Blog your site to unblock your traffic

The blogs are upon us.

About twenty years ago in his book "Megatrends," John Naisbitt predicted that our society will become not only more high-tech but also more high-touch. This trend, which has increasingly pervaded our fast-paced, Internet-oriented culture in the last decade, was the focus of a spinoff book entirely dedicated to that single prediction (see http://hightechhightouch.com).

While Naisbitt never mentioned it directly, my interpretation is this: the more technology-driven we become (i.e., the more automated and robotic we become, as is the case with the web), the more we will crave and seek out human interaction.

It's human nature, for we are social animals. And in spite of the Internet being touted as a tool of automation, efficiency and convenience, it will never replace the shopping mall. We need to communicate and interact with others. We need to socialize with (or at least be around) other people.

Online, Naisbitt's prediction-turned-reality takes the shape of actions marketers take to humanize their digital presence by giving their electronic facade, if you will, a human face.

From as simple as a message board, an ezine or a discussion list, to as complex as an online community, live person chat capability and customer relationship management, marketers do (and should do) what they can to humanize their websites.

People want to deal with people and not computer monitors. Call it the need for trust. Call it desire to interact. Call it the fear of making bad decisions. But whatever you call it, remember that it is only human. And you can't change that.

But one online tactic is growing in popularity. Although it's been around for a while, people are beginning to recognize its place in the world of Internet marketing. Moreover, it's an effective way for visitors to get acquainted with the people behind the website, and offers a way for people to connect.

For marketers, the benefits are many. It can help to not only humanize but also magnetize a website, and it can leverage a viral marketing campaign by creating a certain buzz about the business. In other words, it can become a marketing tool that can enhance a website's traffic, publicity and stickiness.

It's called web journaling or logging (or simply "blogging").

Most news-oriented sites (websites that have pages dynamically generated and updated for the purpose of adding news items on their web pages) started this trend way back in the early days of the web -- that's about five years for you and me, kids.

But today, blogging is taking over the web by storm. A person can use their blog to add personal (and professional) ideas, comments, news, opinions, links and so on. In short, it helps to add a certain voice and personality to the website, giving in to that social necessity Naisbitt described earlier.

According to Rebecca Blood, in a web essay on blogging (see it at http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html):

"(A) weblog provides many advantages to its readers. It reveals glimpses of an unimagined web to those who have no time to surf. (...) There are topic-oriented weblogs, alternative viewpoints, astute examinations, short-form journals, links to the weird and notebooks of ideas."

According to an Inc.com article, while the vast majority of weblogs consist of "hobbyists who publish their own daily wanderings using the Internet's vanity press," marketers are using them as loyalty-building tools or forums in which they subtly promote their skills and expertise (see the full article at http://www.inc.com/articles/details/1,,ART21046,00.html).

Blogs are relatively easy to install. Most of them use simple CGI scripts and some of them are free. For example, Open Journal is a downloadable snippet of CGI at http://grohol.com/downloads/oj/. There's also Grey Matter at http://www.noahgrey.com/greysoft/.

However, a popular one (and it's free), where no knowledge of CGI is required, is Blogger at http://www.blogger.com. All you need to do is register and paste a snippet of HTML code on your website. Thereafter, all that's required is logging into Blogger.com and adding your daily tidbits, comments and ideas.

You can use it to add news items about your website or online business, or to post thoughts and opinions about your field, product category or industry. For a complete guide to blogs as well as a list of tools that enable blogging, visit http://www.lights.com/weblogs/hosting.html.

Two of my favorite blogs, which I visit and read on a frequent basis, are those by Chris Locke and Anne Holland.

Chris Locke (or "Rageboy") is the co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" (for more, see http://cluetrain.com), which is a book professing the concept that the Internet is not composed of computers, companies or even consumers for that matter but of conversations. His blog can be found at http://www.rageboy.com/blogger.html, which is always full of Locke's insights and intelligent scatterings.

Anne Holland, one of the masterminds behind the marketing mega-site ClickZ.com, has her blog at http://sherpablog.blogspot.com. I've been an avid reader of Clickz.com and particularly of Holland's own website at http://marketingsherpa.com. She even maintains a secondary blog dedicated to the information business, in which most of us marketers are, at http://contentbiz.blogspot.com.

Other blogging tools and directories can be found at:

• http://www.free-conversant.com/
• http://www.weblogs.com/
• http://www.weblogger.com/
• http://lukwam.com/
• http://cyberian.tripod.com/Blog.htm
• http://www.blogspot.com/
• http://www.daypop.com/
• http://www.blogfinder.com/
• http://www.bloghop.com/
  

Nevertheless, both Naisbitt and Locke are telling us something ominous to which marketers must heed. The opening statement of cluetrain.com proclaims, "If you only have time for one clue this year, this is the one to get: We are not seats or eyeballs or end-users or consumers. We are human beings -- and our reach exceeds your grasp ... Deal with it."