It’s as important to measure the success of your blog as it is any other aspect of your online presence and there are several key data points that can help you track your blog’s effectiveness accurately. When it comes to blogging metrics, meaningful ones are generally related to how many people come to your blog and how engaged they are once they get there. 

So-which metrics can help you track the success of your business blog?

1. Reach. You can measure your blog’s reach by looking at the number of visitors you receive over a period of time.  This is useful because it gives you an idea about how many people actually arrive at your blog.  This metric can be broken down to help you understand which keywords are driving the majority of traffic to your blog.
2. Number of subscribers. The number of subscribers that your blog gets can give you a good idea of how effective your blog content is (how sticky it is). The better your blog content, the more people that will want to subscribe to receive regular updates from you. 
3. Quantity and quality of backlinks. How many other websites are linking back to your website’s content? Every reputable link that your blog content receives is like a vote for the relevance and authority of your website. A high number of quality backlinks means that your content is relevant and considered to be a good resource in your industry. 
4. Blog visitor conversion rates.  When it comes to online business, it’s all about getting sales, and turning leads into customers relies upon your ability to convert those prospects. In terms of blogging you can track conversions by looking at your blog visitors’ navigation paths to see how many visitors explore your site further (look at product pages etc) and how many turn into solid leads from that. 
5. Visitor engagement. How many comments does your blog receive and how relevant are those comments? The number and quality of the comments you receive can help to give you an idea of how engaged visitors are with your content. Measuring length of time spent on your blog pages can also help you better understand your visitors’ engagement.

Image by salendron on Flickr.

Blog posts should be optimized just like any other content on your website and that includes making sure that your blog posts are search engine friendly. Blog posts are invaluable in terms of long tail SEO, and it’s important to make sure that they are effective not just for your human readers but also search engine crawlers. As we’ve said before, search engine optimization is a constant process, but there are a few quick fixes you can make to help you blog posts rank better.

1. Use your keywords in your title. Often, when reading webpages, search engines give higher precedence to words that appear early on in the pages structure. By including your keywords in your page title you can help search engines understand which words are the most relevant and important on your page. Having your keywords in you title also helps when other websites are linking back to your post because many backlinks are created using the linked-to post’s title as the anchor text.
2. Use internal links. While external links are better for SEO than internal ones, search engines still pay attention to incoming links from your own website. This also makes your posts easier to read and encourages readers to explore your site further by offering them other relevant posts and webpages. 
3. Promote each post. If you want your posts to get seen by a larger audience (and consequently shared and linked to) you need to make sure they get access to it and one of the best ways to do this is to make sure you’re promoting each and every one of your posts. A quick and easy way to do this is to use social marketing platforms like Hootsuite (that’s what we use) which allows you to have your RSS feed automatically published to your social accounts every time you create a new post. 
4. Use your analytics. Website analytics are important for your blog as well as the rest of your website. Your website’s analytics will help you discover which terms your readers are using to arrive at your blog, what types of posts are the most popular and which search terms are the most relevant to your audience. That information is one of the best places to start optimizing your website for SEO. 

Try some of these tips out and let us know how it helps your rankings! Do you have any other tips you like to use to help your posts rank better?

Image by marciookabe on Flickr.

Blogs are important for your website's SEO. By ensuring that your blog content has lots of naturally occuring keywords to help longtail search and by working hard to garner relevant, reputable links, you can improve your overall traffic and search engine rankings. Unfortunately, getting links for your blog isn't always an easy task. That's why we put together this list of 6 ways to build links for your blog.

1. Write compelling content.This is perhaps the most obvious point on our list, but also the most important: if you don't have compelling content then you won't get as many relevant links. You need to give your audience something that they want to link to.
2. Write guest blog posts. Writing on other high-traffic industry blogs and including a link to your website is a great way to promote your own blog and encourage linking. Users that find your content useful on other blogs, are more likely to visit your blog, spread your content and provide links to your blog within their circle of influence online.
3. Make it easy for visitors to share your content. Ensure that your blog makes it easy for you visitors to email, tweet or share your content in their favorite way. This improves the chances that they will spread your content to other users who may choose to link to it.
4. Comment on other blogs. Becoming a regular commenter on high-traffic industry blogs is a great way to not only build relationships with other bloggers (who may link back to you in the future) and a way to promote your content and relevant resources.
5. Submit your blog to relevant blog directories. Blog directories are a good way to indicate to search engines and longtail users the topic of your blog and can help to drive more traffic and links for your blog.
6. Syndicate your content through social media. Using social media websites to spread your content and including links to your blog on your profile is a good way to build links. Social media users are one of the biggest groups of linkers, especially if you manage to produce content that ends up going viral.

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Of course these are by no means all the methods for building blog links. What linking tactics for blogs have you found to be most effective? What challenges have you faced when trying to build blog links? 

Image by alamodestuff on Flickr.

One of the biggest aspects of a website, your content, can also be one of the hardest parts to maintain. Consistently creating compelling content is a difficult task, especially if your bloggers run out of inspiration for content that is relevant to your audience. Luckily, content creators have a tool at their finger tips to help them figure out what type of content they should be writing more frequently to make their jobs a little easier, and that tool is analytics.

Which metrics can help you determine what content you should write?

1. Page Views.  Which of your content has the most page views? The content on your website that has the highest number of page views is definitely the type of content you should be creating more of. One of the key aspects of compelling content creation is developing content that your users want to read.
2. Organic Search Referrers. Which keywords are your visitors using to find your content? Writing more content around the popular keywords that your audience is using is a good way to make sure that you have content ready when your target audience enters a search query. 
3. Number of backlinks. Which content that you’ve develop gets the most backlinks? Backlinks are an important part of your SEO strategy, and developing more content that your readers like to link to will make your audience happy and increase your search engine rankings. 
4. Number of comments per post. This is a metric that is used when creating blog content. By looking at the number of subscribers who have commented on a certain post you can get a better idea of which posts your readers find most useful. 
5. Conversion rate. How many visitors convert (complete an action on your website, for example, subscribe to your blog) after reading a certain piece of content? The content that converts is the content you want to make more of.

There have been several studies over the last few years showing the companies with corporate blogs, espeically small businesses, receive significantly more traffic online than those without one. Unfortunately, just having a corporate blog isn't enough to get you the traffic results you need or want. Too often organizations will build a blog after having heard that it will bring them more traffic but when it comes to turning it into something that improves website traffic and ROI they fall short. Why? Because they don't understand the fundamentals of a successful blog or the amount of content and resources needed to build and maintain a successful blog.

What can you do to help your corporate blog start generating more traffic?

1. Develop a publishing schedule. Before you get started blogging, you need to determine how often you're going to publish posts. Having a firm schedule and ensuring that you have the resources necessary to keep it up is an important part of ensuring that your blog has fresh,quality content on a frequent basis.
2. Put ownership in the right place. Blogging can't be an afterthought or a side-job for one of your already overworked employees. For you blog to be successful, it needs to have a dedicated person(s) who are able and willing to put the time and effort in to creating the content, finding graphics and researching posts to keep up with the publishing schedule you've already established.
3. Avoid blatant self-promotion. Your company should already have enough marketing strategies in place without co-opting your blog into your newest advertising platform. When done correctly your blog should be a repository of knowledge developed by your blogging team to help your target audience find the answers they need, when they need it.
4. Syndicate your content. Once you're posting regularly it's important that you are spreading your content to the largest audience pool that you can. The easiest and quickest way to do this is to synidcate your blog content through social media and the use of RSS Feeds.
5. Monitor comments, posts and feedback. Just like any other social media initiative, it's important that you're monitoring your blog for comments and feedback from your audience. One of the best ways to increase your blog subscribers and traffic is to start a loyal following based on genuine conversations you've had with your readers.
6. Measure. Setting and tracking web analytics for your blog is just as important as having them set up for any other page on your website. Tracking metrics like blog traffic and measuring which blog posts are the most popular can help you to optimize your blog in the future. I also suggest measuring the navigation paths of visitors who arrive at your blog to help you visualize where your readers go on your site after they've arrived at a post.

Don't forget when you're planning your corporate blog, that blogging for business is very different than personal blogging. When you're writing a blog for professional purposes you need to keep your audience's needs and desires front-of-mind. You need to make sure that your blog is written in both the language and tone that your audience finds most accessible and that the content your writing appeals to their wants. Remember, your blog isn't meant to be simply an advertising platform, but it is meant to help support your online goals and targets.

image by Kristina B on Flickr.

Early this week Jon Sobel from Technorati published their most recent “State of the Blogosphere”  report for 2010. The study, which according to the website, “follow[s] growth and trends in the blogosphere,” includes information on: which brands are embracing social media, traditional media vs. social media, brands working with bloggers etc.

Some highlights for the report include:

• Only 1% of bloggers blog full-time while 21% blog for their own company or organization
• 2/3 of bloggers are male and ¼ of bloggers have a household income of $100,000 or more
• Most bloggers update 2-3 times a week
• 42% of respondents say they blog about brands they love or hate (word of mouth marketing people!)
• 42% of bloggers use social media to follow brands (are you reaching those influencers?)
• 39% of respondents believe that more people will be getting their news and entertainment from blogs than traditional media in the next 5 years
• 72% of bloggers are using twitter to promote their blog content, while 62% use it to share links to interesting content

The most effective social media sites to promote your blog content are:

• Facebook (28%)
• Twitter (26%)
• LinkedIn (4%)
• StumbleUpon (3%)
• Flickr (2%)
• YouTube (2%)

The top ways that blogging has helped businesses are:

1. Greater industry visibility (64%)
2. Acquired new customers, made sales (58%)
3. Built thought leadership (54%)
4. Asked to speak at conferences (32%)
5. Helped recruit employees (17%)

Here’s a quick list of things I wish I had known when setting out to create a business blog:

1. You should write everyday, but writing everyday doesn’t mean publishing everyday. You should constantly be thinking about what you’ll write about, and you should be writing down whatever comes to mind.  Every now and again that might come together into something you can use, often it won’t.  The point isn’t to blog on demand, but to occasionally knock out a post that demands to be read.


2. Just because you posted something to be read doesn’t mean it will be. Post quality isn’t what gets readers, its what retains readers.  I know, I know, it sucks.  If it makes you feel any better, you’re going to look back on the stuff you’re writing now in a few months and want to delete it all.  If you write daily, you will get much, much better.  You have no idea.


3. You need a crank for generating readers. If you can’t turn the crank on demand but rely on events like a once in a lifetime ad buy or something, you don’t have a process, you have pixie dust.  Find a number of effective methods for driving incremental traffic and work the process.  There are some very basic and ways to promote your new blog without spending money, without including topless pictures in your posts, and without trying to out-hack Google’s Search Ranking hackers.


4. Temper your expectations about readership. Your daily blogs about the solar cell you invented that will result in free, renewable energy for all of mankind will get .000001 of the traffic that a post debuting a picture of Britney spears not wearing makeup for the first time will get.  I’m sorry, its not personal, it’s just the internet.  If you’re blogging about a niche topic, be the best blogger in that niche. 


5. Blogging is great because there’s very little barrier to entry.  Blogging is horrible because there’s very little barrier to entry. If your blog only took you 20 minutes to set up, it probably looks like it only took 20 minutes to set up.  Think about how much time you’ll put into writing for and promoting your blog.  You are not just a writer, but also a publisher.  Make it your own.  Be proud of it.  Get comfortable there.  It’s your new office.


6. Other bloggers aren’t your competitors; they’re your partners, your readers, and your sales and marketing channel. The average blog is about 300 words long and takes about 90 seconds to read.  Anybody who went to all of the trouble to find your blog buried in the corner of the WWW isn’t going to read just one little lonely blog post.  People don’t read from just one blog and they wouldn’t need an RSS feed if they did.  You’re not competing for eyeballs against other bloggers, even within the same space.  The blogging audience is hungrier than you can possibly imagine.

These are, by no means, the only things to know about blogging.  There are lists and lists of lists.  But these are some key things that, having known them, I could have saved myself a lot of time and energy.

It’s not always easy to come up with consistently compelling, interesting blog content, especially when you don’t feel particularly motivated or inspired. It’s very easy for a blogger (especially one who writes frequently) to become disenchanted with blogging on a regular basis and to just get burnt out. If you know what we’re talking about, then you’re in luck! Today we’ve put together a post with 13 different types of blog content you can turn to when your inspiration starts to lag.

So, without further ado, on with the list!  

1. FAQ. For those of you who don’t know, FAQ stands for frequently asked questions, and these are a great source of interesting and relevant blog content. Every business has questions that their customers ask them on a regular basis, taking those questions and turning them into targeted blog posts is easy, and an excellent way to educate your readers.
2. Links. Here are Marqui, we do a weekly post (on Fridays for those of you aren’t aware) where we post a collection of links to content that we think our readers will find educational, interesting and informative.
3. Multi-media. Using an assortment of different types of media in your posts is a good way to keep your audience engaged, and a smart way to get inspired. When we’re stuck for ideas on blog posts, we head over to YouTube or Slideshare, and search presentations on our favorite topics and as of yet, we’ve never been unable to find a relevant, interesting video to analyze and share with our readers.  
4. Lists. A list post (like the one you’re reading right now) is relatively easy to put together and tends to be a popular choice for readers. These types of posts collect data on certain topics and collect it in one location making it easier for your readers to consume. “Top 10” style lists are particularly effective. 
5. Guest authors. Having guest bloggers write posts for you blog helps take the pressure off you, and keeps your blog content diverse. A one-dimensional blog is never as effective as a well-rounded one. 
6. Social media. There are a lot of tools out there you can use to monitor popular topics in social media. A good example of this is searching current trending topics on Twitter. Using tools like this to write about what’s popular at the moment can help you write posts that are timely and appeal to a large audience.
7. Analytics-based. If you find yourself in a blog post writing-rut, inspiration can certainly come from checking out your web analytics. Looking to see what posts were popular in the past can help you to come up with content for posts that you know your readers want to read! 
8. Industry news. The news items that are going on in your industry are an excellent source of ideas for blog posts. Writing about what’s going on in your industry keeps your blog current and shows that you’re up-to-date on industry-related information! 
9. A series. Now this still requires you to come up with an original idea in the first place (usually) but  once you come up with one a series can keep your in blog topics for quite a while, and, if your readers like the topic, they will most likely return to see how the series progresses. 
10. “How To.” These posts are the best way to inform your readers about industry best-practices and educate your readers on using different tools and business strategies for your industry and they are also hugely popular. 
11. Case Studies. Now we don’t recommend tooting your own horn on a regular basis, that can be boring (not to mention irrelevant for readers) but, posting about success stories that show what you can do for a customer and how a customer can be successful with your product is informative, when done in the right way. Make sure that you write with your readers in mind and highlight your customer’s pain points and their achievements, rather than your involvement in the process.

Image by JeffMcneill on Flickr

Okay, so you have a company blog and you’ve been getting some traffic, but not enough to justify your blogging efforts. Well, you’re not the only ones, this is a common problem and it can be solved with a simple fix: proper promotion.

How can you promote your blog to effectively drive more traffic?

1. Use social media. Syndicating your blog’s content through social media is an important way to make sure that your content is getting spread as widely as possible. The more people who have access to your content, the more people that are likely to come back for more in the future.
2. Get some great guest bloggers. This isn’t always the easiest thing to do, but, getting some relevant or influential bloggers in your space to write a post for you and then promote their post on their own blog is one of the best ways to drive relevant traffic to your blog. 
3. Submit your blog’s RSS feed to feed directories. Many people who read blogs through RSS feeds will search for relevant blogs in RSS feed directories. If you submit your RSS feed to as many as you can (some are free, some are paid, and some have fairly strict submission rules) then you increase the pool of people who will find your blog. 
4. Create posts that people want to link to. Ever heard of link baiting? Well, it’s an essential tactic for promoting your blog and driving targeted traffic. Link baiting is when you create content that readers like to link to because it is highly quality, interesting, entertaining, and relevant. If you want to learn more about how you can get more inbound links to your blog read our post on, “7 Types of Blog Content Readers Love to Link To.”
5. Make sure your blog is visible on your website. If you don’t promote your blog on your own website, that is the biggest mistake you can make. Make sure you blog is clearly visible from your homepage and easy to access.

Image by Thomas Hawk on Flickr

This is a guest post written by Randa Codron, a Marketing and Communications Specialist for WaterTrax, one of Marqui's SaaS partner companies.

First of all, congratulations! Getting a business blog up and running is a notable achievement. Working at it consistently to get a core group of readers is something 95% blogs out there will never have. If you’re running a blog as a marketing program for your company though, you’re likely still short of your overall objective, which is to get sales leads. If that’s the case, you’re probably nailing some of the leading indicators, like unique visitors, reader interaction, subscriptions, and maybe even trackbacks or tweets.

But for most people in your organization they want to know how many leads you’re generating. It’s at this point that we want to be very clear about two things:

1. You have built a successful blog. Anything that happens now is separate from what you’ve already done.
2. The challenge now is to convert your readers into leads

Depending on a number of different factors, converting these readers to actual leads may not be important to you at all. Maybe that’s not what your blog is for. Or maybe leads matter, but you’ve decided to embrace the new thinking that your readers will become leads through osmosis rather than conversion. For a number of reasons, I happen to think that’s the most efficient way to operate. But for some of you, that won’t matter.

Many people who start a corporate blog have to sell it internally. One of the easiest ways to do that is to promise leads! If that’s the case for you, waiting for these unique visitors to qualify themselves and send you an email when they’re ready to buy is just too slow of a process. Your company will expect people to register themselves as a lead whether they’re ready to buy or not. This means that having a successful blog gets you only halfway there. You now need to successfully convert.

Challenges like this a result of a “happiness problem”; like having tons of customers come into your store at once.

Stay tuned for the second part of this blog post about converting your readers to leads.

Image by Inju on Flickr.

When it comes to writing engaging blog posts, having optimized carefully selected images can be a good way to engage your readers and encourage interest in your posts. Images are also an important aspect of a business blog's SEO strategy and can help bring in readers based on organic search. There are several ways to optimize your images and this post will hopefully help give you some tips on how you can find the best images you can and then how you can optimize them.

First things first, why are images important?

1. Images add visual interest to your posts and can help illustrate your point
2. Images are one of the  first things people look at when they come to your blog post and can help draw a reader in 
3. An intriguing image can help create curiosity about the content of your post
4. Interesting images are easy to remember and can help your readers memorize the subject or key point in your post
5. Having optimized images is essential for helping you get found in Google Image Search

Where can you find the best (free) images?

1. Flickr. We're sure that most of your have heard of Flickr, one of the most popular video and photo sharing sites on the internet today. Flickr can be a great place to find interesting blog images. By choosing the "Only search Creative Commons-Licensed Content" under the "Advanced Search" section, you can search thousands of photos licensed specifically for shared use.
2. Webshots. Webshots is another popular video and photo sharing site. The site has free account sign up, similar to Flickr, but it doesn't have a Creative Commons search option so to use images you need to send a message to the user who owns the photo and request permission to use the image. This might seem like a little bit more work, but if it's the right image, it's worth it!  
3. Stock.xchange. This is a photo sharing database, where you can search and download free stock photos uploaded by other users.
4. PhotoXpress. Is also a stock photo database with a free option. After setting up your free account, and filling in the information requested you can earn a certain number of free photo downloads a day from their free photo database.
5. Every Stock Photo. This site is a license-specific photo search engine that indexes millions of freely-licensed stock photos from around the web and then presents them in an integrated search.
6. PicFindr. PicFindr is similar to Every Stock Photo in that it is a search engine that indexes freely-licensed images from around the web for users to search. 

How can you optimize your images?

1. Ensure that your Alt Text and Image Title are optimized. The Alt Text of an image is essential for both website usability and accessibility because it is designed to describe an image when the image itself isn't available to be viewed. Good Alt Text includes a clear description of your image including keywords. On the other hand, an Image Title is meant to provide additional information about an image and is the text that pops up when you hover over an image in some browsers. A good Image Title should describe the image, be catchy and should also include your keywords. You can read more about this from Search Engine Journal here.
2. Be conscious of width and height. Specifying the height and width of an image, rather than scaling an image using HTML, allows for faster rendering by eliminating the need for unnecessary repaints and reflows. You can read more about this from Google and Yahoo!.
   
3. Watch out for file names. Using descriptive file names is a quick way to increase your search engine traffic. Make sure that when you upload your images you change the file name to something descriptive of the image itself rather than allowing a default name.
4. Know which image format is best. For large images it's best to use JPGs, and when images are low or flat-color, PNGs or GIFs are preferable. You can read the reasoning behind this in a great post from WebsiteOptimization.com.

These are by no means the only ways you can optimize an image, or the only places that you can find free images, these are just a few of our favorites! Hopefully you found these tips helpful and good luck optimizing your images!

Image by Capt Kodak on Flickr.

Getting people to link back to your website's content, should be an essential aspect of your organization's SEO strategy, and one of the best ways to encourage your blog readers to take the time to link to your blog or website, is to create engaging content that people like to read and want to share. While creating appealing content is never and easy task, you can make the task of getting back links a little easier by creating content that is popular with a wide range of readers.

What are some of the favorite types of content for readers to link back to?

1. Statistics, graphs and infographics. Readers love industry statistics, especially if they are surprising, useful for benchmarking and even better, if they're presented in an appealing graphic format.
2. A collection of links and resources. This is a good way for your readers to get all the educational information they need on a topic in one easily accessible place. Rather than having to find the individual links themselves, you've published them all in one location, established yourself as an educational resource. Posts like this a two for one deal, since the reader only has to provide one link, but ends up linking to multiple resources at once.
3. Reviews of design elements. These posts are often easy for your readers to absorb and share. Commenting on visual and design elements of different websites or social media profiles, for instance,  and providing examples of these elements create posts with excellent visual appeal and ease-of-consumption.
4. "Top" numbered lists. These lists don't actually have to be for the number 10. Any kind of list that purports to name the "top" factors for any given topic is often appealing to a wide range of readers. 
5. Videos. Videos are an interesting, engaging way to spice up your blog posts. Videos are a great alternative to written content, and whether the videos are your own creations, or selected by you from YouTube, Vimeo or another video sharing site for their educational or informative nature, people love to share this type of content with their friends, followers and business colleagues as a way to break up the written content the consume throughout the day. 
6. Special offers. People love free stuff. Whether your offer is for complementary content or resources or promotions of your products or services, often people are more than willing to link back to your content  if someone has an opportunity  to get a deal out of it.
7. Interviews with industry thought leaders. Every industry and company, whether B2B or B2C, has thought leaders, professionals who have innovative, maybe even groundbreaking ideas, and who share and promote these ideas for the betterment of their chosen industry. Interviewing the people recognized as thought leaders in your space is a great way to encourage linking, as well as to increase the credibility of the rest of your content, which can encourage linking in the future.

Image by rubybgold on Flickr

We recently wrote a post on how you can get started with small business blogging and it gave you our tips on how you can start a company blog successfully, but where do you go from there?  You’ve got a company blog in place successfully, it’s been launched and you’re ready to celebrate your success, but what are the next steps? Well, without an engaged group of subscribers following your blog it’s not going to be optimized for success, so the next stage of the blogging process is to get more subscribers for your blog.

How do you get more blog subscribers?

1. Make it easy for them to subscribe to your RSS feed. There are several ways you can make it simple for readers to subscribe: offer email subscriptions, display the RSS icon where people will see it, include a call-to-action like “sign up now.”
2. Submit your blog’s RSS feed to feed directories. This will help you reach out to potential subscribers who use these directories to locate feeds they’re interested in and would like to follow. 
3. Talk to your readers not at  your readers. Posing questions to your readers, or requesting their opinions, can be a great way to interact with your audience and increase your following. Another way to do this is by making sure that when people comment on your posts, you respond quickly. If people think they are being listened to they are more likely to subscribe and return as loyal followers. 
4. Make sure you promote your posts. If you already have a loyal following on different social media sites or newsletter recipients, these are a great resource for new blog subscribers. Make sure that they have a chance to read your posts in the medium that they originally chose to follow you in (post links to them in social media accounts, or keep them updated in your e-newsletter) and then make it easy for them to convert into blog subscribers by providing links to your blog and RSS feed. 
5. Offer consistent quality.  Don’t underestimate the power of providing your readers with great content. This may not be the fastest method of garnering more subscribers but it is certainly one of the best ways to create a relevant and loyal following.

Just because there are tools available for just about everyone to set up a blog, doesn’t mean that blogging is something every organization should just jump into. Many companies make the mistake of starting a blog without really taking the time to understand how it fits into their overall marketing strategy or plan.

Here are a few reasons why we think business blogging can be a good idea for small business:

• It helps with your SEO strategy
• Blogging helps differentiate and build your brand
• It can position you as a thought leader in your industry
• You can educate your potential customers
• It can be an excellent lead generation tool 
• Blogs can create communities and conversations

How to get started

1. Determine the reasons why you want to publish a blog. Before you get started it might be a good idea to ask yourself these questions: What is the purpose of your blog? What are the goals your blog is meant to accomplish? Do those goals relate to your overall business objectives?
2. Figure out what businesses in your niche are already doing a good job. Researching successful blogs in your space can be a great way to help you figure out where to get started with your own blog. It’s a good idea when undertaking any new business initiative to see who your competition is and how they are performing and it also helps you get an idea what you can write about once your own blog is up and running.  
3. Decide who your target audience is. Who will you be writing for? Understanding your audience can help you get a grip on their concerns, challenges and what they’re looking for from a blog in your industry. 
4. Establish what you want your readers to do once they read your blog. This relates to the goals you set for your blog earlier. For example, If you want your blog to generate more leads for your business, then you need to have clear steps on how you’re going to guide your reader to subscribe to your blog updates or convert on your website’s other content. 
5. Set aside the time to make it a reality. The fact of the matter is, blogging is a big commitment. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t undertake it, but a successful blog needs frequent content updates and this requires dedicated time and resources. It’s a good idea to establish in advance how often you want to be blogging (at least once a week is really a minimum requirement for business blogs) and then establish ownership and workflow schedules if necessary.
6. Start writing! Now that you’ve done the research; you understand your objectives and your target audience; and you’ve set aside the resources, it’s time to get down to business and start actually writing posts. Take the research you’ve done and write posts that you think your readers want to read, about information you think they need to know and remember, no blog is successful immediately. Like any business or marketing channel it takes time and effort to reach your goals.

Improving lead generation is one of the most important goals for any marketer and is often one of the key metrics through which marketers and sales measure a marketing team’s success.

So you know that getting more leads is important—but how exactly can you do that?

There are lots of ways you can increase the number of leads you get online and one of the best of these tactics is to use a business blog.  Unfortunately, we often find that many corporate bloggers aren’t taking advantage of this opportunity. We hate to see hard work not paying off, so to help you out, here some things you can do to help your blog start generating more leads.

• Create great content. This seems like a no-brainer, but it is the key aspect of your blog that will attract new visitors to your site and encourage them to return. By creating content that is educational and useful you can build an audience for your blog which will generate more leads.
• Answer your visitors’ questions in your posts. Many B2B organizations receive the same questions, at the same point in the buying process, from most of their prospects. Instead of waiting around until your visitors have questions, why not answer them in advance so that the information is already available to them? Providing the answers to common questions can increase a visitor’s trust in your company’s expertise and help them become a lead. 
• Track what your prospects comment on and how often they come back. Many marketing automation and blogging tools allow you to track your commenters and what they have said in response to your posts. This not only shows which topics in your blog are the most popular (allowing you to create more of the content your readers want) but also allows you to hone in on the subscribers that are most engaged for future conversations.
• Establish it as a “go-to” resource. On our blog we don’t just write posts with information we think our subscribers need to read. We also provide links to valuable resources from other sites that we think they should know about. Don’t be afraid that providing your subscribers with additional information from other locations will cause them to click away from your site. Establishing yourself as a resource for critical information, whether it is your own or not, keeps you front of mind as the place to go for your subscribers to educate themselves. 
• Promote your posts through social media. A lot of the leads we get through our blog have actually arrived at our site through social media. When we write posts, they are simultaneously posted on our social media accounts so that the content we provide can be found quickly and easily by a wider audience.
• Use it to increase your organic search rankings. Blogging is a great way to enhance your search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines love new content and giving this to them can help you rank higher in their search results. Getting found organically more easily is an important way to drive new leads to your website.