With daylight savings time starting, the weather turning slightly warmer, and my rugby team starting up practice, I’m looking forward to shaking off the winter blues and getting outside. Turns out, more of us should be thinking the same.

According to government figures, more than 210 million Americans use the Internet. The more time they are online, the less contact they have with their social environment and the more time they are spending on work, both in the office and at home. A few statistics to make you reconsider how much time you spend online:

• Estimates suggest that five to ten percent of the population suffers from Internet addiction, which interferes with normal living and causes severe stress on relationships and jobs.
• Internet addicts often suffer from depression and anxiety-related disorders, and use the world of the Internet to escape stressful situations. They have relationship problems seventy-five percent of the time.
• Fifty percent of all Internet addicts also have other additions, to drugs, alcohol, smoking, etc.

As the father of two boys, some statistics about teen use of the Internet keep me awake at night, too:

• Two problem characteristics associated with having close online relationships include high parent-child conflict and being highly troubled (depression, victimization, etc.).
• Forty-two percent of all parents do not monitor the content of the messages sent and received by their teens, 37 percent of all teens have received a link to sexually explicit content.
• Thirty-three percent of the 13-17 year olds and 48 percent of 16-17 year olds report their parents or guardians know little or nothing about their online activities.
• Fifty percent of all teens frequently communicate online with someone they’ve never met in person. Thirty percent have talked about meeting someone they have met only through the Internet.
• Eleven percent of teens are solicited online by adults and keep the incident from their parents, 28 percent admit to using a code to signal to their correspondent that a parent is watching.

So, now that daylight savings time has given us an extra hour of light, turn off that computer, head home early from work, grab your kids if you’ve got them, and get outside to toss around a baseball, or a football, or best of all, a rugby ball!

According to Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware, 2008 will be the breakout year for blogs. To listen to some, blogging is an ideal low-cost, high-return tool to raise company profile and build the brand.

Not every company needs a blog though—to do it well requires a large time commitment and some writing skills, which not every small business has on hand. And, if you’re a clothing manufacturer, making good clothes may be higher on your priority list than creating content. But, if you are in a consulting or service-oriented field, a sector where there is a steep learning curve (like wine), there is a lifestyle associated with your products or services (camping gear, pet products), or have a strong social mission, then blogging should be a key part of your communication strategy.

Here are a few tips for making the most of your blog:

1. Increase ROI through SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Blogs are a great way to achieve high rankings on a wide range of targeted keywords. Use yours as a key tactic in your organic SEO strategy.
2. Get employees involved: Search engines look for good, targeted content. Empower employees to add content so that you have a good variety of search terms, topics and voices.
3. Control is good: Corporate blogging is not a free-for-all. Manage your content and find the balance between complete freedom and control.
4. Conversion goals: Make sure your blog has specific calls-to-action, just like other parts of your site. Often, the fresh content and conversational tone of a blog leads to higher conversions than other sections of the site.
5. Spaghetti is ok: Marketing tends to discredit the theory of “throw the spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks.” Corporate blogging is based on content and volume. You can throw a lot of content at the wall and see what has the biggest impact.

Currently, only five percent of all small businesses have a corporate blog. If you decide a blog is in your future, make sure you make it an integral part of your marketing and SEO strategy.