A realtor contact of mine recently asked about the benefits of business blogging, whether or not to worry about content and idea theft, etc… Here are a few of my observations:

• Business Blogging is highly effective at building reputation and perceived expertise online. It is the perfect PR path to establishing you as a/the expert in your niche and for online reputation management.
• Branding is accomplished through repeated contact. Blogging is an effective vehicle for brand building through return website traffic.
• Competitive Differentiation - Repeat readers of your blog will more easily see the differences between you and the competition.
• It is efficient at distributing time-sensitive and time-relevant information as it is indexed significantly faster in the search engines than static website content.
• Blogging can distribute content days and/or weeks faster than print to your client base.
• If your business is personal (as real estate is), it can help establish rapport and respect with potential clients.
• If your business is "big business," blogging can help make customer service and satisfaction more accessible and allow a conversation to develop between customers and staff. Customers appreciate corporate transparency and honesty.
• If you already have a website, blogging allows you to make regular, easy additions to the site content; and the search engines love fresh subject-focused content on websites.
• If you need to publish any news or updates concerning product recalls, shipping delays, etc…, blogging can save you from an avalanche of phone calls and emails by providing a focal point for offical distribution of company "news."
• The act of writing will provide you with new ideas and help you formalize the general concepts floating around in your head.
• RSS syndication feeds produced by your blog software make your content accessible outside of your website and the traditional path of search engine traffic.

On the subject of idea/content theft, people can "steal" anything, especially considering that the basis of most creativity is mimicry and inspiration from prior "art," but you will have to determine the value of presenting the content vs the value of its duplication. The reality is, very few people take the time to duplicate people’s successful efforts no matter how much they talk about it or say how "easy" it would be. If someone sees your brilliant yard sign, for example, they may consider copying it but will not likely follow through. However, I would imagine that that yard sign will bring you significant returns vs any theoretical theft. Same with online content. On the flip-side, blogging does allow people to easily quote you and redistribute your ideas and content to a larger audience while driving the credit back to you. Any derivative works will also establish you as a quality resource.

Also, the golden rule of copyright is that creative works are the copyright of the creator at the moment of creation, whether you file an official copyright request or not.

On the subject of frequency, I recommend "publishing consistently." If you can only post one article per week, that’s fine, but do it every single week. Subscribers will expect it and you will not gain a long-term audience by writing 12 posts tomorrow and none for a week. Many blogging platforms allow you to apply a future date to an article, allowing you to post-publish any excess articles that you have written so as to spread out the content. Every 3 days is better than every two weeks, but it is imperative that whatever schedule you choose (more being better), it must stay reasonably consistent.

Further thoughts?