Understanding and Determining Your Blog's Purpose

While blogs in general have many purposes, to communicate with friends and family, to express opinions, to share photos, to teach, etc…for the purpose of building a business and profiting from your blog there are really only three main types of blogs.

1. Blogging to communicate or build relationships
2. Blogging to sell
3. Blogging to brand

You can of course mix and mingle your blog’s mission making your blog’s purpose to build relationships and your brand, however it is going to be easier to start your blog if you have one main purpose in mind. Let’s examine the three types of blogs, how they might be set up and then how you could expand on them to add more purpose.

Blogging to communicate or build relationships.

The purpose of this type of blog is very straight forward. You can focus on one or many groups in this type of blog. For example, if you have a business selling products or information marketing, you could have a blog dedicated to customer service. Each post will communicate on behalf of your business, customer service attributes, incentives, programs, or problems.

It would be a good idea to promote your customer service blog in your other marketing materials and in your communications with customers. You could also include your FAQ page on your blog and direct customers to see if their questions are answered on your blog before they submit a customer service ticket.

You could expand on this blog and add a sales element to it by occasionally posting about current incentives or new products you’re offering.

Blogging to sell.

Blogging to sell is one of the most common types of business building blogs. You can use your blog to make announcements about your products or services, offer coupons and incentives, write copy that links to your sales page or affiliate products. This type of blog doesn’t need to have daily posts, two or three times a month would be perfectly appropriate. Another option to help monetize this type of site is to sell ad space on your blog and to consider a joint venture partnership where you have a guest blogger that can sell their products and services in exchange for allowing you to be a guest blogger on their website and promote your products or services.

If you are looking at a blog with this type of purpose, it is important to remember that your blog must still offer quality information. Blogs that are 100% sales promotions may have a difficult time finding consistent readership. A good rule of thumb is 80% information, 20% sales.

Blogging to brand.

Many corporations spend big bucks to create strong branding blogs. General Motors for example, has a well known blog where executives post about their favorite cars when they were young, trips in cars, just about anything to do with cars. It has received high acclaim because it is very skilled at communicating on a very personal level with people about their love for cars, and at the same time strengthening their brand. They strengthen their brand by increasing their credibility and likeability as car aficionados as well as a few well placed links and product placements. Nowhere do they directly sell nor do they attempt to solve people’s problems, they simply share stories.

To monetize this type of blog, you could sneak in an occasional promo blog, link to affiliate products and sell a small amount of ad space. The key to a branding blog is high readership. You want people to link to you to read your posts and you want them to subscribe.

For more information on how to determine what type of blog is right for your business, read http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/blogging-rss/blogs-for-business.html Okay, now that you have a general idea of what your blog’s purpose might be, let’s next take a look at how to get started finding a host and designing your blog.

===> Lesson #3 Getting Started With Blogging, How To Choose Your Host, Design, And Format.