Blogging is a highly under-rated aspect of having your own website. When blogs first started they were "hip" and "new" but as blogs became more and more prevalent they became flooded with bad content. Those that maintained high standards, however, stood the test of time and many careers have been built solely on the content of an individual blog. Today blogging is one of the easiest and cost effective methods of building out website content. Why would you want more website content? Because Content Is King! The more content you have on your website relevant to your products and services the greater your likelihood of being found through organic search results. It is that simple. So how do you find new, interesting information to talk about in your blog and keep it up to date?

Be a good writer
Good writing isn't about being brilliant, sassy, or profound, its simply about maintaining quality in your content. Spelling, grammar and "voice" are key. The first two can be taken care of with a word processor, the later, "voice" is often the most challenging for people to grasp. The best tip we can give here is to say your content out-loud. If can articulate your point verbally then you have 90% of the problem well in hand. If you find that you're getting writer's block as you stare at the computer screen try stepping away, writing your thoughts on paper or even recording yourself speak about your subject for 3-5 minutes. When recording yourself relax, you'll be the only one listening to it and often you may find that as you speak your thoughts will flow more naturally and when complete you can simply play the recording back and transcribe what you've said.

What to blog about
Common sense dictates that you're going to blog about things relevant to your community. A good tip here is to search for things that have already been "socially tested", which is to say things of a similar topic to what has been discussed on a blog you follow but which may not have been geared to your audience. Often business owners are privy to information through their own professional networks, or news sources which their customers may never read but which is nonetheless relevant to their concerns. For example, if you're an insurance agent and you are made aware of new changes in federal law, that may make it to the top of your inbox or news reading but your customers may need a bit more explanation. Explain it to them in your own voice, citing the sources where appropriate, and using language which your customers will understand.

Start with what you know
Writing and reading are concepts that have gone hand-in-hand since childhood. A good writer is, by nature, a good reader. If you're not currently reading several blogs within your own industry now is a good time to start. By reading good content from the top voices in your field you'll not only be better informed but you'll also find that you have much more to write about. If you're apprehensive about starting your blog the best place to start is by reading other blogs, paying attention to their voice, use of bullets, images, and how other bloggers respond to comments. All of these will increase your ability to write effectively and communicate with your clients.

Where to find "Socially Tested" Content
The upside of so many blogs being available on the Internet today is that there is a lot of information about which blog articles are most popular and receiving the most positive feedback. "Socially Tested" simply means that the content, in some form, has been expressed before and has had positive result. Lets cover a few places where you can find socially tested content:

Alltop.com is also a fantastic tool for finding content relevant to your customer base. Following on our Insurance example http://insurance.alltop.com/ has an aggregation of all the top news stories on Insurance. Other categories can easily be searched and aggregated within the site as well so you can easily find information on everything from Adoption to Zoology.

Digg.com - Digg is a social news website made for people to discover and share content, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories. Voting stories up and down is the site's cornerstone function, respectively called digging and burying. Digg can easily be searched to locate specific content that may be relevant to your customers and you can easily see by how many times the information has been "dugg" how popular it is.

Delicous.com - Delicious is a Social Bookmarking site that allows the user to save their bookmarks on-line. What separates Delicious from other similar services however is that these bookmarks can be made public, or shared among a group of friends. Social + Bookmark. Delicious also measures the popularity of these links and is publicly searchable so in addition to saving your own bookmarks on-line you can also search through tens of thousands of pages that other users have bookmarked by their keyword or "tag".

Google Search / Google Alerts - Google search is a nice tool for finding more granular information or researching topics you intend to blog about. If you're interested in staying up-to-date on the latest news about a given topic Google Alerts can be used to send you an email containing on a regular basis of the latest content indexed by Google. A surgical equipment vendor, for example, may find it useful to setup an alert on the words "Surgical Equipment" and get the latest news on that topic sent to their email box as content is added to the web.

PopURLs - If you're interested in what's popular across the entire span of the Internet PopURLs.com is a very interesting place. The latest headlines from Reddit, Digg, Delicious, CNN, Twitter  and dozens more are available and can provide plenty of interesting content on slow days.

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