The fact of the matter is, blogging is in. It’s not just for teens and personal sites anymore. More and more companies are introducing their own company blogs as a way to help keep their customers informed and keep interest in their product. It’s becoming so common now that if you don’t have one, you may not be able to keep up a positive reputation.

People do read blogs. They add a personal touch to a company that helps the customer know there’s someone behind the company. It is actually a really low-cost way to get and maintain interest in a website, product, or service. Other than the inital setup and the designer, there’s very little cost to maintaining a company blog. Simply add it to your existing website.

Maintaining a company blog can also help you gain valuable feedback you might only be able to get via survey. You can pay a survey company, but most likely the only people interested in giving feedback are those who were either very happy or very unhappy with your company. You can use a blog to introduce new products or services and get immediate real-world feedback.

You may wonder if blogs are just a phase, if they’re worth the effort. Do you remember when message boards became big? Probably not, unless you’ve been around since the beginning of the ‘WWW’. When message boards first appeared on the scene they weren’t much. If you take a look now, you’ll find that more often than not, companies are running their own forums. Blogs are a lot like this, except people don’t need to sign up to leave their thoughts on your articles.

Company blogs are beneficial for the rest of us, too. I’m planning a fitness blog with a case study where I apply my methods to another person. While I am working on this fitness blog, the one over at Women’s Health Magazine helps inspire me and gives me ideas to apply to my own fitness case study.

Businesses with blogs have also begun buying advertisements on other blogs, like this one, to get the word out about their blogs or specific articles. Depending on the popularity of your own blog, you can make millions from them.