While personal blogging has seen a decline thanks to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, business blogging has seen a surge in popularity. Businesses are embracing blogging as it can suit the needs of their customers who refuse to tweet and shun Facebook, whilst improving their customer service and Google page ranking.

It certainly helps that marketers and PRs identify blogging as the most effective way of spreading news of their products and services, in particular in creating and launching virals.

Considering how quickly the UK tends to follow the lead of our friends over the pond, we’re likely to see similar statistics over here.

So the question isn’t really whether you should blog, rather can you afford not to? If your competition is optimising their target market with a blog filled with high quality SEO content, can you really justify not doing the same? This is particularly relevant to SMEs, who are the leading the pack when it comes to blogging.

Don’t forget you can find out more about business blogging and see some great case studies on the Miramus “Why Your Business Needs a Blog” presentation [4:28, needs audio]

Related: Blogging and social media marketing. Original content is key to success

Find the rest of the report on eMarketer.com

If you’re blogging for your business (or just blogging for the hell of it — we applaud that too), here are some Firefox add-ons, online resources and incredibly handy tools to keep you tapping at top speed.

Blogging add-ons

Top five Firefox add-ons for bloggers.

Five more Firefox add-ons for bloggers.

A survey of 450 CEOs revealed that 85 percent of  respondents feel original content is critical to the success of their social media campaign.

If you’re trying to drive traffic to your site, a blog is not only excellent at natural SEO, it’s also a great way to bring in a new audience via both search and social bookmarking — not to mention traffic from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

If you’re just writing about the latest new products your company offers, you’re unlikely to see a huge increase in traffic or sales, but by producing something that is worth reading, you’re adding valuable content to your site that can be shared amongst online communities.

For more great ideas on how you can add valuable rich media to your site to increase traffic and sales, check out the case studies in the Miramus “Why Your Business Needs a Blog” presentation [4:28, needs audio]

Related: Blogging for SEO. Improve your Google ranking with good content.

Read full report on HubSpot [via Gold Coast Social Media]

The key is to create content that’s actually worth reading. You can stack up the keywords, optimise the life out of your headers, merrily chuck in celebrity names and wave around as many search-friendly statements as you like, but if what you’re saying is ultimately pointless, you’re not really doing much to make that traffic stick.

The web is a weird and wonderful place. Make something marvellous, and people will love you for it — which is good news for your Google rankings, and even better news for your brand.

So, yes, you should be writing a post a day, engaging in social media, getting excited about social bookmarking and making free and easy with the outbound links, but most importantly of all, you should be feeding the internet with something tasty, filling and more-ish. Not something full of empty calories with a strong odour of spam.

What the SEO world has to say about blogging

Blogging for SEO
The Top 10 E-commerce Blogging Tips to Skyrocket Sales

Here at Miramus, we like to think we’ve played a small part in that thanks to the Crystal Palace Children’s Book Festival. The festival, run by Miramus founder and children’s author/illustrator, Alex Milway, will be returning at a slightly later date this year (thanks to the arrival of a Miramus baby).

New Poster unveiled!

Here’s a sneak preview of the poster, designed by the amazing Sarah McIntyre (illustrator of Morris The Mankiest Monster), who will be taking part in the festival – along with many other marvellous, award-winning writers and illustrators.

We’ll be announcing more from this year’s line up in the coming months. We’re very excited about this year’s festival. Last year’s was great – with an art exhibition, countless amazing workshops (like How to Draw Zombies!), and author readings in the Bookseller Crow on the Hill.

But this year will be EVEN BETTER! We’ve got some new venues to unveil, a very special one-off publication, and a brand new bit just for teenagers.

More announcements coming soon!

Crystal Palace Children’s Book Festival 2010 (23 October)

Of course, we’re biased because we create blogs for a living — but don’t just take our word for it. We’ve put together a presentation that explains why your business needs a blog, along with some great examples of companies whose online presence has been *transformed* by including blogging in their social media marketing strategy.

Why your business needs a blog

If you need a blog for your business and you don’t know where to start. Get in touch with Katie at Miramus — we’d love to help!

We’ve been busy working away on a brand new project over here at Miramus. Please allow me to present to you Dork Adore: Lovely Things for Geeks. A special haven we’ve set up for nerdlingers.

Here’s the blurb:

Dork Adore is brought to you by Katie Lee, founding editor of Shiny Shiny – the first gadgets site written by women for women. Dork Adore isn’t here to give you the latest tech press releases, it’s here to provide the best advice, opinion, reviews and the odd bit of geek news.

Since the site is written by a group of dorks, you’ll find every obsession covered, from TV to beauty; lifehacks to coffee makers. If you want to get in touch, click here.

Please feel free to have a mooch about, maybe click on a few links and read a few articles. And if you’d like to leave us some comments, or email me with any non-crazy thoughts, please do! You can use the contact form on Dork Adore here.

The site is written by Emma and me, as well as lots of very lovely contributors and you can find out more about all of them over on the About page.

The British Mummy Bloggers list is updated monthly and voted for by blog readers, so it’s encouraging to see that we’re moving up the chart each time it’s published.

We have a strong writing team at the moment, and so we’re not currently looking for any more regular writers.  However, we would like to hear from you if you have any one-off feature ideas. Please contact us here with your pitch.

Don’t forget, you can also follow Parentdish on Twitter.

So now, if you’re looking for my personal blog, it’s over on Katielee.co.uk, where you can also find out about various little projects I’m working on. I’ll save the big news for the Miramus blog – though we seem to be working on an awful lot of  TOP SECRET projects at the moment, which makes it quite hard to talk about new things.

Initially, he resolved this issue by using the Sky Player to stream the Ashes onto his Mac, but it kept buffering at vital moments, and we both got fed up with him stealing all the internet: BT Home Hubs aren’t designed for two web heads on wireless connections.

Instead, he bowed to the inevitable and took the retrograde step of tuning into the radio to listen to the cricket commentary like normal, Skyless people.

This has led to an interesting phenomenon, which I’ve noticed many times over the years and usually moaned about. However, in this case, it’s actually been quite handy.

It turns out, when you watch Sky HD, you are watching everything in the past thanks to the time lag. You’ll have noticed it when you switch from low-def to high def, but the time difference is even more pronounced if you’re listening to the radio.

Back in the World Cup, this time difference took the edge off penalty shoot outs because we could hear the neighbours down the road cheering or groaning a few seconds before we saw the player take the shot. We ended up enduring the stifling heat and watching with the windows shut.

But this time all it means is every time there’s a wicket Al comes running in to watch it and I look up from my monitor to catch the moment “live” for myself. It’s proved a very useful time lag and means that I’ve enjoyed the best bits of the cricket without having to watch the dreary afternoon slouch towards a draw.

So while I’m enjoying the edited highlights of the Ashes, Al’s getting a regular break from his screen with those room-to-room jogs.