What’s the best way to start with blogs? Many businesses want to jump right into blogging without even familiarize themselves with the environment first. It’s like jumping into a lake without knowing how deep the lake is. If you’re a first time swimmer sure you don’t do that, aren’t you?

The fact is that blogging is different beast than conventional writing and web publishing. Sure, if you have a good writing skill or even like to do it, you have an advantage, but it’s best if you know the lingo before participating.

You may be blogging from the middle of a distance and lonely island, but once you start blogging, you’ll join the conversation with other bloggers and readers.

Ok, so you’re still reading. With current development in blog technologies, you are no longer depend on a generic search engine to locate blogs. Don’t get me wrong, search engines like Google and Yahoo! are still my favorites when it comes to searching information.

I even use them regularly to find interesting blogs, but there are more than just those. As a start, I recommend the following resources:

• Search engines: Google, Yahoo! — Using “keyword blog” to quickly see if there are blog specific to keyword. Of course you can use whatever search techniques you know.
• Blog collections and rankings: Technorati Top 100, Feedster Top 500 — Very popular blogs, may not specifically of interests to you but worth to at least a glimpse upon.
• Blog search engines and directories: Technorati, Google Blog Search — Index individual blog posts almost instantly, find interesting posts you like to read and correspondingly visit the blogs.
• Blogrolls — This is a list of blogger’s most favorite blogs, usually found on the sidebar of the a blog. Browsing blogrolls can lead to many interesting blogs, often in the same niche.

Start reading at least 20 or 30 blogs regularly for a few weeks. Have fun, besides searching for blogs specific to your industry, try entirely different things; from politics to economies, technologies, hobbies, and so on.

Get acquainted with how different industries publish news and content, express opinions, etc. Apparently, each industry speaks its own lingo. Most of them even go as far as using me-to-you voice instead of corporate speak, even on a company blog.

It is true that to establish your blog, you need to personalize and keep building relationships with prospects and customers using your own way, specific to your industry and you as a brand.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do whatever people have done successfully.

So, let’s take some actions. I’ll come back in the next installment with how blogs can affect your business.