Have you got blogging as an item on your list of techniques to implement and is it still unchecked? If it does not appear on the list, why not add it? If it is already there but is unchecked, it’s high time you took steps to cross it off.  Blogging is a sure way of getting and staying connected with your customers provided you abide by a few simple web-tested guidelines!

Though there are millions of blogs on the web with many more popping up every minute, the number of business blogs are relatively less in number. So while your competitor may be still be deciding on whether to blog or not, you can get a head start by doing it right away. Contrary to traditional outbound marketing, blogging is an inbound marketing strategy that is becoming trendier.

<strong>Topic – What to blog about?</strong>
The best method is to blog about what you care about most. This will be your niche – a passion that you possibly wouldn’t be bored of. If you are an entrepreneur and have come online to promote your small business, you don’t have to look far. Your niche could well be your area of business.

It is okay to start a blog with the ultimate aim of roping in more business. However, it never is a good idea to sales talk in every single of your blog posts. To succeed with your blog, you will have to build up credibility. Daunting as this may seem, it is definitely possible with time and effort. If you have chosen your niche aptly, you will find it easy to come up with original and informative articles for your blog. These should be useful to your customers. Think from the customer point of view, understand what they would like to know and then provide valuable information; educate them, solve customer problems. This will lend you authority in your field. People will tend to value your opinion. Once you have attained this trust, it will be easier to promote your products. Remember inbound marketing is where the customer is in control; they come and find you. So you have to prove yourself as worthy of being sought out.

<strong>Technology – How to set up a blog?</strong>
Sometimes for business men it is the lack of technical know-how that keeps them from starting a blog. The first decision would be whether to have the blog as part of your website or at an entirely different domain. If your blog is going to be about your products and services alone, it would make sense to tag it along with your website. It would an ideal forum to interact with customers, solve product issues, generate ideas for new products, announce new services and so on. Moreover, search engines would love your site all the more when you have a blog with fresh and frequently updated content. However if you intend to give the blog a wider scope giving expert opinion, educating people and providing information related to your business, it wouldn’t harm to maintain one that is totally removed from the website. You could always link to your site from the blog to route some of the blog traffic to the website.

Next major decision would be the choice of a  blogging platform – hosted or non-hosted one. A hosted blog platform is one which is usually free and hosts the blog on their domain. Common examples are Blogger.com, WordPress.com and MSN Spaces. A novice would find this option more suitable as it is easier to run. Setting up the blog takes only a few minutes, platform updates are done automatically and such blogs gets indexed quickly by search engines.

Non-hosted or stand alone blog platforms on the other hand, offer more flexibility and control over your blog. Having your own domain name is another definite advantage of such platforms. The downside is that it is more complicated to set up and involves recurring costs. Some popular examples of non-hosted blog platforms are WordPress.org, MovableType and ExpressionEngine. TypePad offers a combination of hosted and non-hosted services through remote hosting.

By no means does the discussion end here. There are a whole lot of other considerations to be weighed before plunging into business blogging, but this article tries to throw light on two of the major concerns.