Blogs are the best way for your business to have an online presence. You could have a static HTML website, but currently there are many limitations to them. First, as mentioned before, there is a lot more work to get a regular HTML site to be “search engine friendly.” With blog software, they are built for attracting search engines.

What good is a website for your business if you cannot be found? To rank high in the search engines makes it possible for your business to get visitors to your site and a greater chance for generating new customers. Blogs have the following advantages over HTML sites:

1. They allow visitors to contribute content to your blog site by making comments.
2. They have a built in program that allows RSS feeds.
3. They allow widgets to “hook into” your blog that adds SEO functionality.
4. Search engines now list blogs as a separate type of website because of their popularity. So now there is more visibility of a blog.

Blogs popularity is currently through the roof with the search engines. As a matter of fact anything that has to do with blogs and social media puts you ahead of the pack regarding websites related to your niche.

There is a great video here that shows you how to set up a Facebook Fan page and then connect your blog with it. This is a great marketing vehicle to get right on top of using social media to give additional exposure to your business.

Whether you are thinking of blogging for your business or actually doing it, you must be involved in the online community. Blogging is the way to go to keep your branding going, to get connected with your customers and to keep the “conversation” going in order to make sales and generate a loyal following.

Business blogging is growing at a rapid pace since the beginning of the year. More and more “brick and mortar” businesses are finding that they need to beef up their online presence because they are finding that all their competition is already doing many things to get noticed online.

As mentioned in the previous blog post, Facebook Fan Pages are becoming more inportant in the marketing mix of any business. Twitter, although I find it not as effective, is also on the rise from businesses.

Business blogging can dramatically improve customer relations for your business because it removes the barrier of resistance. It helps your company become a “friend” with your customers. By giving them informative content about your business and industry, you become the “go to” for anything related to your product.

Blogs are just as important as a social media vehicle as the mainstream social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. As a matter of fact, blogs will probably outlast most of the social media sites that come and go in popularity. There is more consistent value to blogs because they are most efficient at dispensing content in all forms.

Check out this video on social media.

We know now that when you start your business blog, it is for the long term. From the day you put your blog on the internet, it becomes one and the same with your brick and mortar business. You must “breath” with it and make it come alive with consistent content that is valuable to your customers and online visitors.

Your blog should become the “expert” source in your industry or niche. One main criteria of getting ranked high with any and all search engines is the “authority” rating of a site or blog. In the search engines’ “eyes, “does it have creditibiliy and the authority that is beneficial to the visitor?

Google’s mission for search engine “domination” is to serve up the most valuable and relevant content to the internet user. When you show the position of authority in your industry, you certainly gain favor with all search engines. Just on what kind of content you insert in your blog will guarantee your chances to rank high. This is “natural rankings” which is more important than if you bought sponsored positioning with search engines like “Google Adwords.”

Keep in mind that, in order to be an “authority site,” you truly need to know what you are talking about or discussing in your blog. If you don’t know enough about the fine points of your industry, then tap into an expert that does know and interview them or possibly have them “guest blog” in your business blog. As a guest writer, they help to rank your site as an authority site.

Currently the two best ways to attract traffic to your blog is through video marketing and using social media. Check out the following video below and in the next several posts, I will go into detail about how I use these methods to attract traffic.

There are literally hundreds of tools for bloggers, ranging from calendars, subscription feeds, forms, opt in boxes, slide shows, stat counters, etc. The list is so large that it can be overwhelming to the business blogger.

What is very important is to plan out, on paper, what you want the blog to do for your business. Of course, you need your core purpose, which I will assume it is to promote your business and your products.

Next, you should outline the things you want your blog to do, even if there is no widget that does that function. I had some clients ask me about some complex way to divide the viewers and to funnel, automatically all visitor statistics into email lists. Well, although there may not be a widget or piece of software that does not do that, it gives reason to hire an outsourcer to write a program specific to that need. In other words, don’t count any idea out that you want the blog to do. There is always some way to make it happen.

For many tools for bloggers, I usually go to several websites to find what I want. Here is my list:

Quick Online Tips

Weblog Tools Collection

Tech 2 All

Quick Online Tips

Of course, if you scour the internet, you can get more listings, but these are my favorites so far.

Blogs can generate money for you.

Did you know that after you get your business blog established you can make money from the blog itself? Earlier, I stated that the purpose of your blog is to connect with your audience to showcase your brick and mortar business by posting interesting and informative articles related to your business.

After your blog has a good number of blog posts, say over 200 or so, it’s time to monetize the blog itself.

One of the first methods is to insert affiliate ads. This way, when you are attending to the day to day posting on your blog, you “silently” make money when visitors click on the affiliate link and purchase the product from that link.

Next, when you build up a large viewership to your blog, then begin to sell banner ad space for a monthly or yearly fee.

Lastly, you can develop an information product or membership to sell within your blog.

Having these three sales channels going on simultaneously along with selling products from your business is a winning formula for profits to you.

One of the most important ways of driving your traffic to your blog is with a large number of backlinks to your blog. When you have backlinks to your site, it is recognized as an “authority” site and it is valued higher with search engines. The search engines want to serve up the most relevant and valuable information to their customers.

For some tips on how to successfully make comments on other blogs, check out the video below:

Since blogs are part of the social media chain in connecting with your audience, I wanted to offer some information here on how to link your blog postings so it shows up in your Facebook page. Watch the video and enjoy.

Everyone wants to belong to a club, a family, a group that they can relate to. It is “hard wired” in human beings that we relate to other human beings in order to survive. Anthropological scientists say that we are social beings.

Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, My Space and most notably, blogs, answer this inner need for us to relate to others with similar interests or passions. When this congregation of people come together for the purpose of belonging, a true “community” is formed.

Now, it is the social media owner’s responsibility to keep that bond with the community. Bloggers are the best example of being the “leaders” of the community. The visitors that come to these sites are very loyal to these sites because of the passion that the blog owner evokes with the community.

From a business standpoint, blogs lead the customer base, who are the “community” of the business. Say you own a restaurant in your local area that has the most delicious food and people just talk about day and night. They are raving “fans” of your restaurant and are literally “free” billboards advertising your establishment every single day.

Once you build community, you have built a foundation of a successful business that will last for years to come.

Remember this when you start your business blog. It can affect the success of your business more than you are aware. Building community = recurring profits.

I found a great video on blogging tech guru, Stephan Spencer who talks about the advantages of using a blog in place of a static or basic website, which he calls CMS in the video. CMS, stands for “content management system. This form of website is the basic format of a site in which a webmaster can feed content and manage it in all ways possible, for example, to be able to archive the older articles in a database or recall any article at will for the visitor. Also, to keep content such as video, pictures, audio and other forms of content in an orderd way to call up at any time on the site. Most corporate websites years ago used only this model.

Enjoy the video.

Want an awesome tip that is going to make you a very effective blogger right now? Get your blog, social media sites, comments, articles, videos, pictures and other forms of your content out there in the internet!

It’s very hard to keep up with the technological advances in computers, internet and search engines. About a month ago search engine giant Google has stated that the new “secret sauce” to get higher rankings is to have a combination of many forms of content simultaneously out there representing you and your content.

If you have recently seen on search engines, they are even dedicating a separate section to list blogs, images, mentions on social sites like Facebook and Twitter, and videos. Consider these listings as additional ways to get exposure of your blog and all your content.

Seems like more “work!” I will have to agree that it puts more effort for the owner of a blog, but think about it for a moment. All search engines are “battling” for visitors to use their site for searches. You see, they make money from advertising on their sites so their main objective is to keep you coming back to make more searches on the internet.

But, in order, to get your site ranked higher, you need to provide high quality content, and more of it, to be relevant. You can’t “cheat” the search engines by putting up “any old” rehashed content about your industry or niche. It has to be original and be truthful and helpful to the visitor.

In my next post, I am going to give you a valuable checklist that will guide you on what you need to put up on the internet to get higher search engine rankings. This is especially helpful for your blog.

As a tribute to the man behind this blogging software that you are reading now, I thought you might be interested in getting a glimpse of what he looks like and what he stands for. If he were to run for President, I would certainly vote for him!

Watch this video and be inspired. It was his own personal inspiration that made him “invent” WordPress, the world’s most popular blogging platform today.