Anyone can write a blog. Some people write blogs for personal reasons, some write about their hobbies. I focus on how to use a blog as a tool to grow your business.  To be an effective blog writer and to get the most return on your investment of time and money spent blogging, you will need a blog strategy, personal discipline, an internal desire, and unique content.

Your blog strategy will determine why you are writing your blog and what your goals are. You need your plan to include how frequently you are updating it, what types of content it will include, and it needs to speak to your target customer.

Your blog needs to be updated regularly according to your plan. If it is not updated regularly it will get less traffic and be less effective in implementing your strategy. Not only do you have to update frequently, you also need to be persistent and keep at it. It will take time to develop a following. It doesn’t happen overnight. This requires discipline.

You need to have the desire to create the content on a regular basis, and to be persistent. You can’t stop once you start. I have found that once I got in the habit of writing, I about my daily routines and interactions with my blogger goggles on. For example, I was at church thinking “Oh, that would make a good blog post”.

Which brings me to content. You need a content plan that offers compelling content to attract your customers and keep them coming back. You can create a 3 month rolling calendar of what your content strategy, topics and types of articles will be. You can even write them in advance.

• Strategy
• Discipline
• Desire
• Content

These are the 4 key personal characteristics that are required to have a valuable and successful blog.

Blogs are easy to get for free. The easiest and most popular site for hosting your blog is Blogger. If you want advanced functionality, use WordPress.com. Both of these are free. There are actually a ton of free blog sites that add more social features as well.

Why would anyone pay for a blog when you can get one free?

The downside of the free sites is that they will not give you all the benefits of search engine optimization and thus will not optimize the amount of traffic to your site.

A paid blog with your own domain will give you better search engine traffic and thus be better at increasing your customer base and your income. This blog site is written using the open source WordPress.org blog software and self-hosted at Godaddy.com. I chose this because I liked the blog philosophy of WordPress. It is easy to use, is extensible and there are thousands of free plug-ins to support it. I have over 15 active plug-ins at the time of this post. They help with everything from search engine optimization to blog monetization. And, it only costs $5 per month.

Blogging is an easy and inexpensive way to create a web presence, and a blog is easy to keep fresh and up-to-date without the expense of a web developer. If you want to make money at blogging, use a hosted solution where you own the domain name and the content resides on a server you can control.

Blogs can be a free or low cost way to gain more visibility for your business. It can establish credibility in your field. It helps you to be recognized as an expert and thus people will turn to you for advice in your field. This also helps you to build your brand and communicate with your customer. It creates a face to the customer and builds the personality of your brand.

Your customer can subscribe to your blog which enables them to stay in contact with you and strengthen your relationship.  Blogs make it easier for your customer to give you feedback. They simply need to leave a comment after a post.

Blogs can be monetized to increase your sales and add supplementary income to your bottom line. A blog is also a useful tool to increase traffic to your site because the blog format is naturally search engine friendly. It is optimized for search engines. Blogs make it easy for you and customers to get links back to your blog or website which enhances search engine optimization and traffic.

You think you need a blog but you have no idea why. What are blogs anyway? What is the purpose? How is a blog different than a website? Do I need a blog philosophy?

What is a Blog?

Blogs are a type of website with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, text, graphics, video or links to other blogs, web pages and other related media. Unlike a website, a blog enables the reader to leave interactive comments after each entry.

Why do I want a Blog?

The most important reason to blog is to create a relationship with your customer.

What is a Blog versus Website?

How should your blog differ from your website? Your blog is about creating a relationship with your customer. It is “pull” marketing or publicity. Your blog reflects opinion, personality, individual viewpoints etc. Your website is an example of “push” marketing, meaning direct response, offers and promotions.  It is corporate information. Your website is factual. For example, while your website will contain press releases, your blog will contain commentary on announcements. If you host an event, your website will include facts about the event and registration information. The blog will include photos and stories from the event.

A blog can be used to get interactive with your customer, to raise awareness of topics related to corporate goals and to assist in closing sales. From a public relations perspective your blog can be used to deal with disasters and build the reputation of the company. Regardless of your blog philosophy, the blog should always be focused on your customer and talking to their needs, wants and desires. It is a dialog.

Let’s say you are a crafts-person. A photo blog would be a practical and very effective means of sharing your custom work. A photo blog would do many things for your business, such as:

1) Create a portfolio of projects for your customers to review before making a purchase decision. For example, a painter, you can post before and after photos of her work.

2) A crafts-person could post photos of their booth and customers at the latest event they attended.

3) Allow your existing clients to post comments about the success of the project or event, thereby improving trust and probably conversion of potential clients and increasing the connection and relationship you have with your existing customers.

4) Your clients could link back to your blog post, increasing your search engine rankings and improving traffic to your site

5) When you add comments about the event/project/etc. in your post you can include keywords and increase your traffic and SEO.

6) It gives you more pages to be indexed by an search engine.

Just something to think about. There are many different types of blogs and many different reasons for creating them. One way to think of a blog is that if your business is involved in something informal, dynamic, changing, or current, perhaps it belongs in a blog. A blog is a great way to create an informal portfolio and to market your business or service.

Business Blogging Strategy

Learn How To: Create Abundance in Your Business through Effective Blog Strategy! Only $19.95! Click Now For More Info!

You can get a Free Blog from one of these resources:

• Blogger – A team in Google focusing on helping people have their own voice on the web and organizing the world’s information from the personal perspective.
• WordPress – WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.
• TypePad – TypePad is the premier blogging service for professionals and small businesses. TypePad hosts many popular blogs and small business websites.
• LiveJournal – LiveJournal is on the forefront of personal publishing, community involvement, and individual expression. One of the world’s most respected blogging platforms.
• Blog.com – Blog.com is the choice for almost two million bloggers. Blog.com provides a fully-featured publishing platform for free. Blog by yourself or establish a writing community, all under an address that looks like: you.blog.com
• Windows Live Spaces – Make your own space on Windows Live. It’s your place on the web to express yourself.
• Facebook – Leading Social networking site.
• MySpace – Second largest social networking site.
• HubPages – HubPages has easy-to-use publishing tools, a vibrant author community and underlying revenue-maximizing infrastructure. Hubbers (HubPages authors) earn money by publishing their Hubs (content-rich Internet pages) on topics they know and love, and earn recognition among fellow Hubbers through the community-wide HubScore ranking system. The HubPages ecosystem provides a search-friendly infrastructure which drives traffic to Hubs from search engines such as Google and Yahoo, and enables Hubbers to earn revenue from industry-standard advertising vehicles such as Google AdSense, Kontera, and the eBay and Amazon Affiliates program. All of this is provided free to Hubbers in an open online community.

Note: To get more marketing lists such as this, go to the sidebar and download our Free Report: “187 FREE Ways to Explode Your Business!”