by Jim Smoot

Created on: March 27, 2008

Over the past several years blogging has become a very valuable tool for internet marketing, and for good reason; it works! Blogging gives you a great return on your investment for a number of reasons.

1. Ease of Entry

Getting started blogging is one of the easiest ways to establish a presence on the web. With services such as Blogger, WordPress.com, and many others, getting started is very simple. It's basically just a matter of signing up for the service, writing your profile, then getting started writing your blog posts.

Blogging in general does not require a great deal of writing skill, however, if you are using your blog as a marketing tool there is some skill involved.

If you are writing for your own personal enjoyment you can say pretty much what you want, however you want to say it. If you are writing for marketing purposes there are other considerations to keep in mind. In order to attract readers, it helps to get noticed by Google. That means you need to learn how to work keywords into your posts in a way that Google will notice, but it doesn't become distracting to your readers. It's not hard to do, but it does take a little practice.

2. Low Cost

Depending on what you are trying to accomplish with your blog, it can be very inexpensive, even free, to set up and maintain.

If your purpose is to get the word out about a product or service, or to promote yourself as an expert in your chosen area, then many of the free services will serve you well. Be aware however, if you are looking to earn money selling advertising on your blog, many of the free services will not give you that option. Think through what you want to accomplish before making a decision. Research the different services to find out what they will and will not allow.

Free services also give you less flexibility, although many of them do give you a lot of options in the look and feel of your blog. For the majority of bloggers this is fine, but if you are thinking about going "pro" with your blog, the free services will probably not be a long term answer.

Even if you do want to set up you own site, it is very inexpensive to so. For the cost of registering your domain name, and a basic hosting service you can be up and running in very short order. I use a free program called WordPress that is very simple to use, and offers great flexibility.

3.) Interactive

Here is where blogging really separates from other forms of marketing. While traditional marketing focuses on building a customer base, blogging focuses

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