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Australian businesses are still yet to enter the world of blogging in any great numbers. Compared to the rest of the world we seem to be a little blogophobic.

Perhaps it is just too much like hard work, or it might be time constraints, but more likely it is because your average business owners and managers fail to realise the opportunity that a blog presents a company in terms of interaction with their customers.

The biggest movement in the world of blogging is definitely coming from the small business community, with quite a few great blogs, right here on the Northern beaches.

The ladies at Women’s Own adventure are doing a great job, as are the team at Enlighten education with their blog on educating teenage girls.

It would also be safe to say that the biggest movement within the small business sector is in the IT industries. Web designers and IT specialists probably make up the largest percentage of bloggers on the scene at the moment.

For a look around some of the better blogs in Brookvale, the Northern Beaches and in Sydney, check out blog.businessinsydney.com. A dedicated directory of business blogs in Sydney.

Twelve years ago Netscape Navigator was launched and everything started to change.  More and more people now access newspapers and other media through the internet, but the big advertisers have been slow to spot the trend.  This is now changing, and it’s not looking good for TV. 

Australian media ad spending is expected to grow by 11 per cent to $11.6 billion this year; $620 million of that will be online.  Free-to-air TV will increase by only 2 per cent .

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald article on internet advertising growth says Australian advertisers are ahead of their US counterparts, spending about 9-10 per cent of their budgets online (most US marketers spend 4-10 per cent).

Australia currently ranks eighth in the world in its rate of internet access, just behind the U.S.A.  Top of the chart is New Zealand, closely followed by Iceland.  Most businesses here have a website and use email to comunicate with their clients,  and the time is rapidly approaching when it will be impossible to conduct anything but a cottage industry without it.

If you are buying pay-per-click advertising from Google or Yahoo you may want to read this article in the Sydney Morning Herald.  It seems it’s not only call centres that are being out-sourced to India and Mexico.  Or it might just be your wily competitors.