Are you Blogging for Business?

Purpose

Through blogs, you can build an invaluable platform where expertise, talents and experiences gained in the business can be demonstrated instantly to the people all over the world.

The primary function for a successful blog is to provide adequate information. All successful and popular blogs are those that provide information without overt promotion.

But that raises a big question for a business. If I cannot promote my products what value does my blog have?

1. You make your brand known
2. You come across an as expert in your niche.

The above two factors are enough to get visitors interested in your products. So your blog becomes a part of indirect marketing. In this age of direct marketing bombardment this subtle form of marketing appeals to a prospect. Your expertise has already been established but most probably

1. Always put a 'call to action' on your blog.
2. Display your latest products and your most popular products as images linking to details or specifications and cart page.
3. The copywriting on the call to action page and the product pages must be well done to convert. Your blog has established your expertise; all you need now is the emotional pitch that tells the prospect how the product will change his/her life.

Popularity

• In this age of social networking you can use your network to tell others about the blog.
• You can also make your business colleagues know about it and ask them to link to your blog. You may have to link to them in return.
• Technically it would be advisable to submit your blog to some of the most popular blog directories.
• Use keywords that your customers will use to find you in titles of blog posts. Search engines will pick it up and make you rank higher. The higher you appear the more chances are that your customers will visit your blog.
• Post excellent content. Good content gets linked and this raises the value of your blog and indirectly your business. Generic content has no value.

Platforms

There are several ways to blog and many more types of blogging softwares. If you are thinking of setting up your blog on a folder or sub domain on your website the blogging software has to be compatible with the website. For a stand alone blog domain you can choose any platform and then decide on a host that will support the platform. You can even opt to host your site on a platform like blogger or typepad.

Please see the link http://www.pcworld.com/article/128620/blogging_platforms.html for information on blog types. Select yours carefully taking into considerations your skill sets, who will manage your blog, are your willing to pay, your storage area and your future vision of your blog as to will you allow podcasts and videos on your blog?