Is Blogging a Black hole of time for you?

Social Media for Business is the current method that everyone is talking about and beginning to utilise.

Business owners and employees are becoming more socially active, and more visibly active through using the platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Slowly but surely, this is also catching up to the corporate website too.

No longer are websites just static pages of information, they need to be as engaging and interactive as the other social networking systems. Visitors to websites are now looking for something more than just how to find you and what you do - they want to find out about you.

One way of doing this, is to use blogging. These do not just have to be text blogs, they can be video blogs, audio podcasts - whichever medium you feel the most comfortable with providing.

What is blogging? They are short posts and can be about anything that is related (most of the time) to your business product, service or community. The difference between a blog post and a website page, is that the blog posts are more frequently posted. Think of them if you will as diary entries.

So, you have your website either created from scratch, or tweaked to include a blog section, you sit down to write, and are hit with the stick that is known as the "Empty Page Syndrome". The screen is blank, in your head as well as on screen. The words are just not there, or even beginning to flow, in fact, now you can't even remember what it was you wanted to blog about in the first place!

Blog posts needn't be essays, they can be as little as a question you would like to pose to your subscribers, or a little longer! The main point is, to have an intent - what would you like a reader of your post to think about? Is it a call to action for them?

Visitors or prospective clients to your site like frequent and active content. Could you post every day? Could you post every other day if every day is too much? Once you've done this, then you can get on and make a blogging schedule.

If you think that blogging could soon take up all of your energy and time resources, it can. However, below is a simple guide to keeping things easy and efficient.

1) Decide frequency of posting (daily, every other day...)

2) Make, buy or print a calendar and highlight those days.

3) Decide on your blog topics. If you are a Personal Trainer, Monday could be "Exercise at work day", Wednesday could be "How to vary your routine" Friday could be "Diet and Nutrition." This gives you a structure and the start point for ideas for your blog posts.

4) Write down ideas for blog post titles. "How to exercise at work" or "Do you get bored with the same old routine at the gym?" You will increase people's curiosity if you post a question or problem that they may well be experiencing. If you find it difficult to come up with blog titles, ask yourself what some of the problems are with the topic for the day that people face, and use that as your blog title.

5) Set aside half a day once a week and write the posts for the week. Most website blog interfaces will let you "publish later", so you can input the post and set it to automatically publish.

Follow these 5 guidelines and see just how quickly you can actually create a week's worth of blog posts!

(As also posted at GoArticlesGoArticles.com and Communicology).