“A blog is a simple, easy-to-use platform for connecting with and sharing timely and relevant information with customers. It’s your direct communication channel.”  Dechay Watts, sproutcontent, June 2016

Blogging is a great way engage with your contacts online, increase traffic to your website and attract potential customers and followers. Blogs are becoming an essential tool for marketing your business. There are a number of features that make blogs noteworthy and different to websites:

Tone – blogs are written in a personal and conversational style. They tend to be informal in their approach. Make sure that the tone of your blog suits your audience.

Topic – bloggers tend to define what they are writing about and will focus on a particular topic. Take a little extra time defining your subject and the post will flow better. You will develop something that matters to your readers.

Trackbacks – it is easy to insert links to other websites and blogs. Try to make Trackbacks relevant and engaging for your audience to keep their interest.

Comments Section – blogs provide an effective message board for your articles so that you can answer questions and engage with your readers. Ensure you don’t leave any comments or questions unanswered – always reply promptly and keep the conversation alive.

Five Reasons why you should blog:

1.   Build relationships

Blogging is one of the best ways to build relationships with new and existing contacts. It is important to share information that is interesting, useful and relevant. Blogging on topics that interest you will allow you to create relationships with people who are interested in similar topics. You will also connect with other bloggers and build an online network.

2.   Share your ideas with a larger network

By including social sharing options on your blog posts, you have the opportunity to expand your range of influence to a much larger network. The key here is to write consistent, high quality content that people find interesting and want to share.

3.   Create opportunities

Search engines love blogs and using the blog format can help acquire search engine traffic. Blogging makes it easy to build trackbacks; it is very easy to insert links to other websites and blogs. When creating your blog ensure that you include keywords and tags to increase SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

4.   Validate and share your expertise

Blogging can help you build a fantastic reputation and you may even be recognised as an expert in your field. We see bloggers on news interviews and hear radio shows speaking with bloggers to get expert opinions. Blogs create an environment for experts to share their expertise with each other too.

5.   Establish Authority

Blogging about important topics that are relevant to your audience establishes you as an authority and enhances your professional image. Your blog can be a strong positioning tool for your business. Each post you publish gives you the opportunity to teach something new and connect with your audience.

Blogs can create an environment for others to share their opinions long after your initial post. Often the real action happens once your post is published and being interacted with by readers and other bloggers. Taking time to respond to all the comments can be very fruitful and leave you feeling, quite rightly like you’ve done your job well.