Every marketing professional knows the power of word-of-mouth advertising. In an era of advertising oversaturation, consumers crave the personalized information that word of mouth can deliver-the access to candid opinions from sources they trust.

Blogs (web logs) are informal online journals that can act like amplifiers for word-of-mouth exchanges, vastly multiplying the number of people they can reach. Many blog readers prefer blogs to more traditional messaging efforts because they tend to be more immediate, informal, and honest-like having a chat with a local expert over a beer.

Blogs are already starting to change the way audiences stay abreast of everything from politics (think Matt Drudge) to consumer products. Even if you're short of money, time, and technical know-how, blogs offer an effective new way to get more engaged with online ski enthusiasts and use word of mouth to promote your resort.

Many Internet users haven't yet discovered blogs, but that's changing fast. Analysts estimate that more than 30 million Internet users now have blogs. Although the vast majority of blogs are published by individuals, commercial enterprises are starting to embrace blogs, too. Outdoor outfitter REI is rolling out blogging capabilities for its retail store personnel, for example. Victrola, a cafe and coffee roaster in Seattle, uses a blog (victrolacoffee.net) to report on topics from the minutia of specialty coffees to developments in its neighborhood.

It's easy to imagine how ski-resort blogs could keep visitors apprised of current conditions, new lifts and runs, the latest in equipment, tips and techniques, special offers, race results, and much more. Yet blogs remain rare in the ski and snowboard business. Still, some operators have experimented successfully with blog-like features on their sites. Chuck Shepard at Hoodoo Mountain Resort, Ore., has been posting "Chuck's Page," his periodic personal musings on a variety of topics, online since 1999. Although Chuck's Page preceded the rise of blogging, it's somewhat similar in concept-and it's definitely had an impact on business. "People say to me they came to visit Hoodoo because of Chuck's Page," Shepard says.

The Benefits of Blogs
Blogs have a number of attributes that make them particularly appealing as an alternative marketing channel. You can build them for a low cost, or even entirely free of charge. They're widely accessible; anyone with a Web browser can view blogs, and for that matter, anyone with a Web browser can create blogs. As we'll discuss shortly, setting up a blog and updating it isn't much more difficult than, say, sending a few e-mails. Most blogs also provide ways for readers to subscribe so they can easily get updated information as soon as it's available.

Just what is a blog? At its heart, a blog is an electronic diary, openly published on the Web, with entries organized chronologically. One or more contributors add new entries to the blog as often as they please-once every few weeks, or multiple times in a day.

That might not sound much different than a typical Website, but one of the key advantages of blogs is how easy they are to update. Setting up and maintaining a blog doesn't require installing or learning to use complex software-all it takes is clicking a few links and filling in a few simple forms in a Web browser.

Because blogging is so quick and easy, it removes obstacles to keeping content fresh. Regular updates encourage readers to keep coming back for the latest information. Ease of use also fosters spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness postings from the bloggers themselves.

In fact, what really makes high-profile blogs stand out is that they're bursting with character and personality. Like "Chuck's Page" or the entries at victrolacoffee.net, they feature opinionated insights and personal experience rather than the sanitized corporate-speak of typical press releases or the blatantly self-promotional style of advertisements.

Additionally, most blogs include a comments section where readers provide feedback. That means bloggers can engage readers in an active dialog, rather than broadcasting into the vacuum as so many marketing efforts do. You could use a blog to highlight the opening of a new run or lift, for example, and then get a firsthand sense of what skiers really think of it.

Many blogs also incorporate "blogrolls," or lists of links to other blogs that the blogger thinks might interest his audience. Blogrolls tend to interconnect blogs on related topics, so that a Web surfer who visits one interesting blog can serendipitously discover others. Additionally, blog postings themselves often reference interesting material on other blogs.

This heavy interlinking, and the fact that most blogs are updated frequently, helps blogs achieve prominent placement in the results lists of search engines like Google. That can, in turn, drive more traffic to your Website. It also can lead to a kind of word-of-mouth chain reaction, where a particularly catchy topic that one blogger covers ultimately gets echoed across a far-flung network of Websites, increasing its reach.

Blogging: The Who and What
Even if your resort doesn't have a blog of its own, chances are that some of the millions of bloggers out there-perhaps even some of your employees-already have blogs that mention your resort. Visit a Web search engine like Google and type in the name of your resort plus the word "blog" to see if you can find out what people are saying about you. Or visit a blogging aggregation site like technorati.com and search on ski-related keywords.

Active bloggers tend to be natural influencers, so you may want to try reaching out to them. (Beware, though: Longtime bloggers have well-tuned BS detectors and will resist attempts to spin them. You've got to be sincere in your desire to start a real conversation, not just look for the blogger to be your mouthpiece.)

Going a step further, a resort owner or mountain manager could start a blog of his own. Maybe you don't believe anyone will care about the random thoughts of, say, a resort operator. Don't be so sure. "What I found," says Hoodoo's Shepard of his musings in Chuck's Page, "is that people were interested in the life of a guy who owns a ski resort, and my views about things"-even things that had nothing to do with skiing.

If you want to be even more progressive, encourage staff to blog (caveats below). Not all of them will catch the bug, but a few will discover they love sharing their passion for the sport and start attracting a small but loyal following.

Keep in mind that blogs let the reader stay in control. Readers can visit blogs when they please, or use a technology known as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) that lets them "subscribe" to get the latest headlines or even complete entries from sites that provide RSS "feeds", so they can stay on top of the latest from dozens or even hundreds of blogs. RSS is fast becoming a major new technology; Microsoft will be building support for RSS right into future versions of Windows.

How to Get Started
It's easy to become a blogger. A variety of Web-based services offer inexpensive, or even free, blogging tools that you can try out in just a few minutes. If your resort runs its own Web servers, you can with a bit of effort install blogging software on them. But why bother? Two of the best-known sites providing free blogging capabilities are Blogger.com and LiveJournal.com.

Once you have a blog, making an entry is equally easy. You visit the site, log in, type your message (adding formatting if you like), preview the entry, and publish it. The whole process takes no longer than composing a typical e-mail message.

If you want to get more sophisticated, you change the blog's appearance, add pictures, grant posting privileges to multiple people, and get fancy in various other ways. Some of these more advanced features may require you to upgrade to a paid plan, but it's still a fairly inexpensive investment. LiveJournal.com, for example, charges just $25 for a 12-month subscription.
Once you start a blog, you'll also want to make sure you promote it. Blogging services provide a variety of tools that can help get the word out, like listings in the site's white pages-like directory, RSS feeds, and "e-mail this page to a friend" links. Use them all! Submit your blog to popular blog "aggregators" like Technorati.com and Blogdex.net. Make sure your Website points to your blog, and consider mentioning your blog in your e-mail signature so that everyone you collaborate with hears about it. Post blog entries with links to other blogs and Web pages that your audience might enjoy; others will reciprocate and promote your blog as well.

Cautions and Caveats
Every promising new technology also brings its own problems, and blogs are no exception. In particular, if you encourage staff to blog, you should consider what kind of boundaries to set. You probably don't want them spending hours writing their blog posts when they're on the clock, for example. Similarly, you should communicate limits to acceptable postings. Effective blogs tend to have a personal voice, but consider how you'd react if an employee posts a politically charged entry, one laced with profanity or drug references, or other content that some readers might find objectionable. Communicate your expectations to avoid unpleasant surprises.

Also, if your blog allows comments, be prepared to spend time reviewing those comments and deleting inappropriate ones. Unfortunately, anonymous posters like to deface comment boards or clog them with unrelated commercial solicitations.

Above all, though, remember that once you've started a blog, you'll need to make at least a modest effort to keep it fresh. Don't be afraid to dash off short posts off the top of your head; frequency is more important than length, and spontaneous comments will better let your real personality show through.

Technology has a reputation-not undeserved-for being painful and expensive for the uninitiated. But blogging is an unusual exception.

John Clyman is president of technology consulting firm Narrative Logic, LLC (www.narrativelogic.com).