Blogging is too often looked at as an end - it's not an end, it's a means. Businesses that choose to blog should do so because it supports their web presence - either to sell something or support a customer.

Blogs aren't a new end, they're a new means to an old end of business - growing revenue or supporting customers. Integrating blogs with other media and marketing means, to achieve the overall most effective communications, is the goal of marketing and how you should approach blogs. Add blogs to the tool kit of media and combine it with the best of all marketing communications to the betterment of your company.

Businesses that decide to blog need to integrate them into their web strategy. Note I'm saying they should integrate blogs into their web strategy, not their web-site. When integrated properly, blogging supports the company and its objectives - there's no issue of blogging being a distraction or a side-line of the business...they're one and the same.

To be certain, not all companies should blog - they're a tool of business. Tools are employed in support of a goal to achieve something. For example: A hammer is interesting, but it's worthless unless used as a means to hang a picture, build a tree house, etc. You never use a hammer just because you can; you use a hammer to accomplish something greater and more important. Blogs should be employed as a tool in the same way. Blogs are a means, not an end.

Blogs support a company's on-line strategy to sell or support a product or service. If your key audience isn't on-line today, employing a blog isn't going to change that. There are exceptions, but the exceptions require other changes in your business and web strategy.

People should ask themselves one question when trying to decide their web strategy and the decision to blog: Should my business be on the web and if so, for what purpose? From there, a blog either makes sense or not. Blogs trail web strategy, they don't lead it.

Business Blogging - just because you can, doesn't mean you should.