To improve your blog into the next year, try to redo the look. Change out your header design, keeping the same logo. Change the order of the content or placement of the sidebars. Add more video or insert less pictures. Add a new guest blogger to your writing staff. Start a contest to further attract viewers.

Make changes that are consistent with the purpose of your business blog. Your business may have opened up a satellite location, or may have started carrying more products. Changes in your business may change the purpose of your blog. Your blog may complement the way you changed the way you do business.

Change is good in this instance. It is not saying that your blog is any less effective than it was last year. It is only a time to take inventory of why your blog is online in the first place.

The one overall purpose of your blog is to get found on the internet when your customers are searching for your product or service.

There are many writing styles from as many different bloggers. Remember that there is no perfect way to blog. Some people blog with videos, some people blog with pictures, still others blog with downloadable books. Try to write your blog that complements your personality. If you are a prolific writer, then write a lot of valuable content. If you are photographer, then show lots of pictures. If you are a business that holds lots of outdoor events, then put lots of video on your blog.

Visiting other blogs gives you so much to draw on when you plan out your blog presence. You will also find that your blog is better than others and still other blogs may be better than yours regarding presentation or content.

Visiting other blogs is a great way to compare how you present yourself versus your competition.

Bottom line, remember the most important thing is to make sure your blog is simple and easy to navigate. Don’t make it too busy because you will lose your audience attention if it is.

Here is a video that discusses blog content strategy.

Your message must not be lost in so many different distractions going on in your blog. So keeping the design simple is important.

You blog should position you as the authority immediately. Your ongoing posts should have relevant information that is timely and interesting. Don’t be boring! That will kill your chances at having anyone come back to visit your blog.

Craft your marketing message and spread it across your blog in various forms such as pictures and text.

Be creative with your blog message. You might show an entertaining picture that shows your message. Always keep ahead of your blog visitors mind. If you talk about your product and how it helps people, plan out your next post that adds to that benefit.

If you are concise on the message you relay to your blog visitors you will gain a solid audience.

I, for one, believe that blogging is helping you make your online “space” for the long term. If you didn’t blog today, what would you ask yourself a year from now when all the rage is to be branding yourself on the internet or else your competition will have you for “lunch?”

Blogging is definitely a long term committment. If anything, for the benefit of your business, you should blog on. The advantages are many, just that you have to look at the whole picture of your marketing efforts. If you stopped blogging for your business, it is like turning off space and print advertising. Blogging has to become part of your business operations just like anything else you do now for your business.

Here is a motivating video from a blogger/businessman from Spain. Take his message to heart!

PROS: First off, blogs are the perfect online vehicle to get noticed by people who are interested in buying your product or service. They are easy to set up and maintain. Blogs have the capability to be totally interactive with your audience. Anyone online that sees your blog has the option of making comments on it to give you valuable feedback. Blogs allow you to expand what you sell at your “brick and mortar” business location. Let’s say you sell golf clubs at your physical location. You now have the capability to sell your golf clubs to around the world! If your blog site gets very popular, you also have an opportunity to sell other peoples services and products through affiliates or selling banner advertising to large corporations.

CONS: There is a learning curve to making a successful business blog happen. I would say, on the average, it takes about 4 months to get totally comfortable with the routine things you have to do with a blog. There is the responsibility of posting on a regular to semi regular basis. If you never wrote anything in your life, you better learn quick how to! You have to learn how to navigate around the administration panel to know where you can upload pictures or videos. You have to plan out in advance how to grow your business blog. You have to learn how to connect an autoresponder system to your blog to capture your valued visitors so you can sell them at a later time. Lastly, there is the motivation factor. Do you really know yourself to be able to follow through on blogging in the first place? After the “newness” wears off and you are now making business blogging part of the routine of operating a business, can you see this through? It is an extension of your marketing department. You must continually market your business in order to stay alive financially.

Blogging is fun, but is also serious business. Make sure you are prepared for the “long haul” first. Blogging can be fun through the long term if you let it.

What is a relationship? It is developing trust and gaining favorable reputation with your customers. This takes time. No one wants a “relationship” thrust upon them in a short time. Japanese businessmen have a ritual where they have to know you for quite a long time before they will do business with you. They have inner patience to “give and take” within this relationship and make it in their best interests to do business with you. It is not because they got “burned” from some unscrupulous business scammer, rather, it just makes sense that they feel comfortable doing business with you after judging from your actions that likely to prove you are worthy to do business with.

It makes good sense to keep your blog content consistent to “prove” to your visitors that you are real and have value to offer them. If you sell at all, it comes down to how people buy. They buy from people they “like, know & trust.” It has been written in many creditable sales books that the relationship is the key to successful selling.

So, when blogging, keep this principle in mind. You should take the time to lay out consistent and relevent content that you know your visitors will appreciate and use. Don’t waste your time, and their time, in content that has no value. Also, keep asking your visitors and customers what they want to see in your blog. Let them have a “voice” in what they want to see from you. I guarantee that you cannot second guess your customers  on what they want from you. Asking what they want in content, what kind of additional service or product your business can provide, will be very important to your business.

Your blog’s sole purpose is truly a collaboration between your business and your customer.

Yes, if you represent outstanding customer service, or are the only business that practices “going green” philosophy, these are all causes to boost your marketing efforts. Not only is a blog good for positioning your business favorable with the search engines, you can also attract tons of visitors that share your view of how you do business. Not many businesses are aware of the power they have to take their marketing to the next level by using this one small aspect of marketing.

The first thing to do is to research what the buying public is focusing their attention to. Is it that they want an honest business that does not “bait and switch” their customers after a seemingly straight forward advertisement is presented? Is it that they only patronize a business that carries “green” or organic products? These are things you should be paying attention to.

Whatever the mindset of your target audience is focused on, get you and your business infront of them right now!

The secret here is not in the selling of your product or service, rather, it is stressing in developing a relationship with your visitor audience via having a conversation with them. Do you see the difference?

When you converse with your audience, you develop trust with them and in turn, they develop a like with you. Popular marketing guru, Seth Godin once said in his earlier books, “turn a stranger into a friend,” “then turn that friend into a customer.” Oh, so true. People want to deal with “real” people. When you are transparent in your intentions with your audience, your audience will respond with choosing to buy your product or service when the need arises.

Getting back to communication. We are a social being and therefore have a natural need to communicate with others. We need to belong to a community with like minded people. Blogs fulfill the vehicle in which we communicate online. It is a perfect “marriage” of a one to one relationship.

So, when you plan out your blog for your business, keep this in mind. If you approach using your blog as a tool to develop a solid communication with your audience, you will guarantee your business will generate a loyal following.

If you set up a blog with too many different topics or go into too many different directions, you will just be “spinning your wheels” and will be wasting your time.

Besides your main focus, your secondary goal should be to have a “call to action” for your visitors to go to your place of business and buy something. Your blog can show the benefits and advantages your customer will receive it they do buy your product or service.

If you do nothing more than focus on those two things, with time, your blog will be a very important vehicle for generating more customers and raising your revenues.

Now for the major “don’ts” when blogging. Here they are folks!

DON”T EVEN START BLOGGING IF:

1. You don’t intend on posting regularly to your blog
2. You don’t have a passion for your topic or theme
3. You can’t post meaningful content
4. Use your blog to attack people or other businesses with needless gossip
5. You are not going to devote your energy to your blog, long term

Blogging is serious business, just as your own brick and mortar business is. You wouldn’t walk away and ignore your business for several days just because you don’t feel up to it, would you? Likewise, blogging for your business. It should work in tandem with your business. It should be a necessity that a blog is part of your business from this day forward. Take great care in using your blog to be a permenant extension of your marketing operations.

I am as passionate to manage this blog as I am to help people make more profit from their business. It drives me to a higher level. It makes it real, to have a blog. It provides my opinion, my vehicle to actually do something that matters. Blogging can take care of your business if you take care of it.

It must have quality content. Think of a good book you last read or the types of magazines you subscribe to. You expect these publications to put out great content that you paid for. Blogs are like “free” magazines that get picked up and read by the internet and offline audience at large.

You must have a “personality” or style of conversing in the blog. If you are a laid back author and you know it appeals to your audience, then play that up. If you are an author who is more informative and considered to be like a “teacher,” then by all means write in that style.

Keep your blog interesting by using pictures, videos, and occasional reports, statistics or audio podcasts in your posts. The more you make it interesting visually, the more your readers will stay on as “regulars.”

The most important point is to post regularly. Make it a point that posting on a blog is like putting out the American flag at your “brick and mortar” location every morning. It is consistent and people come to expect it in the frequency you present it.

If you give value in your content and you respect and appreciation to your readers, you will soon have a good following to your blog and consequently attract loyal readers that will turn into repeat paying customers to your business.

After we decide exactly what we want to achieve with a blog, the next step is to find a domain name. Now you can go two ways with this. First, if you already have a domain name, you can add a blog to a different “directory” within that domain name. Secondly, you can put up your blog on a separate domain altogether. We suggest you put up the blog on a separate domain because it can “feed” traffic to your original “static” web page and therefore get points for higher search engine ranking or page rank.

Next, you need to plan out your layout of the blog. Blogs have several main features to think about. We have listed the basic features you need to be aware of:

1. header
2. post area
3. sidebar
4. search box
5. category box

Now this is not the complete list, but the basic list to be aware of when starting a blog from scratch.

Always remember that the “lifeblood” that drives the full function of a blog is content. By that, we mean that you need to consistently add post articles in the post area weekly. Every time you add content or make a change to the blog, such as adding an affiliate ad, you take advantage of the full potential of the power of the blog.

In our next post, we will share with you, several ideas to think about on how to make your blog effective at the start so you get a running head start at success.