By Antonia Chitty and Erica Douglas

1. Why blog? If you want to blog for business, be clear about why you’re doing it so you can stay motivated. Blogging is a low cost way to raise your profile as an expert and increase the chance of your site being found by search engines. Think of your business blog as a lead generation tool, your job is to attract warm prospects and turn as many of them as you can into loyal customers.

2. What first? If you don’t have a blog, visit Wordpress.com for an easy and free way to get started. If you have a website already for your business and want maximum benefits for search engine optimisation and traffic to your main site go to Wordpress.org to download and integrate a blog to your main site. An integrated blog or one on its own domain is best for business.

3. Spread the word. Most blogs don’t find readers unless you plan some promotional activities. If your blog is new have you registered it with Google? You can do that here - http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl. Then think about promoting your blog on Facebook and twitter. Comment on other blogs in your niche. A good way to raise your profile and attract visitors back to your blog is to do some guest posts on other blogs in your niche or in complementary niches. Try to do 3 things to promote each post you write, and see which are most effective in bringing in visitors.

4. Next Steps. Next, spend a couple of hours getting ideas for your blog. Pull together all the articles you have written in the past that could be repurposed. Write a list of frequently asked questions that you could answer on your blog too. Perhaps gather together a list of products to write about that might interest your target audience. Brain storming, mind mapping and spider diagrams are all helpful ways to organise your thoughts and give you new ideas at this stage. For more on coming up with endless ideas for blog posts watch this video - 40 Blog Post Ideas in 5 minutes.

5. How to do it. Blog 2-3 times a week. Keep posts relatively short – 200 words is about optimum, use bullet points and headers to break longer posts down. Also, consider all the different types of post you could write – a how to, a list, an interview, a tutorial. This is your chance to let your creative side go wild, the more unique and creative the better.

6. Make it easy. Add in widgets so that your articles are tweeted automatically, use the Networked Blogs app to link your blog to Facebook, or join everything up using Twitterfeed. This means that your followers know when you have added a new article to your blog, every time.

7. Spread the word. Get involved with bloggers writing on similar and complementary topics. Comment on their blogs, join carnivals and even create response posts to big issues addressed by other bloggers.

8. Need more comments? If you want more comments on your blog, review your content: is it engaging? Are you finishing your posts with a question? Perhaps your audience feel they need to be invited to comment. You might want to start writing response posts to other bloggers topics and inviting them to comment and share their views, or get controversial and write on ‘hot topics’. Share these posts on Twitter and Facebook too and proactively invite people to come and share their views. Finally, when you do get a comment always respond and encourage further debate.

9. Stick at it. A blog needs persistence. Book time in your diary every week to add a few articles, using inspiration from your list of ideas. 10. Make more sales. To increase sales via your blog ensure that each part of the flow of visitors and customers is working correctly. It's a bit like making sure there aren't any holes in your bucket. Too many holes and by the time you get back to your sandcastle there's nothing left! It's the same when you're trying to get clients from not knowing you at all to becoming a loyal customer; you have to navigate them step by step from social media, to your blog, then onto your email list and then finally offering something that they want to buy.

Follow these steps and within a few months you should start to see more visitors to your site and clients for your business. If you want to learn how to blog for business success, join Erica and Antonia’s free 21 week ACE Blogger eCourse, which takes you step by step through what you need to do to build a great business blog. Join today at www.aceinspire.com.

About the authors

Erica Douglas and Antonia Chitty, working together as ACEInspire, offer a range of courses to allow you to learn key skills and strategies to see your business GROW. ACEInspire gives you the information and skills needed to unleash the power of the internet, Work with us not only to increase sales and revenue but also to build passive income streams that can allow you more freedom to do the things you love.

Antonia Chitty is the author of the Mumpreneur Guide’s Start Your Own Business Book, A guide to Promoting Your Business, Family Friendly Working and 10 other business, health and parenting books. She offers PR training through ACPR, and runs the Family Friendly Working website. Antonia won the Inspirational Business Mum of the Year award 2009. Consult Antonia on: Developing products from your service business, PR, Marketing, Advertising, Online Promotion and Social Media.

Erica Douglas is the author of The Complete Mum Blogger eBook and the Mum Blogger e-Course. She now runs a range of online courses with Antonia Chitty helping businesses achieve success online. Erica consistently ranks in industry lists (Cision, Tots100) for her blog. Consult Erica on: Blogging, Social Media, Creating & selling information products, Email Marketing and Online Marketing.