This interaction is what “social networking” is all about – with the most glaring examples being platforms like Facebook and Twitter. They provide you the opportunity to interact with an ever-broadening network of people who share your interests, or are interested in what you have to say.

Those of us interested in using these social networking sites as marketing tools can find it a bit overwhelming. Keeping up with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, ActiveRain, and many others is difficult and time-consuming. And if there is no comprehensive strategy for our social networking it will eventually become tiresome and of questionable value.

As part of a sensible online social networking strategy, most “experts” agree it is important to have your blog at the centre of things. Your blog is where you can express yourself in greater depth, and without worrying that you are being too pushy or sales-oriented.

Generally speaking, your friends and followers on sites like Facebook or Twitter do not like to be bombarded with a sales pitch whenever they read your entries. But using your tweets and Facebook entries to point them to interesting stories, articles, videos, or special offers is perfectly acceptable. The easiest place to point them is your own blog.

This strategy is no mystery and it has been discussed many times by marketing experts: use your blog to build your online identity, publish your opinions, and present your special products and offers. Use the other social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to drive traffic to your blog.

In other words, as I said above, your blog should be at the center of your marketing strategy. Looking at it this way may encourage you to reconfigure your whole online marketing strategy. But that is probably a good thing.

1. Pick an interesting topic for your blog
2. Write interesting posts with catchy titles
3. Optimize your blog posts for the Search Engines
4. Promote your blog on blog directories and bookmarking sites

If you do these things, the forumula says, you will get the attention of the Search Engines (especially Google), and they will send you a “stampede of targeted traffic”.

In case you haven’t noticed, this formula relies almost exclusively on the Search Engines for traffic, and because of this it is seriously misleading. I can state with no hesitation at all that if you use this formula to get traffic to your blog you will almost certainly be disappointed by the results.

Yes, there are bloggers who get tons of traffic, and much of that traffic is driven by the Search Engines. But what you’re not told is that these bloggers have built up their list of followers over quite a long period of time, usually using a strategy other than simply relying on the hit and miss results you get from the search engines.

And if you are a local business – a real estate agent, accountant, lawyer, chiropractor, restaurant, landscaping company, etc., etc. – you are addressing a narrowly targeted local niche where the fact is only local followers matter to you. You will soon find that to rely on the search engines to deliver a lot of traffic from such a relatively small target market will be extremely disappointing.

For more ideas on traffic strategies that do (and don’t) work, get this free report called Blogs That Work.

But it takes commitment to keep a blog going. Unlike a static website that you put up once and then only update from time to time, a blog requires constant attention in order to be effective.

And that requires a strategy. Sorry, but without an explicit strategy your blog will very likely fail. It will not accomplish what you set out to accomplish with it, and you personally will probably lose interest within a month or two.

1. Creating a ‘Brand’ With Your Blog

You need an objective for your blog, and I think the best one is to…

“Define and Enhance Your Corporate Brand”

That is a fancy way of saying use your blog to give your company a distinctive persona – what used to be called your “image”. Think about how you would like your public (customers, contacts, prospects, site visitors, etc.) to think about you.

For example, if you’re a real estate agent do you want people to think of you as

…the friendly guy
…the helpful guy
…the knowledgeable guy
…the smart guy
…the reliable guy
…the experienced guy
etc.

Do you want to reflect your area of specialization in what you do? For example, if you’re an internet marketer or online entrepreneur do you have a clearly defined area of specialization? Are you,

…the blogging girl
…the video girl
…the affiliate sales guru
…the list building expert
…the link building professional
…the SEO guy
…the creative web designer
…the clever copywriter

Whatever you choose, this should always (or almost always) be reflected somehow in all your blog posts. Each of your posts should clearly say “This is the voice of experience speaking when it comes to commercial real estate” or “Our web design is not only creative, but it will give you an edge when it comes to convincing people they should deal with you” or “I will work my tail off to make sure I get the best price for your home.”

Often the decision about the character or persona of your business has already been made for you. It is usually a reflection of your personal character and is simply the way you conduct your business.

But don’t assume your people know this. Make it explicit in how you promote yourself. In other words, turn your persona into a “brand”. Because of the personal nature of blogging, that makes your blog the perfect place to refine your brand.

Next up: Choosing Your Topics and Staying on Message.

I’m talking about business blogs here – blogs used to enhance your corporate image, improve communication between you and your clients, expand on product features and benefits, or collect input and opinions from visitors.

You can’t do any of these things effectively with a normal – even a nicely designed static website. But with a blog it is fairly easy. The key, of course, is to create quality content that your readers are interested in reading. And then invite their feedback.

The SEO advantages of doing this are a slightly different matter, a bit more obscure and harder for many people to grasp. When all is said and done, SEO is all about keywords. Search Engine Optimization amounts to the systematic and disciplined use of specific keywords in the most advantageous places within your web content.

In other words, the point of SEO is to give the search engines a clear idea of what each web page, article, video, press release, etc. is about. This will help you move up in the high stakes game of search engine results, make you visible to the right people, and drive traffic to your site.

Creating a blog increases your odds in the search engine traffic game. There are a number of reasons…

1. Because your blog is being updated on a regular basis the search engines will visit more often, and if your content is deemed worthy of attention, your posts will start appearing in search engine results very quickly.

2. If you are using your blog effectively you will be creating posts once a day, or every few days, and you will be be discussing a series of issues or providing information about a fairly narrow subject area -in my case, for example, about “local business marketing”. The cumulative effect of regularly creating content focusing on a narrow, well-defined area is to gradually establish your blog as a worthwhile source of information on your chosen topic – what Google calls an “authority”. The more authoritative your site or blog becomes, the better it will do in search engine results.

3. The fact that you are creating new pages (for the search engines each post is considered a “page”) means that you can cover a wider range of keywords. If you watch the sources of your search traffic you will notice that people find you by searching for a very large number of keyword phrases, variations and combinations. Creating posts on a regular basis lets you “optimize” each of them for different keywords. Hopefully they will all be related to your primary area, but they will also let you expand your focus somewhat.

For example, a website about SEO may contain several pages discussing the merits of search engine optimization, and the specific methods you employ to enhance a client’s search engine rankings. SEO theory suggests each of those pages should focus on a fairly narrow set of keywords.

But if you have a blog about SEO you can create a virtually unlimited range of pages about different aspects of SEO:

Onpage SEO
SEO and traffic
Offpage SEO
SEO and links
SEO and WordPress
SEO and Blogs
Article marketing SEO
SEO and video

And unlike with normal website pages you can be very specific in your focus:

The best SEO WordPress plugins
Can Search Engine Optimization Turn Your Business Around
SEO and Corporate Blogging
etc., etc.

All of this amounts to saying that dollar for dollar, a blog has much more SEO potential than a standard website. That does not mean you should abandon your standard, relatively static website, because there are some things that blogs (so far) don’t do very well. But it certainly suggests a blog can be a powerful weapon in your overall strategy to win in the online marketing game.