As a freelance copywriter working from home, my only company during the day is BBC Radio 4. A recent edition of The Food Programme illustrated just how powerful the blogosphere has become.

Food bloggers are taking the world by storm. They’re starting and ending trends. They’re creating new celebrities. And they’re making people fortunes.  

A week or so later another R4 programme covered food photographers, again venturing into the blogosphere to marvel at the online manifestation of peoples’ fascination with the subject.

I know for a fact that this blog helps keeps my website visible on Google. I also know it nets me a fair amount of business. How’s your blog performing?

Bloggers are already hugely influential across all sorts of sectors. Blogging is still a relatively new marketing medium and we don’t fully understand the long term benefits yet. And I don’t think blogging’s influence influence has peaked. Nowhere near. It’s powerful stuff.

If your blog is sad and neglected now’s a good time to give it a boost. As well as working a treat for SEO and delivering fresh regular content to your visitors, you might even end up a big cheese in the blogosphere.

Jump on the bandwagon! Just ask me for a quote for writing regular blog posts. 

In the olden days the first bloggers used their blogs – or ‘web logs’ – as simple online diaries.

It didn’t take long for people to discover that blogging is a superb way to update a site regularly and easily. And it soon became clear that blogs, used wisely, have very significant SEO benefits. 

But do you have to open your blog up to comments? And if you don’t, will it still deliver SEO juice?

If you disallow blog comments:

• your content will still have a significant positive effect on site visibility…
• … provided you include key words and phrases in your posts wisely and consistently
• fewer people will recommend your blog to friends and colleagues
• you’ll might also get fewer inbound links from other sites
• on the bright side, you’ll avoid aggressive feedback and comment spammers

If you allow blog comments:

• your content will have the same positive effect on site visibility, provided you write it with SEO in mind
• audience participation means you’ll probably get a lot more recommendations…
• … and reader numbers will increase faster
• you will probably also win more inbound links from people who enjoy your stuff
• on the down side, you may have to deal with aggressive feedback
• and you’ll need to watch out for comment spammers  

So says Technorati. Apparently a massive 95% of the blogs they surveyed hadn’t been updated in 120 days.

Which is understandable. Once the novelty wears off, a lot of businesses give up blogging because they’re simply too busy. It’s hard to keep a blog going if nobody at your place likes writing, or writes well enough. And people run out of ideas.

The thing is, a healthy blog is still one of the best ways to keep a website fresh, updated and exciting for search engines and visitors. And it is an extremely cost effective marketing / SEO medium.

Like many things, the more you put in the more you get out. One blog post a week will work harder than one a month. Three quality posts a week should soon win you some serious attention from search engines. Consistency is important, regularity is vital.

If you leave your blog unattended for 120 days, like most businesses, it won’t do a thing for you. If you make regular, frequent updates something you do as a matter of course it’ll soon bear fruit. And you’ll be several steps ahead of the 95% that languish in the doldrums.

Why bother? A well laid out blog post delivers your message powerfully and logically, and readers get the most out of it.  Here’s a few sensible blog post layout tips:

• Use a bold header to make it 100% clear where the post starts and what it is about. Think newspaper headlines
• Use bold subheads to separate your story into bite-sized, logical chunks. This makes it easy for readers to gauge whether they want to read the post in detail 
• Use short paragraphs. Long, dense paragraphs look daunting and can put people off as well as being hard to read on screen
• Use a relevant image to give your post immediate visual appeal 
• Use bullet points and lists for extra clarity and reader convenience
• Don’t be scared of space. Leaving plenty of space arond headers and paragraphs makes posts easier to read

Occasionally a news story will resonate with your business. So grasp the opportunity and tell people about it!

Putting your slant on a local, national or international news story will bring readers, responders, visitors and customers. Here’s an example.

You are a building firm. A local scandal has just surfaced. A rash of cowboy builders, insisting on cash up front, have disappeared leaving customers’ jobs unfinished. You write letters to your local papers, send out a press release, email your local radio station and write a blog post on your website called Top ten tips to avoid the cowboys.

The result? You get a letter printed. Another local paper prints your press release and uploads it to their website at the same time. And people searching for details about the story online run across your blog post.

Beautifully simple.

It’s common knowledge that posting regularly into a living, reacting blog encourages a loyal following.

Hm. I’m a fine one to talk. Some weeks I’m just too busy to write a post and other times I’m stuck for a subject.

Now and again I’m full of ideas and inspiration, and have a couple of hours spare to rattle off a post or two. So as far as regularity goes, I’m as crap as the next person.

A nifty WordPress function, however, makes life a bit easier for sporadic bloggers who should know better. It’s simple but elegant: when inspiration strikes, write like the wind. Stash as many posts as you can for a rainy day then drip feed them automatically into your blog, one or two a week.

I hate to quote a supermarket advert, but every little helps.

Quality blogging attracts all sorts of business benefits.

1. visibility – Blogging bigs up your visibility with search engines. Regular posts keep your site fresh. They encourage return visits by search engine bots. Your blog’s style, tone and content give readers a valuable insight into what it’s like to work with you.

2. credibility – Quality posts will boost your credibility within your markets and industry sector. When there’s a choice, people prefer to buy from businesses who know what they’re talking about. Blogging can help you become a ’thought leader’ in your field. And because the media like to talk to thought leaders, it can result in wide-ranging publicity.

3. flexibility - Blogging is instant. Meaning you can react to market news, views, threats, controversies and developments fast. And sneak one past your competitors! You don’t have to write loads. Just write something useful, informative, entertaining and relevant.

4. economy – Blogging’s cheap. Free templates let you set up a blog from scratch in a couple of hours. If you bolt your blog onto your existing site you won’t need to buy another domain. If you write it yourself, you won’t need to employ a writer.

5. competition - If your competitors aren’t blogging, you can pull steadily ahead. If they are, your blog will help you keep pace, differentiate and re-position your business, offers, services and products.

As always there are a few common sense caveats: 

• If you can’t write, don’t write! Poorly written stuff does more harm than good. Take on a copywriter: on average half an hour per quality post @ between £35 and £45 an hour
• Exercise common sense when deciding what to say and how to express it. Don’t say anything on your blog that you wouldn’t say to a customer
• Remain professional
• Keep at it. The benefits of blogging are neither magic nor instant – a blog takes a while to bed in 
• Be consistent in your attitudes and ideals. Otherwise you’ll scare people!

Got a business-related blog? Then listen to your webstats and experience blog power in action.

I’m always banging on about monitoring webstats. But you can’t plan marketing effectively unless you know what works and what nosedives. You need to know returns on investment, especially if you’re paying for search engine marketing. 

Webstats are easy to understand and there’s plenty of online advice about interpreting them. As far as my business is concerned, blogging  seems to be doing what everyone says it does: as long as I provide useful, relevant content it brings in visitors, goodwill and work. Here’s the evidence: 

MONTHLY BLOG VISITORS

September 2007 (launch) - 375
October:  – 547
November: - 716
December: - 770
January 2008 – 992

A steady growth in visitors. Not bad for a young blog.

The effect is immediate. When I write a particularly useful article I see a corresponding spike in visitor numbers, which is useful for planning future articles: Because you know what people want, you can consciously provide more of it.

PS. This post was originally written in late January ’08. Today, 11th November ’09, this blog averages more than 4000 unique visitors a month.