Blogs have morphed into many different ways of presenting offerings from businesses. About 8 years ago, blogs have started to resemble conventional websites and many people who visit these sites could not tell the difference between an HTML site or blog site.

Blogs have become the standard in large and complex websites now because of the ease of use and most importantly, the built in features of search engine optimized coding within them.

What you are reading here in this post is based on a WordPress blog platform. WordPress is the world’s most popular blogging platform with Google’s, Blogger not too far behind.

A great advantange that the WordPress blogging platform has is the amount of third party developers who make so many plugins for it. You can use a WordPress based blog to be a time management tool, use it as an online calendar, hold contests, picture gallery, sales page for your product or service, polls for voting for a favorite topic, immediate connect to Facebook pages, post advertisements, able to get people added to your email list, able to add audio and podcasts, and so much more.

There are thousands of plugins and enhancements available that you can turn your blog site into something completely different that won’t even look like a blog. Blog plugin developers show no stopping of making new and improved plugins for this platform.

So blogging will continue to be a strong medium to bring your message or your brand to as many people as you want. Remember to add blog postings as often as you can because every new change and new blog post will attract the attention of search engines.

It is as simple as that. Let’s say your business sells automobile parts. You should have “automobile parts” in the blog content of your posts. You should have pictures of auto parts somewhere in your blog with an “alt tag,” a description of what kind of auto parts they are. Your blog should have outbound links to auto related websites.

You should also have keywords of your physical location tied to the auto parts you carry. For example, if you have an auto parts store located in Atlanta Georgia, you should have “Atlanta Georgia auto parts” as a keyword phrase within your blog content.

If you can find pictures of Atlanta Georgia, insert them in the blog and/or blog post. The more you emphasize your location along with your business terms and descriptions, your blog will start to attract readers that are interested in your blog because of the niche topic and location.

Blogs, as mentioned before are very well suited to make the search engines “happy” because of the way it automatically alerts these search engines via “pinging.” For a great definition of what a ping is, click here.

Every time you make a change, whether it is adding a picture or a new blog post, the blog software automatically pings the search engines.

Always remember that keywords and keyword phrases are the life blood of getting visitor traffic to your site. Always write blog posts with this in mind and you will find that every blog post and every piece of content you add to our blog will contribute to getting higher search engine rankings.

With higher search engine rankings your site will be found more than not and you will gain new customers sooner than later!

Wikipedia defines CMS as a “software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming to create and manage website content with ease. A robust CMS provides the foundation for collaboration, offering users the ability to manage documents and output for multiple author editing and participation. Most systems use a database to store page content, metadata, and other information assets that might be needed by the system.

A blog is based on a database system to be able to add each additional blog post to the database.

The beauty of blog software is that it allows a complete non-techie to be able to use this database system to have a two way communication with with a blog visitor.

The content you manage with your blog is your blog posts, digital images and audios. But today, it is not enough just to make blog posts or post pictures, you have to know how to present your content.

Think creatively when presenting your content. Provide helpful information that your customers can use now. Make some of your posts entertaining. Show some very unique pictures that your visitors will find no where else. Be unique.

Also, make a good effort to plan out your content in advance. Write at least three to four blog posts in advance for a timed release into the future. WordPress has a unique feature where you can write and submit a blog post and time it for release on your blog in a specified time in the future. Say you write a blog post and want to release it live on your blog for two weeks ahead, you can do so.

Study how other bloggers present their content. Take note of how often they post blog posts. Study how they design their blog, what colors they use, and how relevant their content is for you, the visitor. This is all the methods they use for managing their content.

If you stumble upon a great blog you like in the industry of your interest, insert their URL in alexa.com and check out their traffic rankings. Odds are, they have a very high ranking (low number) and that means they are masters at how they present and manage their content.

If you want to successfully manage your blog, imitate what successful bloggers are doing.

One mistake that a lot of bloggers make is to write a blog post that is not valuable or not relevant to the topic of the blog.

“Content is king” as they say, and there is a lot of truth in that. I know that it can be a challenge to keep making posts on a daily basis and keep it interesting, engaging, and entertaining to your visitors. You may be asking yourselves, what is the best way to write content, then?

What has worked for us is to make an outline of all 12 months of the topics you want to talk about and stick to that plan. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to make up this outline. You can worry about the exact articles later. The main thing is to develop your list of topics. It can be recurring topics throughout the year. Some can be related to your customers needs or related to the seasons of the year. Tie some of your topics into the holidays too.

Once you decide on the topics to write about, start researching early online and you will get an unlimited amount of ideas that will get your creative juices flowing. You may want to assign one person in your company to dedicate a set amount of time each week to research each topic you have laid out to write about.

If you implement a system of the outline of topics, you will never run out of quality of content to add to your business blog.

Remember, you become a publisher the moment you start a blog. Blog visitors want to continue reading your blog if you provide, on a consistent basis, good high quality content that is helpful to them.

A great way to keep your viewer base is to offer valuable tips and tricks in your industry and niche. People love free advice and since they devour content on other sites, such as the news or sports or weather, you should make your blog part of a necessary read for their daily “fix!”

If you have a new product to roll out, talk about how the product will benefit your customer. Don’t be salesy in your content. You want to develop your blog as the “trusted advisor.” This low key approach will work wonders in helping to gain your customer base and to assure future sales and a loyal customer at the same time.

Know your product and service inside and out. You want to come across as the true expert in your field. This should be the easiest part. Flaunt your product knowledge. You product should be the solution to your customer’s problems. Many times businesses show the features of a product but don’t relate how the features can benefit the customer. You need to focus on the needs of the customer.

Blogging with the customer in mind may sound like a very basic “marketing 101″ strategy but quite often we overlook the obvious!

Here is a video from an international blogger that gets to the point about blogging.

We mentioned before that search engines are all in competition for the web surfer. The reason why search engines want as many surfers on their search platform is because they make most of their money selling ad space somewhere on the page where you use the search box to find something. These companies know that a certain percentage of people going to their page for surfing will eventually click on a sponsored link and the money starts rolling in for them. Google, for instance makes billions of dollars each year from their adwords program alone. Other search engine companies make their revenues from banner ads, solo ads, click through terms, and affiliate links to complementary products.

What should be important to you is writing very relevant posts and inserting good videos that make your point in your niche. Everything that has to do with your niche is going to help you rank high with the search engines. Over the long term, when you will have hundreds of pages of content related to your niche, you will see that your blog will stay high in the search engines for months or even years to come.

Your blog gives you the ability to let them opt in to your email list so you can keep in touch via email. You can hold contests, give exclusive discount coupons only for your VIP list, or make announcements of private showings of your products, thereby tapping in to your most loyal customers.

Blogging takes patience! The one mistake that most business bloggers make is that they tend to be impatient and think that the blog itself is going to make money for them outside of the business operations. They have to look at it like a separate entity that will also grow the business but in a different way. The blog is the “silent” salesman that promotes the business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

So, when starting up the blog, make sure you assign someone the duty of maintaining the blog going into the future. There must be a plan to regularly “feed” it with valuable content. There must be a way to generate interest in the blog on a daily basis. It becomes a virtual “daily” newspaper that gets delivered to your door for reading first thing in the morning.

Blogging will have a lasting positive effect on your business. With everyone going online through their desktop computers or their “mini computers” that reside on their “smart phones,” don’t worry, you blog will be read!

By timely content, we mean that your material must relate to current events or what is relevant to most people today. You don’t want to write about internet marketing practices from 6 years ago when Google was not yet the dominant search engine and you did not focus on what was important to get the attention of Google search engines. Things change within months now and we have to be aware of the material we publish. So, it is also important that we make sure we date the posts we insert. Then the content made back at that time seems meaningful for the time.

Rarely is content “evergreen,” that is information that lives on at any time of our lives. It is a fact that everything changes and we must adapt to the changes in both our personal and professional lives.

Many bloggers who are dedicated to their blogs will be surprised at how many posts they have made in months and years of its inception. At the time of this writing, our blog has seen many changes in the law that affects how bloggers conduct business through their blogs. It seems that the Federal government has enacted some changes that mandates more transparency in privacy and affiliate procedures that was not a concern just months ago.

Just remember that valuable content that you write is meaningful at the time of your writing it, if it truly helps the people or audience you are writing to.

This is a relationship building tool and should be used consistently. Even if you don’t see immediate results, remember that customers like to read your content and get value out of it.

Let’s say you start your blog with a great tip that helps make your customer money through better selling practices. Your blog visitor will definitely come back to read your blog to get more valuable tips. If you continue to deliver great content to truly help your visitors, they will eventually purchase items from your business whether from personally visiting your place of business or buying directly from your website if you offer a great product or service that they need.

Building community involves getting feedback from your customers as well. As mentioned in previous blog posts, a blog site enables a “two way” communication between visitor and blogger. Always keep your “allow comments” button on with every post you make. You will be surprised at the positive feedback you get on your products and your business. Be prepared for negative feedback too. Quite often you can get ideas on how to improve your business from critical feedback.

Do you know your metrics? What is metrics?

“Metrics is a way to measure certain aspects of your operation so that you have a starting point from which to improve your statistics.”

Some measurement stats you should be aware of is:

1. daily unique visitor count
2. overall hits per month
3. number of backlinks to your blog
4. how large is your email marketing list

These are just some of the basic metrics you should be aware of.

The reason you should keep track of your daily unique visitor count is to make sure you are doing everything you can to constantly attract traffic. Unique visitor traffic is new visitors to your blog who never came to your blog before. The one most important thing you can do to help your unique visitor count is to keep posting on a regular basis. Every time you make a new post to your blog, you are pinging the search engines and attracting them to help get you higher in the rankings. When you go higher in search engine rankings, the more likely you are to attract unique visitors. Getting new visitors is very important because it helps you rank as an “authority” site. That is, a site that carries a lot of weight as a site that contains very high quality information relevant to the search from the search engines.

Overall hits per month counts all visits from unique visitors, repeat visitors and visits from search engines. You want to know this statistic to make sure you are not “static.” The object here is to constantly figure out ways to increase this figure from month to month.

Backlinks are  necessary in order to help rank you site high in the search rank. The number of one way backlinks to your site proves to the search engines that your site is looked upon as the site to see because other sites have “referred” their visitors to your site. Again, this proves your blog site as an authority of your niche.

Email marketing is hot right now.  Having an email list or a subscriber base that is growing is a good sign that your business will grow too. Always figure out ways to grow your list and to monetize it. You want to make money from your subscribers. They are your fans!

Social media is the movement for conversing with each other through many channels on the internet. It could be from an RSS feed from your blog, interacting with many members from a particular social media site like Facebook, even exchanging referrals of products and services to buy through simple emails in your inbox. Whatever we think of social media, always remember the purpose is to connect with other people.

As mentioned before, social media is not a platform to sell on, rather, a platform to meet other people and start a two way conversation about likes, dislikes, philosophies, common interests, favorite sports, fashion, celebrities, etc.

When a group is formed or joined for the purpose of sharing like interests, you are experiencing social media at its best.

Your blog is a social media source as well. Blogs may be the only social media channel that will outlast many of the other forms of social media sites for years to come. Why is that? Blogs are a great source of content in all forms. Text articles, video, pictures, audio, profiles, calendars, events, it all seems to converge nicely with blogs. No other social media site can be used as a total content management system while serving as a hub for social media at the same time. And the best part of it all is that anyone can master the art of publishing a blog within a matter of hours.

Blogging will last for years to come so plan out and implement your plan on the content you want your blog to have and align it with your personality. You can’t go wrong because someone out there will want to partake in consuming what you have to offer on a regular basis!

Problogger, Darren Rowes talks about using “outposts” of social media sites to tap into promoting your blog posts. Remember that once you publish your blog posts, you can attach links to other social media sites to get the attention of those sites and attract visitors.