The New York Times has an article today that suggests that “blogging is a low-cost, high return marketing tool”:

To its true believers at small businesses, it is a low-cost, high-return tool that can handle marketing and public relations, raise the company profile and build the brand.

That tool is blogging, though small businesses with blogs are still a distinct minority. A recent American Express survey found that only 5 percent of businesses with fewer than 100 employees have blogs. Other experts put the number slightly higher.

The NYT article is a bit gee-whiz, and underplays the significance of blogging’s social media elements for search engine optimization. But the article is a sign of the mainstream acceptance of blogging as a business tool.

Podcasting Is A Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool, Too

If blogging is ready for mainstream business adoption, podcasting can’t be far behind. Small and medium-sized businesses are already using podcasting in interesting ways.

One of the most interesting examples of a corporate video podcast is BlendTec’s Will It Blend?. The podcast features the slightly deranged, but crazy like a fox, Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson using the company’s industrial strength blenders to destroy everything from iPods to broomsticks.

The podcast is low-budget, but extremely effective.

Who doesn’t want to see if you can blend Halo 3? Especially after you play it too long and it fries your XBox 360?

BlendTec’s podcast is a viral hit. On YouTube, the show is one of the most-subscribed channels of all time, with over 50,000 subscribers and millions of views.

What’s that worth to BlendTec? The videos turn a boring kitchen product into a lustworthy gadget for geeks. The videos get people talking about a company that they probably hadn’t heard of before.

Most important of all, BlendTec’s video podcast gets your attention. It puts their name into your mind. You may never have a need for a high-end blender, but if you do, you know where to start.

Making a low-budget video podcast that’s as viral as BlendTec’s isn’t easy – but, then, making an infomercial about blenders into something cool probably wasn’t easy, either.