Social media strategist Lori Osterberg is now offering ghost blogging services to time-crunched business owners.

According to entrepreneur Lori Osterberg, small businesses are facing two problems in the current marketplace:

1. They know they need to become more Internet savvy, and begin reaching out to clients through various social media sites. They create blogs and open up accounts on social sites like Facebook and Twitter, only to realize they aren't sure what to do next.

2. They understand they simply don't have enough hours in the day to accomplish everything on their to-do lists. After working a full day on their normal tasks, adding another hour or two networking on social sites and writing blog posts simply isn't possible.

"I continually meet small business owners that realize the potential a blog could have on marketing their businesses," stated Lori Osterberg, founder of TheSocialGhost.com. "Yet the overwhelm quickly sets in. They aren't sure where to find the time to write and network, and what to write and communicate about with their followers."

Enter The Social Ghost.

TheSocialGhost.com provides ghost blogging services to time-crunched small business owners. Instead of taking on the role of writing about their product, service and industry, TheSocialGhost becomes an extension of their marketing team, and provides the content necessary to reach out to prospective customers, and provide quality information that helps them build a strong web presence.

Blogs typically help a small business owner in two ways.

1. Blog posts provide content that helps build up a company's expertise. Consumers aren't gullible and quick shoppers anymore. They have the tools at their fingertips to become experts at any subject matter in a short period of time. In a matter of minutes, using a desktop, laptop or mobile device, they can access websites and blogs, find testimonials and reviews, and gain instant access to a variety of product or service information. Consumers are looking for the businesses that are willing to share information, and teach them why they should depend on them as a company. And with a blog, a small business owner can feed in all the content and advice they desire, giving consumers what they are searching for.

2. Blog posts are quick to receive ranking within the search engines. Google currently has around 31 billion searches every single month. If a small business owner wants to gain traction in the search engines, a blog is the best way to do it. Blog posts can be written towards very specific terms, and focused on reaching out to specific clients and niches. The more specific, the greater the chance of being found within that search term.

"The ultimate goal is to help small business owners use technology to reach out to their target client, and stay active in engaging them," stated Osterberg. "Our job isn't to pretend to be the business owner, or communicate as such. Instead, we focus on building up expertise, and reaching out to educate readers on the company and the industry itself."

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TheBlogFrog, a tech start up offering social add-ons (also called widgets) for blogs, is taking the mom blogger market by storm. The Boulder-based company offers social features for blogs that let blog readers ask each other questions, discuss relevant topics, and see each others' blog posts and Twitter streams, all without leaving the blog.

TheBlogFrog launched in Q4 2008 and is the brainchild of Rustin Banks, who developed the beta product during nights and weekends while still a full-time engineer at a local aerospace company. Banks said he got the idea from his wife, an amateur blogger who used her blog to keep friends and family updated on their growing family. He knew there had to be a better way for readers of blogs to interact. "There was no simple way for bloggers to enable real discussions and interaction on their blogs." stated Banks. "A blog might have thousands of like-minded readers but what if I want to ask another reader a question or share my own blog content?" asked Banks.

So Banks left his aerospace job and recruited co-founder Holly Hamann, a start-up marketing veteran and blogger, to help launch the service to the blogosphere. Within months, the social widget service had struck a chord with mom bloggers, who have become the company's largest market to date.

"Our social features really resonate with mom bloggers because they are inherently community and service oriented. Women and moms tend to be more social online than men and also tend to form stronger online relationships." said Hamann.

"Our widgets have been viewed more than 50 million times by over 800,000 blog readers and growth has been phenomenal". Said Banks. TheBlogFrog has quickly grown to almost 20,000 members, whose blogs all cross-pollinate each others' content via social widgets and community forums. This makes TheBlogFrog the largest, integrated network of mom blogs on the internet. Growing segments of communities include blogs that serve military families, homeschooling, parents with special needs children, food blogs and those offering expertise on "going green" and surviving financially in a recession.

The company recently partnered with one of the most influential online mom sites, 5 Minutes for Mom, to launch a reader community for the tens of thousands of moms that visit the site monthly. The popular mom site is a Technorati Top 100 blog and was created in 2006 by twin sisters Susan Carraretto and Janice Croze. Within several hours of launching, there were over 45 discussions taking place in the online community with more than 500 replies. "We are thrilled to see our BlogFrog community connect our users in meaningful, interactive conversations." said Carraretto. "5 Minutes for Mom is all about bringing moms together and our community helps us reach that goal by integrating Web 2.0 style forums with Blog and Twitter feeds to create a truly active community." added Croze.

"There are 120,000 new blogs created every day and the total number of blogs is expected to double by 2012*. Says Banks. "Every person has a unique story to tell and people are gravitating to blogs as a way to share what they know. The social web is evolving from large, single-destination social sites to an integrated network of millions of smaller, niche blogs."

By cross-pollinating content within its network of blogs via the social widgets, TheBlogFrog helps bloggers increase exposure and traffic for their blogs, which enhances reader engagement and revenue opportunities.

About TheBlogFrog
Based in Boulder, Colorado, and founded in October 2008, TheBlogFrog brings social network capabilities to blogs via a family of community-building blog tools that enable interaction among readers. Readers can ask each other questions, see blog posts and Twitter feeds from other readers, and see trending discussion topics. TheBlogFrog's customers include bloggers and website owners who want to give visitors more ways to interact and who are looking to increase traffic and reader engagement on their sites.

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