Blogging is good for a lot more than posting pictures of your cat. Developing your company blog is an effective way to develop a dialogue with your customers, engage prospects and point people in your direction. Your online marketing strategy and your organic search marketing strategy should include a simple and effective way to generate useful content... the easiest way to do that is to start a blog.

But, your blogging work will not be effective and your blogging time not well spent if you don't take time to set up your blog properly in the first place. Here are some helpful hints:

1. Register your blog's URL just like you would for your website. Don’t just leave it under “www.yourname@freeblogsite.com.” Connect it with your website URL so it looks like this : www.blog.yourdomain.com instead of this: www.janedoe.blogentral.com. Do it up-front when you establish your blog and it's easy... try to make the change after your blog is already established and it's hard.
2. Submit your blog URL to the important search engines and directories just like you would for your main website.
3. Linking to your blog from your main domain will get you indexed and found by the main search engines.
4. If you already have a sitemap add your blog URLs to your sitemap (if you don't have a sitemap you need to back up a few steps here and MAKE ONE)
5. Get busy and post! Don't spend too much time fussing with design. Get started writing great content. You can kick off your blog with an intro but don't stop there. Move on and start giving people helpful how-to articles, tips and techniques , and of course product information they can use to help make an informed decision. You don't have to write a book, one or two paragraphs should suffice. But get started.
6. Promote your blog just like you would any web site you go to the trouble to build. How? use your contact list. Email people you know–personally and professionally–and give them the address of your blog. Ask them to participate, request links and comments. Don't' be shy about using family, personal friends, and co-workers to get you off to a good start.
7. Set up a schedule. Nothing is more of a turnoff than visiting a blog that has not seen a post for six months to a year. Make posting to your blog an item on your task list. Set up a reminder in Microsoft outlook. Stay committed and don't let yourself get overwhelmed by thinking you have to write a book. Just write a couple of paragraphs.
8. Always keep your ears open for blogging ideas. Don't just wait for inspiration to hit you the minute you sit down at your keyboard. Why not turn a customer question into a blog post that answers the question? How about a new product or service you just added? Once you get rolling it gets easier.
9. Don't forget why you set up your blog in the first place. In every post point your readers back to your main site, your business service or products . Don't be obnoxious but don't be overly shy about adding links.
10. When you do link make sure that you get your readers deeply linked into your site. Don't just link to your home page. Link to specific articles, unique products and get them deep down into the pages of your website. these deep links will also help your overall search engine ranking with Google, believe it or not. When you set up links be sure to use your favorite keywords for the linkable text (don't use click here use keywords).