In the first Blog article of our Business Blog Series we discussed how to establish your business as experts and create trust online.

In the 2nd part of our Business Blogging Series we want to discuss how often you should write a blog and how to find time away from your business to write every post.

Realistically businesses don't have a lot of time so you must decide how much time you will spend on all your social media strategies. Whether that is Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogging, Twitter etc. Be strict with your time. For example, decide that first thing in the morning when you usually open up new emails and send a few responses, spend 30 minutes of that time going through you social media and updating where needed.

If you are going to have a Business Blog then you need to commit to at least the following:

1. At least one post each week (although some believe in order to really increase traffic on your website, a new article needs to be published 20 times a month!
   
   
2. Have a Content Strategy. I cannot recommend this enough because so often we see businesses who have lost interest or don't know what else to talk about so they stop. Planning, like in any other part of your business, is essential for success. But how do you create a content strategy that works for your blog?
3. To really get the most out of your blog, you should:
   
   1. be committing time each week to comment on other blogs. They should be related industries or topics where you can share your opinion and then share your blog URL or partiular article.
   2. notify your other social media strategies that a blog article has been written. Often this can happen automatically with it being tweeted or added to your business fan page on Facebook.

So now what? Once you have a blogging content strategy, allotted time to create blog articles and comment on others, you now need to make sure you understand the platform you are using. Next week find out the pro's and con's about Wordpress including what to watch out for and what to never forget.

If you are interested in learning more about how to Build an Effective Business Blog, please attend our full day workshop in Kingston on Thursday, February 9th, 2012. If you are not in the area, please let us know as we are conducting full day workshops across Ontario and will begin offering webinars. To register, go to our Business Seminar and Workshop page.