To start off this week’s Tip, here’s an extremely abridged history of the blog: in the olden days (we’re talking 1990s here, practically pre-history to current Internet users), blogs, short for “weblogs”, were the exclusive prerogative of computer geeks and tech nerds of all stripes and colors. Then, a New Yorker named Jason Calacanis got together with seven of his friends and they all started writing blogs. Each friend maintained 10 blogs, for a total of 80. After blogging for a year, the 80 blogs made $1 million in Google AdSense revenue. Soon thereafter, Calacanis’ company was bought out by AOL for $25 million.

All of a sudden, blogging ceased to be regarded as merely the tech nerd’s favorite pastime.

Today, blogs are just about the fastest-growing feature of the Web 2.0 tool kit. Actually, to be a little more accurate, blogs are spreading across the Internet like wildfire. It certainly seems like everyone and his brother now runs a blog, from hot-shot celebrities to angst-ridden high schoolers. Blogging has changed the face of media as we know it — the worlds of politics, sports, entertainment, and daily news are now cocooned in a blogosphere that is bigger and more comprehensive than any information source previously known to man. And that’s no exaggeration.

Every business could use a blog. As far as SEO goes, blogs are great for creating new content for and generating backlinks to your website. If your business doesn’t have a blog, start one, either on your website or at a new domain. The smartest option, at least from an SEO perspective, is to host your blog on a separate server with a different IP address from your corporate website. You’ll be rewarded with a faster and more powerful indexation from Google and the other search engines.

Don’t know what to write about in your company blog? Well, that’s the real beauty of the whole blogging thing. Feel free to write about anything that enters your mind, even the most mundane events of your day. Spend a couple of minutes getting your thoughts together, and eek out a paragraph or two every so often. Before long, you’ll find that blogging isn’t just an important chore, it can actually be fun.