By Rob Jones
Through blogging, companies in every field are making direct connections with potential customers and industry partners. They are creating opportunities for the content they create to be more frequently indexed for relevant keywords by search engines like Google and Yahoo. They are building brand awareness and trust. They are driving traffic to their sites and creating greater exposure to products and services. Blogging has become a fulcrum for success in the way that having a company website was in the mid-1990s.

So, how do you start a company blog, or improve a current one? Consider these four key ideas to blogging success:

1. Focus on what your audience is interested in and craft your content around it.
2.Create content on a regular basis.
3. Engage all people (commenters), even the dissenters.
4.Create strong and committed reciprocal connections with other bloggers/companies relevant to yours on other social media platforms.

What to write about
The first step in successful blogging is identifying your audience.

Use your audience’s interests as your sole focus. Employ your writing skills, but also consider video and audio. Use attractive images for every post by investing in stock photos, or creative common images (offered for re-use on the Internet—such as creativecommons. org). Interview the experts in a field related to yours, then post the conversation.

And don’t try to sell products or services when you post. Instead, try to educate and become a trusted voice for your audience. Sales will come later after that trust has been established.

How often to blog
Create content on a regular basis. Choose a weekly schedule and stick to it.

If you begin by posting on Monday and Wednesday, then your audience will expect to see new material on those days. You can write posts weeks in advance if you know you’re going to be tied up during the busy seasons, and then schedule them to automatically post on specific dates and times.

The more regularly updated content you create the greater the momentum you will create in building readership.

Also, search engine ‘bots’ will return to your blog more often when you regularly add fresh content to it. Optimize your content by using the keywords, in context, most relevant to your business. Place them in descriptive blog post titles, tags and in the body text of your posts.

This helps increase your chances in ranking more favorably for those terms on search engines. But, remember that your content still needs to be aimed at your audience, not primarily at search engines.

Managing comments
Open comments on all posts you make, and always thank people publicly for leaving comments. Don’t be afraid of dissenting voices.

Examine what your critics are saying to you, and address those issues in an honest, rational and respectful manner. Dissent is a chance for you to clarify your point, and show your audience your ability to address problems or oversights according to your values.

This helps build trust at least as much as a post that everyone instantly agrees with will.

How to attract more readers
Actively seek out and link to the best content that relates to and enhances your own blog post. Then, seek out and contact the content creators. Tell them about your post, and about linking to them.

Like you, other site owners and bloggers want to get their material out there. If you help them do that, chances are they’ll help you promote your work in return, and you will have gained a potential long-term ally.

Engage the social networks your company has built up in parallel on Twitter, Facebook and others. Include links to your blog posts in your tweets, and in your Facebook page updates. Include an RSS feed of those posts on your LinkedIn profile.

Since you’ve actively built up relationships with other people on these social platforms all along, ask those you’ve bonded with to re-post those blog links in their social streams. Send personal messages to ask them, by name, to add comments. Offer to do the same thing for them, in order to promote their content.

Finally, invite guest posts from those people in fields related to yours who are interesting to your identified readers to be published on your blog. Offer to embed links back to that guest posters blog, and potentially increase the page rank of that person’s blog.

Ask to craft blog posts to appear on their blogs in return, for exposure to a new audience and for the same link benefits back to your blog. Cooperate, collaborate and cross-promote using blogs as your vehicle to benefit readers, and strengthen business relationships with peers.

Why blogging works
Blogging for business works because it has a focused appeal to a niche audience of potential partners and customers.

Blogging is a way to create alliances based on mutual trust. Through them, flooring retailers, manufacturers, interior designers, contractors and other interconnected industries can begin to see the whole picture of how to appeal to a common consumer base. This improves your vision of how to sell the right products and provide the best information and services.

In this sense, the objectives of a company blog aren’t really any different to those of old fashioned public relations, networking, market analysis and lead generation. And like those pursuits, it is not a short game, but a long one. It takes patience, hard work, and commitment. And of course, it’s fun too.

Rob Jones is chief blogger, social media practitioner and online marketer with BuildDirect, which has been in an online space since 1999 at builddirect.com. Attracting new customers, retaining current ones and fostering industry allies on the web are extremely important aspects of how BuildDirect does business. You can contact him at 877.631.2845, or visit BuildDirect’s blog at blog.builddirect.com.