advantage of any of them. Now that time is afforded me, and I intend to make the most of it!

So, any of you entrepreneurs, consultants, freelancers, or bootstrappers that may have some sagely advice, please feel free to share it. One thing I have learned is that there is safety in a multitude of counsel.

I have received an invitation from SquareSpace.com CEO Anthony Casalena to start blogging on the official SquareSpace blog. According to Anthony, "What you normally write about on radiant marketing group's blog is exactly the kind of content we're looking for." Hey, I don't need any more incentive than that!

Anthony has asked that I move my blog to his platform. That's only fair I guess. It will give me the opportunity to merge my blog with my main website. (Who am I kidding? My blog is my main website!) Until that site begins to get traffic, I will mirror all posts there and here, and will keep you informed of the transition.

I really consider his invitation an honor and am grateful for the opportunity.

According to eMarketer.com, in an Internet first, prior to announcing it in any other media, John Kerry e-mailed his choice for Democratic Vice President nominee, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, to over 1 million online supporters. Some correspondents saw this as a sign of the rising importance of the Internet, others saw it as a good PR ploy. In fact, it was both. At least it wasn't Hillary!

I'm going to be tightening up the focus of this blog to really hone in on the following topics. . .

• Web Design and Usability
• Search Engine Optimization
• Pay Per Click Advertising
• Using Blogs for Business
• Affiliate Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Anything Google!

Though I hope you will allow me the occasional personal muse, I want to make this site substantive and worth repeated visits for small business owners interested in establishing or enhancing their online presence.

So, on my honor I promise to do my best to post at least one article per week on each of these topics!

I stepped out on a limb and added an additional author to this blog, Ron Shank. Ron is a longtime personal friend and owner of OptimusMedia.com, a web design and hosting company. I'm not sure what Ron will write about, just hope he does! Whatever the topic, you can be sure it will be both entertaining and informative.

Don't ask me why TypePad doesn't have a search functionality built-in. However, in lieu of that obvious design flaw (I know, I'm being overly harsh.), there is an easy-to-use search engine that can index TypePad files and give good, relevant returns. It's called Picosearch.

I've just started using it, and even though the returns page has some advertising on it and is not completely customizable to mimic the look of my blogsite, I can live with that. If it makes your job of finding information easier, that's all that matters to me.

Since my business is primarily targeted to small-small business, helping them to develop an online presence, I've found that many of my clients have a basic working knowledge of the Internet, but not much more. They know how to check email, browse Ebay and search on Google, but when it comes to knowing how websites work. . .well, that's another matter altogether.

That's why I was glad to come across this article by Russell Shaw. It's called "How Websites Work." No, it won't transform you from an Internet neophyte to a maven, but it is a step in the right direction.