7 Elements of a Good Business Blog

While writing up the script for our weekly radio show Blogging and Beyond, I made a list of 7 things your blog should have at a minimum if it is to work efficiently for your business:

1. A way for readers to subscribe to get blog updates from you: both email and feed readers
2. A list of recent posts, recent comments, and the archives in the side-bar columns
3. Categories – this is how you organize your content and make it easy for your readers to find the subjects they care about
4. Links to products and services (may include books with graphic images)
5. Links to websites, ezines, and other resources that are helpful to readers, both your own, or affiliates’
6. The About page, your bio and, of course, your photo
7. It is smart to create a mini-bio or marketing message as a side-bar item, because many people won’t bother clicking on the About link to read about you. You can put this essential information about what you can do for readers, how they can hire you, underneath your photo by creating a side-bar item

Yesterday I wrote about putting a tag line in the header of your blog to describe your blog's purpose. If you use a custom-designed logo you can include the tag line into the graphic image. Otherwise, use the suggestion in #7 and create a side-bar item that explains your business. You can see an example of this here in the upper left corner.