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Can a Blog earn you a prison sentence? Ask Mojtaba Saminejad. He is an Iranian whose Blog, published in the Farsi language, earned him a two-year prison sentence in June 2005.

The online community is fast waking up to the power of blogs which have spread across the internet like wild fire. If you are still grappling with the word BLOG, these are online websites which are diary-like in approach and people are free to publish news or their ideas and thoughts. Blogs are very popular as they are simple to use and in most cases, free.

However, professional bloggers (people who have a decent no. of hours of blogging to their credit) will admit that blogging is not as easy as waking up in the morning, checking out some posts and putting together a few witty lines before you brush your teeth. You do need to be knowledgeable about the subject you are writing on or you are likely to be torn apart by people who are.

Having a Blog has its own set of inherent advantages which are obvious and some which are not so obvious. The better known advantages are:

Freedom to express: If you like to build a chain of communication and use that as food for thought and for your existence, a BLOG is the best way to create this outlet. You can express your opinion openly and you just might be surprised by the number of people who would agree with you. Such communication channels also help build momentum for a particular line of thought.

Networking at its best: If you own a blog which has genuine exchange of ideas it can evolve onto a good platform to network and grow your business. It is easier to impress potential customers with a strong and valid point of view rather than a price quote.

Excellent advertising platform: The sheer size of community generated at a popular blog provides an excellent advertising platform for advertisers. With the hunger for new advertising platforms which is both innovative and cost effective, blogs seems like the next location for the big bucks of advertisers.

Gauging public opinion on products and services: Bloggers post comments at a fiery pace. It is not uncommon to see a couple of comments posted within a few minutes of the original post. The topic and title of the blog needs to be alluring enough to get such quick responses. Blogs thus become an excellent forum to gauge public opinion on products and services and even political and business events.

Useful tool for inter-company communication without the red tape: IBM recently started a blog for its employees on the intranet. Reason? Simple, to get employees interacting with each other and building up a knowledge based community for putting together new ideas as well as provide good human resource practices. More and more companies are ignoring the naysayers for blogs and going ahead with using this tool for fostering better employee relations within the company. The knowledge sharing is also excellent and HR personnel can monitor comments to get an idea about new policies or identify troublesome issues head on and well in advance.

Other benefits which are worth mentioning if you own a blog is search engine optimization due to the high volume of content featured here, updating yourself on the latest trend in the marketplace which subsequently helps you identify new opportunities which helps you stay ahead and allows you to be tech-savvy in your social and professional circle. The benefits outlined above should be enough to inspire you to start a blog at the earliest!