The word blog is short for “web log” — and it refers to any short collection of posts on a site that are made in reverse chronological order. That is, on a blog, all information is arranged according to the date it was posted. The stuff that is posted last is highest up on the blog. The stuff that was posted a long time ago is at the very bottom or is stashed away in the archives. Bloggers – people who own and post on blogs – tend to update them quite frequently in comparison to normal sites. In fact, it is common for bloggers to post more than once in a single day, often focusing on the latest news events or minor details about some upcoming event. On the whole, blogs are narrowly focused, frequently updated, and are arranged in a specific format.

You might want to own a blog for one of several reasons. Perhaps you want to pour out all of your thoughts onto an online diary, where people can read it and comment on it. Perhaps you want to keep track of news and political events, interact with other people who do the same; and use your might as a blogger to persuade people into taking one position or another. Or perhaps you want to use a blog to promote your business. For the purposes of this article, I will assume that is what you plan to do.

So how do you go about creating your own blog to promote your business? There are several easy ways to do this. First and ideally, if the hosting service you use for your business site offers “Fantastico,” you can host your blog on your own domain. All you have to do is click on the “Fantastico” button on your control panel; and then look for the WordPress plugin. From there, all you have to do is click a few buttons and follow the directions; and your blog will be ready to start making posts in a matter of minutes.

If your hosting service does not offer Fantastico, you can either host a “blogger” blog on your own domain; or you can allow Google to host it for you. This is quite easy. All you have to do is go to http://www.blogger.com, setup an account; and follow the directions for creating a blog, tuning the template, and updating new posts.

Once you have created your blog, you will want to figure out the best way to create engaging posts on a regular basis; and to take the traffic generated from those posts and direct them to your site, so that you can convert them into buyers and prospects. There are a number of models you can use to do this, but I suggest trying the following: rather than adding entire posts to your blog, post the entire entry or article on your site; and then post a summary on your blog. Use your blog to generate traffic through social bookmarking sites (i.e. by pinging places like http://www.pingoat), direct that traffic to those summaries – and then include a link to the full article.

To reiterate: blogs are highly flexible applications. You can use them for a number of reasons. But they are particularly good for making short posts frequently and for generating traffic in ways that websites cannot. Master this tool, add it to your traffic generation arsenal, and you will reap the benefits.