If your blog is your business, or marketing your business, your main goal (as with any commercial website) is to make profit.  Be clear about this. The way to do that is to attract as many people as possible to your website and to maintain that customer list by enticing them to come back again and again.

A blog is not for everyone or for every business, but there are few businesses that can’t benefit from a blog in some way and it may be exactly what you need.  It may be the detonator you and your business need to go stratospheric.

Many are also realizing the importance and power of using blogs in communication with customers and suppliers as well.  Blogs can be very effective marketing tools that can help business owners increase profit.  

Consider the following seven reasons why a blog could work for you:

• Blogs help to increase communication and cut down on time between messages.  Whenever communication is increased in the right way, it correlates to increased sales, and therefore profit. Blogs can actually be money makers.

• Blogs can still (believe it or not) be seen as somewhat cutting edge in mainstream business marketing.  Although they have been around forever (or so it seem to us in Web 2.0), they still seem new to many people in ‘big’ business.  Therefore, if you use a blog for marketing purposes, particularly to non-tech businesses, you make yourself seem up-to-date and actually a leader in new marketing methods. Leverage that.

• Having your own blog is like having your own personal media forum.  It is like owning your own newspaper, radio station, or television station.  This means you have a place to say whatever you want, whenever you want, and you do not have to worry about anyone censoring you or twisting your words for personal gain (provided of course that what you say and do is within the law).

• Blogs can serve as a springboard to promote your other marketing aids, and vice versa.  You can use your blog to help promote your website, and you should also include a link to your blog on business cards, emails, and other forms of communication.  A blog’s success depends on cross promotion to gain readership.

• Writing a blog will help to make you more educated in your field.  You will have to spend some time doing a little research to be able to write interesting blogs.  Showing what you know will help you to promote yourself as an expert and will increase reader/customer trust in you and your product.

• You should also use a blog to help establish an angle for your product.  You need to decide if you are going to promote yourself as a conservative family company or an edgy, less traditional operation.  You can choose to be serious, funny, or strictly educational.

• Realize, quickly, that blogs can often be picked up by other media forms.  This means additional press and free advertisement.  Blogs are quoted by other blogs, on websites, and even in print communication such as newspapers and magazines.  You can also move into the world of speaking if your blog lends itself to setting you up as an expert.