After about a week with the system I am very impressed. I suspect there will be many more reasons to like Docs, but here are the first three...

1. Sharing documents is very easy. Just add someone else's Google login email address and it is done. You can optionally send an email to your collaborators telling them the file is shared.

2. Folder organization works nicely. You can save your text documents in your own folders, then share them with others who can then organize them as they see fit. This accommodates people who have a difficult time with file and folder organization. Believe it or not, everybody does not like the abstract file and folder model used and taken for granted by computer geeks everywhere. With Google Docs you share the specific document, not the document-in-a-particular-location, so Collaborator B does not have to buy into Collaborator A's folder structure.

3. The default formatting used in the basic text "documents" translates nicely into most article submission and blog entry forms. MS Word notoriously adds characters that article and blog entry forms do not like.

The answer is "Yes". Creating and maintaining a blog is a good way to increase your online presence, make more people aware of your products and services, express opinions and share information, as well as being a good way to get feedback from customers and prospects.

Here are some of the reasons why you should have a blog, perhaps even before you have a regular static website.

1. You can do just about everything with a (Wordpress*) blog that you can do with a static website.

2. Setting up a blog is much easier than creating a website. Yes, it is true there is some basic programming involved. But if you get a professional "blog setter-upper" to do it for you it will cost much less than building a decent looking website.

3. Design is very flexible. There are hundreds of free "themes" that determine how it will look. And as long as you don't modify the theme too much you can switch themes on the fly in about 15 seconds for a completely new look.

4. Blogs are generally more search engine friendly because typical blog structure forces you to create content that is optimized the way the search engines like it.

5. The search engines (usually) crawl blogs more often than static websites, because blogs change more often. As new content is introduced with new product announcements or new information, those changes will get picked up more quickly by the search engines.

6. Blogs are perfect for publishing "news and views". This means you can add new content more often, and you can cover a wider range of topics than might be covered in a normal static website.

7. Blogs are interactive which makes them great for getting reader opinion, comment, and questions. If you want to interact with your customers and prospects a blog is a good way to do it.

8. Blogs can be integrated with social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Squidoo, Hub Pages, Twitter, and many others. This is usually done by simply loading in the RSS feed that the blog automatically creates.

I'm sure there are many other reasons why you should have a blog if you're involve in online business or communication. Leave a comment with your suggestions...

(*Yes, I know, this is not a Wordpress blog. It is powered by b2Evolution. That's because I've had it for a couple of years, it works, gets a bit of traffic, and it would be too much hassle to change it over. There's not much doubt that Wordpress is a more versatile and certainly more popular platform, and the one I recommend to clients.)