This is part four in the Blogging for Business Series. The previous three posts can be seen here:

• Blogging for Business Part 1: Why should I start a blog?
• Blogging for Business Part 2: How do I start blogging?
• Blogging for Business Part 3: What should I blog about, and how do I get ideas?

Today’s article (the last in this series, though definitely not the last in blog tips) covers Part 4: How Do I Drive Traffic to My Blog?

Once your blog is set up and you have a good foundation of what you want to blog about, you’re faced with generating traffic, which is generally the toughest issue when dealing with a new blog. Your new blog is like an infant and it takes time to grow and get a name for itself (though not over the span of a human lifetime!).

It is important to follow a few important tips in order to generate that needed blog traffic, especially for promoting your ideas and products!

• Update your blog frequently. The Internet is updated constantly with news and stories. An important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) is that you should always have your content updated. This holds true with blogs as well. People will be driven to come back to your blog as long as that content is there and is updated regularly.
• Participate in the community that surrounds your business. An important thing to note in the world of blogging is that blogging alone will not bring new prospects to your site. Writing that post is the first step, but a blog is a community tool and you should reach out to that community. That might mean searching for other blogs related to your product or service and writing a comment. Post on forums and include your blog site in the signature.
• Share information so that people rely on you for advice. It goes without saying that people will check in with you often especially if you provide useful information for others to use as a reference point. Your ultimate goal would be to have a blog that people would want to share with their colleagues, right? Make sure to provide the content that will make your readers look up to you.
• Link elsewhere, such as your main product website. You have a company blog. Do you also have a company website? Tell new visitors to your site that you have a complementary blog. I’ve heard many blog authors claim that their blog is what drove consumers to purchase their products/services — not their website promoting that service alone!
• Encourage your readers to subscribe via RSS, or enable email signup. RSS allows you to centralize all the news from multiple sources in a single “container” without you having to worry about visiting multiple sites. If not RSS (or in addition to RSS), have an email sign-up link on your site that enables readers to still benefit from your valuable content in their inbox.
• Include a link to your blog whenever you can (newsletters, business cards, product confirmation emails, etc.). Let people know that you have more to offer than what they might have just purchased. Let them know that they can check in for new ideas and suggestions. Be creative. On a similar note, if you have written about something that would interest someone you know, send them a personal letter telling them that you just wrote about it.
• Write in the mornings and during weekdays. Writing anytime is generally good, but if you want it to have an effect on the social media outlets, it’s been proven that there isn’t as much traffic during the weekend (and at night).
• Make your blog post headline catchy. Headlines are a key focus. Do you really want to read something that has a boring headline? I would think not. Magnetic headlines will keep your reader interested.
• Include lists. Lists appear more free-flowing than lengthy paragraphs. If you can support your blog posts with lists, by all means, do so, and introduce the list item’s main idea in bold (as in this list).
• Write well. This is a pretty critical element to successful blogging. Even though your blog is a little less corporate in nature, proper grammar and correct spelling go a long way, especially when you are seeking for your blog to be authoritative.

Bear in mind that if you’re new, you need to be patient to establish your voice, but with the right content and frequent updates coupled with these ways of driving traffic to your blog, your audience will come.

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