• Section: Money Guide - Category: Online Business
• Written by Ba Kiwanuka

If you have an internet business, or some form of online home business which doesn't currently support a blog then you are losing a lot of ground to your competitors and quietly signing the death warrant of your online money making ventures.

Blogging Is The Future Of Online Activity

Actually to be honest blogging isn't the future of online activity Blogging Is The Now of Online Activity and has been for some time. Everything and everybody is leaning towards web 2.0 based sites such as blogs and when I mean everyone and everybody I'm talking about the people who count and search engines. That's right search engines...remember those pesky not-so-trivial online dictators that we just can't seem to do without but fervently wish we could?

SURE...a lot of savvy internet marketers are harping on how th

e golden era of the search engine has been one-upped by social media sites and is for all intent and purposes over; truth be told that's a pile of steaming hogwash. Why? Well let's look at some figures...you can't go wrong with figures and stats; just as long as they are right I guess:

Search Stats End of 2007

* Google: 63.98% (The bigboy has muscled up)

* Yahoo: 22.87% (Retained the same balanced diet)

* MSN: 7.98% (Looks like Microsoft's search is on a slimfast diet)

* Ask.com: 3.49% (The toddler of the pack...must be doing good because it won a PC World Nomination for 25 Most Innovative Products of The Year)

Fine And Dandy But What Has Mainstream Search Got To Do With Web 2.0?

Hmmm,wasn't the whole point of social media websites and the explosion of new refined niche-category search engines supposed to circumvent bigboy online mainstream search? After all Google is no longer the darling of the people it once was and doesn't seem to abide by its "Do No Evil" motto anymore. Be that as it may Google ain't going anywhere anytime soon no matter how loud disillusioned acolytes may chant. Google is making sure of that by strengthening its grip on search and its influence in the social media theater...that's why it bought Youtube for $1.65 billion dollars despite having its own Google Video platform which however, in comparison, performed dismally.

What was the real driving force behind the Google buy up of Youtube? How about the fact that Youtube has over 100 million videos viewed a day and well over 72 million unique visitors each and every month!

But this is happenstance digression, time to get back to the point!

Mainstream Search Engine Web Traffic vs. Social Media Traffic

If you think of mainstream search as enormous relatively unrefined web traffic and that of social media websites as more niche-oriented or refined web traffic you wouldn't be far wrong. But that is not the complete story because conversely search-engine based web traffic is more valuable to you as an internet marketer or if you have an online home business. Catch is, it ain't easy to get to the top of the search engines where it really matters! Luckily this is where social media sites and web 2.0 truly shine.

It is a lot easier to get a good flow of web traffic from web 2.0 and social media sites than it is from the search engines, most especially if your website/blog is spankin' brand new! However getting internet traffic from social media sites also requires a level of input from you (Yup! What one-time big-hair advocate and internationally recognized hairstylist Vidal Sassoon quipped stands ever strong today as the day he uttered it: "The Only Place Where Success Comes Before Work Is In The Dictionary").

Social Media And Web 2.0 Is All About Community

Much as we like to think of ourselves as unique creatures and largely independent-minded the truth is we humans are little more than herd animals. We tend to appreciate and hangout with like-minded individuals, people who mirror our thoughts and ideas. In other words people gravitate towards people who share the same interests. True there is some time-whipped saying which states that opposites attract but that's best left to the fiel

< Prev Article		Next Article >