Priya Shah has written an excellent article titled How To Build Traffic To Your Blog. The article talks about the need to write posts people will read, why you should optimize posts for search engines, and other practical "guerilla" marketing techniques you can use. (Via Micropersuasion)

Oh, and here's another good article on the subject.

Here's an idea to spread the use of blogs - give one as a Christmas gift.

Right now, TypePad.com is offering a special buy one, get one free deal. Get one for yourself, and one to give to a friend. In addition, they are offering special discounts.

Though I am transitioning my blog to SquareSpace.com hopefully by the end of the month, I am still a huge TypePad fan and believe it to be a serious tool for business bloggers.

Saw this in an article on EContentMag.com. . .

The wild and wooly blogosphere itself will not make money for many, including blog networks like Gawker Media and Weblogs Inc. Nevertheless, blogs are already proving to be powerful audience retention devices for known media brands. Some B2B sites report that up to 10% of daily traffic now goes to columnist blogs.

Blogging is less a business model than a thoroughly compelling communications model that keeps users coming back two and three times a day more effectively than standard content refreshes. Accept it and get sponsors for it.

"Thoroughly compelling communications model" is the phrase that jumped out and grabbed me. That pretty much sums it up. Blogging is not so much a business model, as it is as a tool for enhancing marketing communications. It's a traffic magnet that no small business should be without.

Move over Andy, there is another definition of blogs that I like better than yours. (Just kidding, but it is a good one.) It comes from Halley Suitt, who authors the very popular Halley's Comment blog.

Her definition comes from a manifesto she wrote for ChangeThis.com called The Art of the Alpha Female Blogger. She calls blogs "love letters."

When you think about it, that's what they are, because love has to do with passion. And can you think of a more passionate group of people on the planet than bloggers? I don't think so.

Bloggers obsess over one topic and write about it with impunity. They attract a cadre of readers who share similar passions. It's addictive in its force and, when done well, is compelling, articulate and often cutting edge.

Face it, bloggers are hopeless romantics one and all. If that is indeed the case, I fit right in!  (Though I fancy myself as a "hopeful" romantic!)

Merriam-Webster says the #1 most searched word on its Web sites in 2004 was "blog." Who says blogging is not headed mainstream?

I've been promising you a review of some blogging related resources. Here's one from T. L. Pierce on the software application Blogjet.

T. L. also has begun a series called How to Blog 101, which is a basic primer on blogging. If you visit the site, you'll notice he has a lot of info on RSS as well. Good stuff!

If I hear a blog defined as a "personal online journal or diary" one more time, I think I will puke!

I must have read that definition 10 times here lately, and most of the time it was referencing a blog used for business.

I've found two better definitions that I'd like to share with you. And they are (drumroll please). . .

Easy Bake Weblogs - This definition by Andy Wibbels is categorically the best I've read.

Article in Search Engine Journal - Down the page in the article there is this definition:

A publication of content and Web links, sorted in chronological order, with the most recent at the top. The content reflects personal or corporate interests, and is almost always written by an individual. Blogs were originally called web logs or weblogs. However, as “web log” can also mean a server’s log files, the term was confusing. To avoid this confusion, the abbreviation “blog” was coined, and became the common term.

I think that one is pretty good. But, pleeeeaaassseeee, journalists don't show your ignorance of blogging (at least as it applies to business) by using that lame definition listed above. If in doubt, ask, ok? Thanks!

In a few days I am going to be introducing you to my new alter ego (or I should say "altar" ego), the Rev. Billy Blog -- the business blogging evangelist!

Billy has one goal in life, and that is to convert business to the gospel of blogging. You might say he is on a "mission from God!" (The "god" of the Blogosphere anyway.)

Marketing instructor and avid blogger Lenny Charnoff teaches a course called "Feeding The Entrepreneurial Mind" at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon.

For a final project the students could choose writing a paper on a famous entrepreneur or creating a blog. He used this post in my blog to start them off.

Take a look at some of his student's handiwork:

• randi942.blogspot.com
• pacificbloggroup.blogspot.com
• nwphotography.blogspot.com
• ashleyshead.blogspot.com
• www.believeandact.blogspot.com
• pacificsato.blogspot.com
• sakai10.blogspot.com

Lenny asserts that sooner than later you will see colleges and universities offering "Blogging" as a required course for business majors.

He says "21st Century entrepreneurs need affordable, dynamic business tools that can quickly measure the ROI of a product or service."

Lenny's blog is www.digitalcollege.org.

According to a report at ClickZ.com, the phenomena called weblogging is growing exponentially. The current number of blogs is now over 8 times bigger than the 500,000 blogs measured in June, 2003.

Technorati has tracked 3 million blogs as of the first week of July, and has added over 1 million blogs to its stable since then. Meanwhile, Pew Internet & American Life reports a new weblog is created every 5.8 seconds. That roughly translates into 15,000 new blogs every day. However, only a fraction of these are being updated routinely, less than 1 million in fact.

11 percent (approximately 50 million) of Internet users are regular blog readers. Active bloggers, meanwhile, update their blogs regularly, to the tune of more than 275,000 posts daily, or about 11,000 updates an hour.

Finally, the demographics of blog authorship are somewhat disputed, but the bulk of bloggers clearly are within the under-30 demographic. According to a Perseus study, over 90 percent of blogs are authored by people between the ages of 13 and 29, with 51.5 percent between the ages of 13 and 19.