Small businesses should get blogging to increase their profile - and their sales.

That's the message coming from a joint report by Market Sentinel, Onalytica and Immediate Future (PDF - 6.6Mb) on how companies can measure the influence of blogs on their companies.

Firms are being urged to start their own blogs - both to receive feedback from customers and as a marketing tool to get their name out there in the wide world of cyberspace.

Custom Communication helps businesses check out what's being said about them and to build their own blogs. It recently held a conference, Blogging4Business, to show what the medium can do for companies of all different sizes.