Hi, everyone! My name’s Lesley DeSantis and I’m a new staff writer here at Radar Media. I met with Paul last week to talk about the big, powerful world of blogging, and now I’m here to bring you Internet Marketing tips, news, even some in-depth spotlights on some of our favorite people—our customers. I’m also excited to tell you that I’m not alone in this venture—all Radar employees will be posting to bring you a well-rounded range of topics and access to the wonderfully creative minds behind this business. In this blog, we will be focusing on a variety of business and marketing topics, from Web and UI design to copywriting and corporate blogging itself, and we encourage you to leave comments, ask us questions, and get involved.

Blogging has truly come a long way since its earliest roots with IT gurus. Thankfully, geekery is no longer a prerequisite to learning how to set up and keep a blog, though it can certainly help. I, like many of you, used to think that blogging was nothing more than an ‘online journal’ of sorts, filled to the brim with the dynamic tales of what people eat for lunch, how cute their cat is, or brooding high school poetry about that ever-elusive crush ::sigh::.

While there is plenty of that, I can assure you, there is also an entirely different side of blogging which many business owners and professionals are taking notice of. People have realized that personal blogging is a great way to keep up with friends, make new ones, and it can be their little personal soap box to the world (which could very quickly gain more friends,…or enemies). Businesses have realized that if their customers are doing this to make friends and stir things up, they can very likely use it to find new customers or to network with others in their industry. Now many professionals and businesses are enjoying great success through blogging, like marketing guru Seth Godin, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, and problogger.net’s Darren Rowse.

You can find a blog now on just about any topic you can imagine. From politics, to Perez Hilton, to, I don’t know, potatoes? (yes, apparently), chances are if you’re interested in it, there’s a blog about it. While I can’t promise to keep you updated about our new presidency, what shoes Lindsay Lohan was wearing to that party the other night, or the best mashed potato recipe you ever laid eyes on (ok, maybe for Thanksgiving), I can bring you some information to help your business, and hopefully make it fun in the process!

I welcome your comments, potato recipe inquiries included, and I look forward to being a part of the Radar Media team as we move ahead with the blog. If your business hasn’t jumped into social media yet, it’s never too late. I wholeheartedly encourage you to reach out and hold on tight. It can be daunting at first, but it just might pay off. Even if you don’t triple your customer base in the first month, you can dramatically improve your search engine rankings, drive traffic to your website, increase your ‘link love’, and you just might make some new friends. And wasn’t that originally what blogging was all about?