What was primarily an ‘online diary’ became a ‘virtual space’ for me to network. I’ve found many a client and business online, including my PR agent (who technically, found me online). Though my blog was a space for my personal rants, it has grown over the years, as have I.

Undoubtedly, it provides an insight into business, and this digital age, I trust blogs more than websites. The platform serves as a platform to update, maintain and display creativity, all at one time, and in fact, very simply, in just one click.

Strategies to market are umpteen, and believe me, I’ve tried them all – from telemarketing to paper adverts, from digital marketing through my earlier website to the current website through word press, you can quiz me on it.

Of all the options, I’ve personally found the blog to be the most powerful, and in fact, at times, superseding social networking sites. A networking site can only get you this far, but your blog can seal the deal.

The blog has provided me a base to connect directly with my customers and clients across the globe. It is implicit of course that, to use the blog effectively, one must also network extensively, but the benefits are certainly visible within a month or so.

How exactly has it helped me?

• Mine is a service oriented business, and my blog gives a basic understanding of our services, which works as a preliminary short listing of customers. On any given day, I get 20 inquiries, of which 5 are relevant to my business; since blogging has happened, I get only relevant inquiries, and thus cutting down on my time & energy spent.
• It is a one stop option for me to display creativity, networks, past experience, tariff rates, what not – again, a time and energy saving benefit.
• It is an easy point of reference, if you do become an accomplished blogger. Any marketing novice will tell you how important ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing is. The blog is just that – a huge ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing device.

Benefits are limitless – it will depend on the business and the business person. Like most other things in life, business is a two way process of demand and supply, service provider and service receiver, in layman terms, between you and me.

Aparna Gonibeed
CEO
Integrated Systems

Web 2.0 – one of the strongest drivers today—is creating new forms of communication, causing drastic market shifts, seeing massive innovation and opening up endless opportunities for entrepreneurs to both develop and take advantage of the technology. There are various arguments about what exactly Web 2.0 encompasses. In general, it refers to a maturing of the internet, the next version of the web. Some of the Web 2.0 trends, such as user participation, are occurring across many media channels. The increase in the number of reality TV shows is one major example of this. Hit shows like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars extend user participation to the audience by allowing them to vote for contestants at the end of the shows.

The entry points of the web have also contributed to these trends. The door to information is mostly managed through major search engines and portals, such as Yahoo!, Google and MSN. These three entry points now rank search results mostly on the popularity of a website, which is affected by the number of links to the website from other websites. When people post content, they also promote it; the links back to their content begin to increase search engine rankings for sites with such user-generated content.

The popularity of YouTube, MySpace and Wikipedia further validates the importance of user-generated content. These sites either didn’t exist five years ago or were much smaller. All of these sites are predominantly tools for users to post content at no cost. These three sites in particular have come online and taken the internet by storm. YouTube, MySpace and Wikipedia currently rank fourth, fifth and 10th, respectively, in terms of traffic.

For entrepreneurs, Web 2.0 means more opportunities and better tools for running your business. No matter what type of business you own, you need to be using technology to your advantage. If you don’t, your competition will most likely crush you. As the web audience continues to increase and the use of other traditional media and advertising vehicles such as TV, newspapers and yellow-page directories continue to decline, the web becomes increasingly important for even non-technology businesses. For those of you with businesses that target younger audiences, this becomes even more important. Advertising via Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter is becoming essential for most businesses.

If you’re in any type of business where processes and procedures are important, you can use Web 2.0 technologies like wikis and service portals for collaboration. Web 2.0-based project and task management services can help make your employees much more efficient. Web 2.0 tools for collaboration also make it easier for smaller businesses to collaborate with customers and partners.

Customer relationship management tools are probably the best known Web 2.0 software that’s used as a service. Salesforce.com was one of the earliest innovators in using CRM software as a service. Meanwhile, Google Docs and Spreadsheets provide word processor and spreadsheet applications at no cost as part of Google Apps. Web 2.0 entrepreneurs continue to build out software services for functionality that only existed as packaged software before.

Web apps are hot. But what does this really mean for entrepreneurs? Three things:

1. Lots of room for start-ups: The barriers to entry are low, but the way to stand out is by solving a real customer problem. If a web app solves the user’s problem, he or she won’t hesitate to use it over traditional software.
2. Existing software companies beware: Because web apps replace the functions of traditional software programs sans occupied disk space, many PC users may decide to switch.
3. New tools for growing businesses: The myriad business tools in web app form, such as video, accounting, CRM and so on, can help businesses be more efficient, saving them money and making information accessible anytime, anywhere.
   As more and more people rely on their mobile phones and the web moves to wireless, the mobile apps industry is growing by epic proportions.

And the exciting part for entrepreneurs wanting to dial into this hot industry would be the millions in investment money flying around. Apple and Google have launched third-party mobile app markets already, and Microsoft is scheduled to release its version next year. The technology is only going to get better.

Parts of this article have been sourced from Michael Crichton’s State of Fear and Gary Reid’s articles on Mashable.