Photo by Todd Barnard

Blogging has quickly become one of the biggest traffic generators for marketers around the world. It’s an incredibly powerful and fun way to build and maintain relationships with potential clients, vendors, and partners around the globe, and quickly rank well in the search engines for your desired keywords by constantly releasing fresh, valuable new content targeted at your niche.

Especially if you’re building a business-oriented blog, though, you’ll need to work hard (oftentimes for at least 6–12 months) before your blog will really become an authoritative tool that pays off for you, and there are several things you need to take into consideration if you want to get a good return on your investment.

You will likely make mistakes all the time when you first enter social media and the ‘blogosphere’, but thankfully most of them are easy to avoid or correct.

Mistake #1: Being overly business-oriented, or not business-oriented at all

Many people say “the money is in the list”, and before blogs, one of the most effective internet marketing strategies was to build an email newsletter list and pitch your services, or affiliate products, to the subscribers on your list. Blogging and email list building aren’t mutually exclusive of one another though—both tactics compliment one another well and will allow you to extend your brand’s reach exponentially. You still want to use your business blog as a tool to promote your services and increase business.

An opt-in list is still a very powerful tool to get people into your funnel and generate sales, however the blogosphere is typically a place that doesn’t tolerate a lot of overly pushy sales tactics. First and foremost, you can’t spam people—you have to give them the option to sign up for your list and let them opt-in if it’s best for them. Then you have to help solve a problem for them, and provide some high-value information or resources for free. That’s the trade—they give you their email, and you give them something of value. If your organization is truly providing people with value, users will remember you and start to talk about you.

Mistake #2: Not having focus, or going to far off topic

Almost all blogs are developed around a certain topic—and the more focused the topic, the more likely your blog will attract targeted, quality traffic, and engaged, interested users who become loyal members of your community. Unfortunately, many new bloggers have no idea what topic to write about though, wandering from one thing to another hoping to find something that works.

At the very least, your business blog can simply be a place to keep your audience updated on your company’s news and developments. Ideally though, you should spend some time developing a blog strategy that outlines what you will talk about—the industry discussions to keep tabs on and remain involved in, and what areas you want to build credibility and thought leadership in. Keep your updates as focused as possible on the topic that you set out for your blog.

Mistake #3 : Not driving traffic to your site

Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as “if you build it, they will come.” Blogging isn’t just about posting content. Most new blogs start out great, with lots of well-developed articles, but a lot of bloggers don’t stick with it long enough, they don’t continue to update their sites frequently enough, give up, and the discussion around their blog fades. I’ve seen it so many times, and it’s the biggest waste of energy and poorest use of the new tool they’ve created. As a new blogger, it’s easy to become discouraged when you don’t see instant success and huge followership, but frequently if those bloggers had just stayed with it for another few months, they would have seen their ideas really start to stick and their audience start to expand significantly.  Blogging needs just as much attention as any other form of marketing, quite possibly more—and it will take some time to find your voice, connect with a like-minded audience, and build a following.

Driving traffic to your site can be fairly simple though—by searching for similar discussions going on in other sites and forums. You can reach out to like-minded bloggers, comment on other blogs and use your blog URL in your signature, and use other social media tools—such as Facebook, Twitter, and bookmarking sites like Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Digg— to spread links and awareness about your articles. Which brings us to…

Mistake #3: Not connecting and engaging with your users

Blogs enable one very powerful thing: interaction. With an interactive blog that gives users a place to respond and actually engage with you, people are more interested in what you’re saying, and you’ll gain valuable insight into how your prospective customers think and how your market works, which in turn enables you to drill down even further into your chosen niche.

It is utterly important to give your readers the ability to respond to your ideas and updates by enabling comments, to respond to your readers and thank new commenters, to have a helpful and interactive presence on Twitter and Facebook, and to contact other bloggers in your niche and build relationships with them. This all encourages your readers to keep coming back, to pay attention to the ongoing discussion, and it gives you a chance to build rapport with other authors and potentially build up reciprocal links to your fledgling blog.

No matter what obstacles you come across, you’ll find that implementing the solutions here will help immensely. With a little strategic planning up front, and a lot of hard work, you can build a fun, engaging and helpful blog that serves as a true community for your users, provides valuable feedback for you, builds your organization’s credibility and authority in your space, and will reward you with loyal followers.

Cody is a nomadic entrepreneur & lifestyle designer who helps social changemakers & other remarkable people spread their message on the web.

Tags: audience, Blogging, blogs, community, interaction, mistakes, traffic