There are somewhere around 200 million blogs or weblogs online today. Some of these blogs are dormant, but many are alive with conversation. These conversations reach into every category of business and every aspect of life.

Blogging can be fun and beneficial to your business. It can open you up to a world of new ideas and new voices. It can be an eye-opening experience to see what your customers have to say to you in a one-on-one environment. And it gives you the chance to learn how they feel, what they want and how they want it. Whether you are currently engaged in online dialogue with your customers or not, there’s definitely a conversation going on about your business. Don’t you want to be part of it?

Blogs help you increase your search engine ranking.

A vast array of companies have been making successful (and some not so successful) leaps into blogging in recent years. Are you ready?

How Blogging Can Help Your Business:

• Blogs let you share your knowledge and establish yourself as an expert.
• Blogs help you reach potential customers.
• Blogging will teach you more about your current customers and create dialogue.
• Blogging will help you learn more about your industry.
• Blogs can help you reach the traditional media by drawing in reporters.
• Blogs help you increase your search engine ranking.
• Blogs allow proponents of your brand to share your messages with their friends.

At Bozell, we recently completed our largest and most successful blogging project to date. We built and wrote an event blog for the Berkshire Hathaway Weekend. It was a way for our client, Borsheims, to report on festivities during the event. The blog (borsheimsbrk.com) offered photography, video, interesting posts and links to information on key events throughout the weekend. It was promoted through Google AdWords, email campaigns and special cards with the blog’s address that were handed out at events.

The Borsheims event blog received almost 6,000 unique visitors and nearly 25,000 page views in its first few days. The blog still appears in the Top 10 search results for Berkshire Weekend on Google.

Tips for Successful Blogging:

• Determine your blog’s theme at the start and stick to it.
• Name your blog and your posts with keywords that directly relate to the subject matter.
• Don’t try to address multiple themes in each post.
• Be honest, open, passionate and personal.
• Blog under your own name. If you don’t feel comfortable using your full name, use only your first name or a nickname.
• Write an “about” page and leave a phone number or email address for visitors to reach you.
• Write what you care about.
• Personal posts help reinforce that you are a real person.
• Use original material. Don’t be a copycat.
• Be persuasive without “selling.”
• Link to other blogs to help increase your search engine ranking and blog authority ranking.
• Ask questions and solicit input from readers.
• Leave your comment section open and always respond to comments in a timely manner.
• Share stories of the bad times as well as the good.
• Blog consistently, at least once a week.

If you’re ready to explore the blogosphere and see what’s being said about your business and your industry, we recommend starting your search with either of these blog search engines: Technorati or Blogsearch.