The Whale Hunting Women newsletter outlines a process for women to use when planning big changes in their lives. The first three steps are: Imagine, Investigate, and Invent.  As a professional blogger, I’ve observed different business owners planning to add blogging to their business marketing plan, yet they have no idea what blogging is all about.

In theory, blogging is the most easily-launched marketing tool that a business can use.  Unlike labor-intensive direct mail campaigns or expensive new brochures, ads, and signs, blogs can be started in a few minutes, and, even more appealing, launched without any financial commitment up front.  Before starting the process, the entrepreneur imagines: he/she can just picture them coming – hosts of internet browsers, all looking for information about the very kind of products and services his or her business offers. The owner does some investigation.  He/she reads about blogging, perhaps attends a webinar or seminar, and asks friends who own businesses or professional practices about their experiences with business blogging.  On to Step #3: Invent. The owner jots down ideas for the blog, and even writes the very first blog post.  There are so many great ideas to share with all the people who will be clicking on the blog! So far, so great.

But this is precisely the point at which many business blogging efforts go astray, with lofty dreams and plans ending up in the ditch. The fourth step is Implement.  Even knowing that winning the search and driving business to the website involves frequency of posting blogs, the majority of small business owners, even with the help of their staff and employees, simply cannot spare the time or maintain the discipline of composing and posting blogs frequently enough to make a difference in their marketing results.  As Barbara Weaver Smith, founder of  Whale Hunting Women stresses about implementing the plan, “The important part here is to keep moving.  Business owners who fully understand the difficulty in keeping up frequency and recency in business blogging are the ones who hire ghost bloggers.  As a professional ghost blogger, I am there for the fourth “I“ in other words, to implement.

Whether the blogs are written by the business owner or by his or her ghost blogger, the fifth “I” is the key to the real success of blogging – Integrate.  As Weaver-Smith advises, continue to implement your plan until it becomes totally part of your new way of life and work.  In the case of blogging, even if professional ghost blogging helps my client’s company or professional practice in the search, so that the blog is consistently appearing in a coveted Page One spot on Google, Yahoo, or MSN, there’s work to be done back at the business in order to integrate. That means tracking how many new potential customers showed up at the website (or in person at the place of business) just because of the blog.  That means learning exactly who those customers are and whether they fall into the demographic that business is trying to attract.

Barbara Weaver Smith knows whale hunting works.  My Say It For You business owner clients know blogging works.  But, before you jump in with both feet to business blogging, remember this: you’ve got to keep an eye on all five I’s.

The mayor of New York City proposes putting windmills on city bridges and on rooftops to help supply renewable energy to the city in the form of wind power.  Neighbors worry about having unsightly wind turbines on street corners, but the city’s director of the Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability reassured a New York Times reporter that you can make them (the windmills) so small that people think they’re part of the design.

Business owners on a budget can learn a useful lesson from Big Apple.  Just like the city of New York, businesses need to generate marketing power.  The cost of extensive print advertising and direct mail campaigns can be daunting for businesses struggling to grow market share in today’s economy.  What’s needed is wind power to propel new customers and clients to the business without the owner needing to make extensive and inflexible upfront financial commitments.  In business marketing, blogs can serve as the parallel to what New York is calling eggbeater-like wind turbine models.  Blogs are small, shorter and more centered around just one idea than e-zines or newsletters.  Like the proposed rooftop mini-turbines, which require less wind force and less set-up time than their standard-sized counterparts, blogs require less of business owners than major advertising and marketing thrusts.

Blogs are informal, friendly, conversational, and, because new material is posted frequently, blog posts tend to be more up-to-the-minute. Blogs can link to other blogs and web sites, turning mini-power into maxi-power, and increasing exposure to the search engines.  As blog expert Denise Wakeman enthuses: Search engines love blogs!

Mayor Bloomberg is trying to reduce New York City’s dependence on a power grid that caused big blackouts.  He’s thinking small; eggbeaters on the roof. Businesses trying to reduce marketing costs while increasing marketing power might do well to think small, too.  Blogger on the roof, anyone?