• February 6, 2009

Blogging is getting bigger among members of MerchantCircle, an online network of 685,000 small business owners.

The number of sites in the network with blogs nearly tripled to 15,676 over the last year, according to the Los Altos, Calif.-based company. Research by MerchantCircle also shows that a blog increases traffic to members sites by 30% on average.

"Merchants are beginning to recognize the value of a business blog, which people within the Internet community have known for a long time." says Darren Waddell, MerchantCircle's vice-president of marketing, in a statement. A recent survey of marketing executives and business owners by HubSpot found blogging to be companies' most useful social media tool.--Mark Walsh