Blogs are dead. Blogs can’t have creative graphics. Blogs are for techie people or kids.

How did the use or importance of blogs suddenly become so limited?

Think of a blog as a Web site, just with a few more cylinders under the hood. If you are a business owner, author or speaker, you want to achieve several objectives by the time your Web site is launched. Some of goals should include:

* YOU have to be able to make at least small content changes to your Web site pages without paying a designer and waiting days or even weeks for the changes to be made and it has to be easy or you won’t do it

* A custom look to your Web site that has your branding in mind, rather than a free or purchased template used by 250 other sites out there

* Facebook and Twitter are only two of the hottest social sites on the Web today and your Web site needs to automatically syndicate content to those resources routinely

* Simple inclusion of video and audio whether hosted by YouTube or other 3rd party

* Shopping cart and newsletter opt-in compatibility so that you can always be building your list and promoting products or services

* You must have full control over the way your pages appear including search engine friendly urls, custom page titles, custom headlines and other factors to enable any and all of your Web pages to appear high on search engines

* Make sure whatever you spend on help to get the project underway is worth the value you pay and that the project will pay for itself

You can still get a custom Web site assembled from the ground up by paying a designer to construct the site using Dreamweaver or coding the HTML from scratch. But, even today it’s a chore for a business owner to be in control of his own content with a traditional Web site. You either have to buy editing software like Contribute or advance your skills to maintain your content with Dreamweaver or HTML coding.

Of course, you might be thinking a content management system (also called CMS) is the way to go. True there are many CMS products available including some pretty popular ones like Joomla or Drupal. Just be ready to learn because Joomla is like learning a whole new software package and Drupal will require a programmer at your right hand most of the time.

It just all seems so complex doesn’t it? Well, it’s not anymore. I recommend WordPress blog software to almost all my clients who are looking for a first Web site or even those with old Web sites wanting to upgrade. To see them adding new pages on their own and even uploading audio and video to their pages is just truly gratifying.

If you’re a more advanced Internet marketer reading through this and wondering why I’m even talking about blogs as something new and exciting even though they’ve been around for a few years now, that’s because blogs are evolving TO something new … and that is exciting! Sure, there are many advanced steps to what I’m making sound like such a simple process. But, the truth is, it really is simple to get started with a WordPress blog and profitable too!

So, the most important of all of these 7 criteria in this year particularly, is being able to manage your own content and being able to learn how to do it quickly. In this economy, it’s more important than ever that you feed your Web site, search engines and social media with fresh quality content. And, you will soon enjoy the benefits of not having to wait and pay for your designer to make changes for you.