I was reading an article about blogs the other day on BusinessWeek.com, and the writer used an analogy that really caught my interest.  He called the blogging world the “biggest coffeehouse on Earth.”  Well, what goes on in a coffeehouse besides the drinking of various forms of coffee? 

Students studying for exams, old friends catching up on their life events, a retiree soaking up the latest news from the newspaper, managers striking business deals…a coffeehouse is a place teeming with information exchanges which is exactly what blog hotspots do.

Just to get an idea of how much information was changing hands at a blog hotspot, I visited the homepage of a WordPress.com, a free blog service that a friend of mine uses, and by noon that day, between their 347,199 users, 493,292 new posts had been made with 353,578 comments attached to those posts.  Just a little less than 1 million idea exchanges or conversations had transpired. 

That’s a lot of information and those numbers are from only one spot.  There are tons of blog services so you can imagine how much information is flowing through the channels of the internet.

So what does this mean to business owners?  It means a number of things, actually:

• Consumers have a greater access to more information than they have had in the past. 
• They are more connected to what is happening in the world around them. 
• They can find dozens of reviews for your company in a matter of seconds without ever having set a foot in your doors. 
• (Deep breath) They can base their opinion of you on the experiences of complete strangers before they even give you a chance to prove yourself (not that they didn’t do that before blogs, but it’s even more widespread now) and your company’s reputation can now be made or broken in a matter of a few seconds due to the instantaneousness circulation of blogs rather than a few days of friends talking over their morning coffee in a literal coffeehouse.

The instant information flow of blogs and all social media also means that you can get your message out to consumers a million times faster than ever before.  You can answer their questions before they ever ask or they can find the answer to their questions in your own business blog, on your website, or through someone else’s blog/website at their own leisure.  They could be snuggled under blankets in their flannel pajamas and get the information they need.

Instant information flow via social media like blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. has created a world-wide coffeehouse for consumers and businesses to share information a whole lot faster.  Use that freedom wisely and your business will take off.