Over the years, the ways we promote ourselves and our businesses have changed. One of the best ways to increase visibility for yourself and your business online is a blog.

Fact is, anyone and their dog can start one. In fact, many web design companies, business consultants and ad agencies will encourage you to do so… BUT very few will provide you with an effective strategy to best leverage your time. What good is a tool if you don’t know how to best use it? It’s like using a fork to hang a picture.

Here are 5 best practices when blogging for business, based on our years of experience and working with businesses of various sizes:

1. Keep it short – We all have a very short attention span. I’m starting to believe that ADD comes built in with any car purchased after 1984.  Keep your message short, informative and to the point. We call it ‘bite-sized’ content. This way, it’s easier to come up with something to say and it’s easier for the reader to consume.
2. Keep it fresh – Frequent updates are key to improving your visibility and reputation online. We usually suggest at least one post per week. This will not only encourage visitors to come back, but will tremendously improve your search engine visibility.
3. Watch your titles – Now this is where the  good stuff is. Titles are the most important part of a blog post in terms of visibility. They are what will show up in Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Title of the post should match search terms your customers or clients may be looking for. We get most of our traffic through the blog because of the way our titles are structured and our clients do the same.
4. Pick your tags – Most blogging software will allow you to tag your posts. These are one or two words describing the content of your post. Think of them as another opportunity to match the keywords your customers may be searching for.
5. Promote yourself – Finally… you may have the best blog in the world but if nobody knows about it, you’ll get as much traffic as an indigenous village in the middle of Africa. We encourage our clients to, at the very least, include a link to their blog in their e-mail signature.  You can also easily leverage newsletters, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks. Posting a link to your new blog post in your status  helps with generating traffic.

Well there you are! Those are 5 quick and easy ways to get you blogging for business in a way that will actually work.

- Ernest.