Through your blog, you may be able to find a publisher for your next book. You may have never though about writing a book before, but blogging is not much different from writing a book. Your readers can help you sharpen your writing skills, if you pay attention to their feedback. Once you published your book, use your blog to create a buzz around it. The visitors reading your blog may become the unpaid advocates for your newly published book.
You should allow your customers to blog too. Yes, why not invite some of your customers to write about their experiences in your blog. You may invite them to review one of your products, or ask them to describe their experience dealing with your company. This form of testimonial builds trust between your customers and your company.
When there is trouble communicate quickly and honestly in your blog. Sometimes there may be bad news on the horizon. There is no reason to avoid using your blog to help put out fires. If there is trouble, let your blog help you resolve it. For example, you may have a software company that just realized there is a bug in the latest program release. Informing your customers about the bug is bad news, but the rapid communication will be appreciated.
While blogs can help you establish your business, build credibility, or improve relationships with your customers, there are several ways you can profit from your blog. Create a subscription-based blog where you readers pay a monthly or yearly membership fee. A members only blog may be that private section of your publicly available blog. In such a way you can create interest on your public blog and sell membership to the private section. If you are writing about a certain product you may be able to sell advertising space on your blog for the manufacturer. Another option is to become an affiliate and generate revenue that way. Adsense is another possible source of revenue for bloggers. If you decide to go the adsense route be sure you have a fair amount of site visitors. You need a significant amount of traffic to make money with this option.
