And perhaps you are. There are sites that provide quick-start, free-hosting opportunities for bloggers. Through these sites, you can set up a blog within a few minutes, and your target audience can view it instantly.

View it, your target audience will. Once you promote your blog (that is, list it in blog directories, print the blog’s URL on your Web site and letterhead, publish blog entries in other online media outlets, add RSS feeds so that visitors can subscribe, tag each entry with your keywords, and so forth) you will build a base of readers who will, themselves, spread the word about your blog and bring exponentially more readers to it. In fact, getting people with an interest in your area of expertise to read your blog is pretty easy, as long as you promote your blog.

Each blog entry you write and publish is a viral marketing opportunity.

So what’s stopping everyone – authors, consultants, coaches, attorneys, physicians, therapists, professors, and anyone else who seek new delivery systems for their messages – from blogging?

Time.

One of the advantages of blogs in comparison to Web sites is that blogs are easier to update. As a blogger, you enter your username and password, write your new blog entry, click the mouse once or twice, and you’ve updated your blog. You can’t do that with your Web site unless you’re a technical whiz.

One of the challenges of blogs, however, is that readers (not to mention search engines) expect your blog to updated on a regular basis. Busy professionals may not have the time to update their blog, or they may be afraid to make a commitment to regular blogging and, therefore, never begin.

And then there are the professionals who stare at their newly-created blog’s first blank page and wish someone could just tell them what to write, and how to write it, to get their blog started.

Fortunately, you can start a blog, and even maintain a blog, without writing a word. Ghost bloggers are available to help.

Ghost bloggers are similar to ghost writers. They work closely with professionals to distill key messages and style. The ghost blogger develops a list of potential blogging themes, then he or she creates a sample blog entry which the professional approves -- and the ghost blogger publishes. And the process continues for a specific period of time – a month, six months, or a year, with the ghost blogger publishing entries on a daily, weekly, or biweekly basis.