We’ve really written this blog post for all our existing, new and potential clients but hopefully everyone who reads this can take a little something from it.

If you’ve met us you’ll know that if it’s right for your business then we’ll shout about the benefits all the social networking tools can have for your site and products. But we’ll also stress the importance of blogging, it’s a great way to get an insight to the business and to keep your site regularly updated. It’s tough to keep up to date with this and we are as guilty as anyone when times get busy, but we at least try to post at least once a month, ideally we’d love to go back to those days of once a week and we really must. But here’s a gentle reminder to everyone else to make it a priority, it really does only take an hour in your week to write a worthwhile post. Allocate time in your schedule and distribute the task through the team.

Updating your site regularly gets you noticed, your competitors and clients may be watching, and when you update something it might get their attention and they’ll come look. Not to mention the search engines will notice, as well. Add to the mix all the social networking tools to share your posts such as Twitter, Facebook, and Digg to name a few and your audience suddenly increases very quickly. Just one post might be enough to get someone’s attention and come knocking for your services.

However don’t rely on just these tips, Denise Wakeman, Online Marketing Advisor and Founder of The Blog Squad, has created a list of tips to generate leads into your blog. For more details, check out her article “19 Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Blog”

Here are her 19 tips:

1. Publish as frequently as possible
2. Pay attention to the headlines (blog post titles)
3. Send an email broadcast
4. Add a link in your email signature
5. Include multiple subscription options on your blog
6. Try article marketing
7. Comment on blogs in your industry
8. Do some guest posting
9. Conduct surveys and polls
10. Submit your blog to directories
11. Make a Google profile
12. Syndicate to Twitter
13. Syndicate Facebook
14. Syndicate to LinkedIn
15. Use Hootsuite
16. Distribute your video
17. Add the retweet button to your posts
18. Consider share buttons
19. Use social bookmarking

We’d also add to these:

1. Identify your audience. If you don’t find out who they are they won’t continue to visit your posts.
2. Get a few keywords in there that your audience are likely to use. Use them through titles and the copy.
3. Don’t be afraid to re-share older blog posts through all the social networking channels. Blog posts that have been written in the past are still relevant to people and will continue to drive traffic.

So remember peeps keep blogging but make sure you keep it relevant.