In this final article for the Business Blogging 101 series, I am going to give you some tips, anticipations and tactics that can help in building and growing a succesful business blog. This article doesn’t mark the end of what you need to know about blogging, but far from it, just the beginning of the journey to the exciting blogosphere.

If you haven’t subscribe to this blog RSS/Atom feed, this is probably the best time to do so. Install or register an account in Google Reader or Bloglines, or any application of your favorite. Not only does you need an easier way to read this blog on a regular basis, but you really want to sift and sort out content in the topics you are going to blog about. Or let Google deliver keyword related news to your news aggregator regularly. Your choices, but definitely a web feed reader is a must.

People need to understand this: business blogs which want to stay for the long haul require a lot of work and time. Consistency and frequentcy are two most important keys to building a great blog and attract audience. Underestimate this, and you will more likely throwing all your efforts down the drain.

• Write like you talk. Don’t talk at them, but in a personal tone like you talk to a friend. A good trick to do this is by defining a clear target market and then take it down further to an individual. Everytime you blog, write to the person as if you are talking to him/her.
• Choose the right person to blog. A blogger should know your company or the topics you want to blog about inside out. No one know your business and market like you, but for some reasons you can’t do it, delegate to one or a group of bloggers who know your business. They may and should not be the marketing people, but possibly customer support or technical person.
• Post regularly. Frequency matters, after some time as you establish some audience, they expect you to post content every so often. That’s the reason they come back to your blog or subscribe to your RSS feed. Consistency creates stickiness.
• Bloggers are generous linkers. Link to other post, news resource, authority site and give credit where credit is due. This can help you in building a network of bloggers in your industry. People appreciate link and will often link back.
• Encourage feedback and conversation. Commenting is one of the most unique features of a blog. If you keep people for writing comment on your blog, they will do that on their own blog. Use trackback when necessary to continue the conversation.
• Know your keywords. Having a keyword can help your ranking and is one of the important on-page factor for search engine optimization.
• Add supporting pictures. Visual content improves a blog, but should enhance what you write in the post. Using WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) blog editor, you can do this without having to know any HTML code. They are very easy though once you know how to do that.
• Promote your blog persistently. Renew your signature file to point to your blog, tell your newsletter readers about it, promote it in your presentation, talk about it on the next networking event, and so on.
• Encourage RSS/Atom feed subscription. There are always people who like your blog on the first visit, but forget about it tomorrow. If you hook them with your RSS/Atom feed, your content will be syndicated automatically the next time you update your blog and chances are better they will remember you.

No one can build a successful blog overnight, unless he/she is a very influential or famous person. Don’t blog just because you heard that it is going to be the trend.

Blogging requires a lot of resources, but if done properly, can be a great marketing medium you can reap later.