You’re maybe one of those people who thinks blogs are just pointless ramblings from those with an over-inflated opinion of themselves. You’re probably thinking …. why on earth do we need a blog for our business?

Well, there are lots of good reasons for setting up a blog. A blog can get you great publicity, and even make you money.

Here are a few good reasons why you need a business blog:

* A blog helps reinforce your credibility. Today, customers don’t just want to buy from sellers, they want to buy from people who know their stuff. A blog is a very good way of establishing some authority in your product/service area.

* Blogs encourage visitors to return to your website, to see what’s new. The more times a visitor returns the more likely they are to buy or enquire. If you don’t have a blog, or at least a news page, the chances people will return are much lower.

* Social marketing activity ranks very highly with the search engines, like Google. And a blog is one of the easiest ways to go social  – much easier than trying to crack Facebook or Twitter for example.

* A blog is a soft sell way of selling. Rather than hammering home your message with direct advertising – which potential customers find easy to ignore – a blog offers useful information and sneaks your sales message in under the radar.

* You can even generate revenue directly from your blog …. by linking it to relevant products and services on your website, or even using affiliate marketing.

Here are a few of my favourite tips for a successful blog:

* Post frequently. Before you get started make sure you can commit to posting on a weekly basis at the very least – 2/3 times a week is even better. If you can’t, consider hiring a writer to come up with ideas and write your posts for you.

* Have a great headline. Like it or not, blog headlines need to be short, snappy and thought-provoking. If not, they won’t get read.

* Keep your posts fairly short …. ideally no more than a few hundred words. The best and most useful blog posts are digests, or précis something for the reader.

Tip. If you want to publish a longer article publish it to your website and link it from your blog.

* Write with one reader in mind. Your posts might be read by hundreds of people (hopefully), but each individual reader wants to feel you are writing directly to them.

* Choose to write posts that are newsy or highly topical. This is the best way to make your blog useful and keep readers coming back.

Tip. Picking something that is in the news today and writing something relevant on that is an easy way to create powerful blog posts.

I hope you’ve found those tips useful. If you’d like some help with setting up a blog or writing blog content give me a shout.