In part 1 of this article series on marketing with blogs, I discussed reasons why blogs are excellent tools for marketing.

In this article I outline some tips on using your blog as a good vehicle for your marketing communications.

Tip # 1: Choose The Topic Of Your Blog Well

Make sure you are targeting right audience for your products. You might love golf, but you can’t use it to sell your products unless they’re meant for golfers.

You generally wouldn’t write about something like golf on a marketing blog, unless you’re using it as a metaphor.

Pick topic that will attract right audience – people who are looking for your products, but more importantly, people who are willing to actually spend money on them.

If you’re not an expert on your topic, but are learning about it, blog about your learning process. There’s no shame in being a learner, in admitting that you don’t know everything.

In fact your journey could even teach others who are learning and help them relate to your experiences. Products you recommend would then be easy to sell to this group because you’ve established emotional connection that makes selling easier.

Tip #2: Spend Some Time Learning The Basics Of Blogging

You need to learn how to use your blogging software, and which blog engine or service will give you results you need. Decide how much time you want to spend on your blog.

Hire a blogging coach or buy a blogging tutorial. Spend some time learning about trackbacks, pingbacks, keywords and how to use them, linking, blogging etiquette.

Marketers have found that blogs are excellent tools for communicating with their audience. Anyone who has something to sell or an idea to promote can benefit from using blogs.

Corporates like Nike are using blogs to build branding. Microsoft and Sun are using them to communicate with developer community.

Blogs have a number of advantages that make them excellent tools for communication.

They are cheap to install and require little or no technical expertise. So entry point for blogging is very low when compared to expense of hiring a website designer.

While building a website is often out of reach of most solo entrepreneurs, anyone can start a blog. If you can’t write or hate to write, you can start an audio or video blog. The possibilities are endless.