Indeed, blogs are becoming so pervasive that a recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project revealed that 27 percent of adults who go online in the United States read blogs. That same survey showed that 40,000 new blogs appear each day. If only 0.01 percent of those are relevant to your business, that means there are 40 new blogs popping up each day that could be covering your market trends, talking about you and your competitors, and/or engaging existing or potential customers.

In addition, more than 28% of journalists now rely on blogs for reporting and research, according to a survey by EURO RSCG Magnet and Columbia University, with 53% of surveyed journalists revealing they gleaned story ideas from blogs and 36% saying they used blogs to locate sources. The study concluded that because of their appeal to and readership among journalists, blogs have "enormous potential" as a media relations tool.

Perhaps this is why a recent HP Small Business Survey showed that 10 percent of small businesses already include blogs in their marketing activities and why another 81 percent plan to spend more money on technology for Web sites, blogs, and online services in the next two to three years.

Interested in learning how to start a corporate blog of your very own? Then this best practices paper is definitely worth reading.