Blogging opens up a new way of communication, but having a blog is just the beginning of a journey to the exciting blogosphere. Owning a business blog is entirely different than a personal blog. If you are just starting out, expect to make mistakes, but dont give up!

It helps to think about the growth of a blog as exponential. Well, not all of them end up like that. But especially if your company is not a popular brand, your blog will grow somewhat slowly in the first few months or even a year. The good news is, if you stick at it for long enough, it will snowball and bring great impact to your marketing.

First time bloggers need to understand this: business blogs which are here for the long haul require a lot of work and time. Consistency and frequency are two most important keys to building a great blog and attracting an audience. A blogger who underestimates this will more than likely be throwing all their efforts down the drain.

Here are 10 tips to use and promote your blog:

1) Write like you talk. Dont talk at your readers, 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 takes it down further to an individual. Every time you blog, write to the person as if you are talking to him/her.

2) Choose the right person to blog. A blogger should know your company or the topics you want to blog about inside out. No one knows your business and market like you, but if for some reason you cant do it, delegate to one - or a group of bloggers - who know your business. The right person may not even be somebody in marketing, but possibly could be in customer support or a technical person.

3) Post regularly. Frequency matters, after some time as you establish an audience, readers expect you to post content often. Thats the reason they come back to your blog or subscribe to your RSS feed. Consistency creates stickiness.

4) Bloggers are generous linkers. Do link to other posts, news resources, authority sites and give credit where credit is due. Doing this appropriately can help you in building relationships with other bloggers in your industry. Bloggers appreciate the links and will often link back.

5) Encourage feedback and conversation. Commenting is one of the most unique features of a blog. If you keep people for writing comments on your blog, they will do that on their own blog. Use trackback when necessary to continue the conversation.

6) Know your keywords. Having the right keywords can help your ranking and is one of the important on-page factors for search engine optimization. A keyword or key phrase is basically what people enter into search engines like Google and Yahoo! to find you. Common places search engine robot look for keywords are in the title, various heading tags, body copy, text formats, and link texts.

7) Add supporting pictures. Visual content improves a blog, but should enhance what you write in the post. Using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) blog editor, you can do this without having to know any HTML code, and are very easy once you begin.

8) Promote your blog consistently. Renew your signature file to point to your blog, tell your newsletter readers about it, promote it in your presentations, talk about it on the next networking event, and so on.

9) 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 blogs RSS/Atom feed, your content will be syndicated automatically the next time you update your blog and chances are better they will remember you.

10) Socialize. Blogging is essentially a social tool. While you can involve in discussion across multiple blogs, networking propels your efforts to the next level. Bloggers tend to link to other blogs they know.

No one can build a successful blog overnight, unless he/she is a very influential or a famous person. Dont blog just because your colleague says that it is going to be the trend.

Blogging requires a lot of resources, but if done properly, can be a great marketing medium from which you can reap later. A blog extends your marketing reach to the next level, but remember, it should be used in addition to other marketing strategies.