What a difference a month makes! Mark Weisman it appears is now an avid blogger, as his regularly updated blog bears out. In fact, it’s earned a coveted link in my blogroll at stephenw.us, and I’m even learning a lot about sustainable landscape design. I think it’s great when business interaction can enrich personal lives, a good thing in a world that tries so hard at times to keep personal and business separated.

As we discussed down at WDG, SEO in our opinion is a misunderstood field, and part of that is simply down to SEO vertical marketing firms pushing things that are less important than blogging, such as keyword research and keyword meta tags.

In a recent article over at Google Webmaster Central, Matt Cutts really brought to light how things like keywords are over emphasized. It’s created quite a buzz.

Blogging for your firm represents literally the best opportunity to increase the surface area of your brand, and if you are a good writer and people pay attention to what you have to contribute, the organic search benefits are huge. Many SEO analysts will tell you these days that pay-per-click is rendering organic search near useless, but we believe there is no substitute for valid cross linking, non-advertising based content, for essentially creating and maintaining sustainable “near marketing” results. There is little to no cost to you as a business owner for writing a great article and having it consumed by potential clients.

This concept and approach also sort of fits with WDG’s approach to sustainable Landscape Architecture design and indeed is merited in the way that Mark likes to blog. It’s a great strategy, he posts frequent updates, with great images and cleverly articulated copy. I would imagine that Mark will become widely followed in his industry and beyond as a result. Instant marketing savvy.

So the message today is simple; blog. One of my facebook friends has a new years resolution in 2010 to blog more, and I’ve vowed to help him make sure he has a great theme for his blog once he gets started. He is a small business owner and I know from watching Mark and WDG that regularly blogging will over time grow the presence of his brand. That’s the idea!