Also remember to keep your blog current. Most blogs are organized reverse-chronologically for a reason — it’s so you can’t miss the latest post. Being erratic with your blog gives your customers the impression that your company is unreliable.

The Key Features of a Good Business Blog:

1. Relevance: It is crucial to post articles that are relevant for your given industry or business. If you are going to be a primary source of information for your readers in your industry or niche, then you will need to keep up to date with developments and be prepared to give your opinion on them. This adds value for your readers and builds their trust and confidence in what you have to say. Examples include showcasing upcoming tourism events for a hospitality business, advances in technology for a software-based business, or explanations of new legislation or industry changes in the infrastructure business. Use your knowledge to become an expert on your chosen topic.

2. Responsivity: Your readers will soonstart communicating with you directly. It is important to respond quickly. Treat every response with the respect it deserves, ensure follow-up action where relevant, and research the facts that are not at your fingertips already.

3. Clarity: Time is precious, so ensuring your reader can extract the relevant data quickly and easily is the key to success. Be sure to write in a way that is clear and concise – no one wants to wade through pages and pages of text, and such pages have a high bounce rate. Facilitate navigation by having subheadings and subsections to help divide up the article and help someone read the section they are most interested in.

4. Regularity: A website that is out of date doesn’t present a good image of your company and this is especially apparent with a blog, as untouched ones are very obvious. Some simple advice would be to try not to burn out too quickly – don’t exhaust all your topics within the first month of existence by posting frantically. Making lists of planned topics and splitting them up into more detailed separate posts is a useful way to ensure consistent, regular quality content.

5. Visibility: Blogs, like any other part of your website, should be written and structured in a way that is search engine friendly. Your blog posts should be filled with industry-relevant keywords, which should bring you traffic and visibility through search engines.

6. Accuracy: Blogs are an important contact point with customers, so just as you would be unhappy to put poorly written text with errors and inaccuracies on any company literature, set similar standards for your posts. Spelling and grammar are often overlooked, but well researched and presented information and arguments are the backbone of your blog’s success. It is no surprise that the most visited blogs are the most insightful, useful or entertaining reads around!

Get out there and plan your company’s blog today.

However, often companies don’t get beyond good intentions. A study of Fortune 1000 Senior Executives in 2006 revealed that while 77% of them thought their companies should have corporate policies to produce Company Blogs, only 8% had teams dedicated to this task!

So What Does a Blog Do for your Company?

1. It Educates Your Visitors: It is a great forum to explain to your readers exactly why your company does things the way they do, and give them lots of helpful and topical information about the core idea behind your business. From looking at the bigger picture (latest trends worldwide) to focusing on your new products or offers, you will build a loyal fan base that identifies with your brand, trusts your advice, and will turn into customers.

2. Your Blog is Your Press Release: Instead of squandering your marketing budget on Press Releases that are not directed at your target customers, your Blog can serve as the medium to quickly reach a select audience – that’s the efficient way!

3. Your Brand Visibility Zooms Upwards: It all comes down to the content in your Blog. Quality content is usually linked by other bloggers. This helps you gain better placement on search engines and increases your visibility. Today everyone who puts anything out on the Net has only one dream – and that is to go viral! That’s going to happen to your blog when excellent content gets picked up and linked to other blogs, and then you’ll watch your brand value soar.

4. You Personalize Your Business: No-one enjoys dealing with a huge nameless, faceless organization. Potential clients would like to know who is behind the product or service they are buying. When you have a one-on-one relationship with your readers, it gives your business a face – people know they are dealing with someone they know and might have been in touch with personally via email and other forms of communication. This is a huge benefit.

5. You Get Instant Feedback: This is one of the most important benefits of a Blog – rapid, instant feedback and reviews which will help you tweak your strategy and respond better to the market you are trying to target. With a blog you can get feedbacks within minutes after publishing a post on a recent product launch, which lets you adjust your campaign or make necessary changes as suggested by the customers you are trying to promote your product to.

Remember, a Blog is only as good as what you put in it, so make sure your content is professional and relevant, and you will see the effect it has on your business.

However, often companies don’t get beyond good intentions. A study of Fortune 1000 Senior Executives in 2006 revealed that while 77% of them thought their companies should have corporate policies to produce Company Blogs, only 8% had teams dedicated to this task!

So What Does a Blog Do for your Company?

1. It Educates Your Visitors: It is a great forum to explain to your readers exactly why your company does things the way they do, and give them lots of helpful and topical information about the core idea behind your business. From looking at the bigger picture (latest trends worldwide) to focusing on your new products or offers, you will build a loyal fan base that identifies with your brand, trusts your advice, and will turn into customers.