As discussed previously here at BootStrapMe, blogging can be an easy and effective way to promote your business without the need for an expensive advertising budget.

As a matter of fact, bootstrapper Denise Aday e-mailed recently that she will be increasing the posting on her own blog in an effort to increase the online networking potential for her business.

Raj Dash at Bootstrapper has these thoughts about deciding whether a blog is right to promote your venture and if so what form it should take.

Here are Raj's seven recommendations for bootstrapping entrepreneurs who do decide to undertake the task:


1. Blog setup. Raj suggests making your blog a subdirectory of your main business site. That is, if your website is at http://www.example.com, you would use http://www.example.com/blog instead of, say, http://blog.example.com. Some of Raj's commenters claim there's a Search Engine Optimization benefit to this approach. I'm not enough of an SEO guru to know whether that's correct, but Energybyte founder Cristian Dorobantescu is certainly a believer and his Small Business Entrepreneur Blog is a perfect example of this.

2. Niche selection. I'd argue that the worst thing a blog can do is hard sell your product and Greg Sterling of AllBusiness is in my corner on this one.
Greg recommends:

If you're a local realtor and you put up a blog that contains only your listings, you're not going to get as much response in the end as if you provide tips or informational pieces, in addition to your listings, that somehow help buyers or sellers.

For example, content and informational articles such as "Ten things to do before selling your home" or "How to minimize closing costs" or "Should I get an ARM or a 30-year fixed loan" are going to be valuable content and ultimately help build "your brand."

3. Editorial calendar. Raj has some pretty solid ideas here to get you started including:

• Resource lists and general linkbait articles.

• Profiles and interviews of industry leaders.

• Comparisons and reviews of products and services, though not of your direct competitors.

• Tutorials of how to do something related to your blog's niche.

• Video screencasts of how use relevant software.

• ebooks.

(NOTE: I also suggested adding product or industry news as an important and informative feature. See some further discussion on this in Raj's comment section)

4. Regular schedule. Raj suggests publishing no fewer than three times a week and I'd say five to seven is optimum and will really gain both repeat readership and search engine visibility. I even try to publish at a regular time when possible though this doesn't always work out, especially on hectic weekends.

5. Giveaways. Just like in radio think giveaways. Raj suggests the product or service you're selling or free plugins and web templates maybe with your websites link on them...(Read more)

6. Build relationships. Commenting within the web community, particularly on the sites of others who blog on a similar topic, can increase traffic and ranking, but some new to the blogosphere may worry they will cross the line and be labeled spammers. As a rule of thumb any comment that contributes to the overall on line conversation (follows the topic of the post you're commenting on and expounds upon it) is not spamming.

7. Promote and build links. For more on this delicate art, probably every bit as important as the content you create, read Tropical SEO and Search Engine Journal