Blogging is an excellent way to supplement your small business marketing.  However, there is a great deal of confusion about exactly what role the blog plays in small business marketing and how it helps you to make money.

Contrary to what some people may tell you, the blog itself is not meant to make money. You can add some advertisements, sure, but this is very unlikely to become its own source of legitimate revenue. However, a blog can help you to make your small business more successful and here is how.

Creating a successful blog with lots of subscribers is beneficial to your small business marketing in the fact that it helps to create a wide audience to promote your product or service to.  The blog itself needs to be successful – measured by the number of regular readers, subscribers, or traffic – in order for your promotions to be successful. The benefit of the blog is the relationship it allows you to create with your regular readers. They get to know you, they get to see your style, and eventually they get to like you and trust you. Is this beginning to sound familiar, i.e. "know like and trust"?

But a successful blog alone isn't going to make you rich overnight. You might have a million readers, but if those readers have no idea what business you're in or what it is that you're actually selling, that's an awful lot of traffic going to waste. In other words, you can't neglect your small business marketing in lieu of your blog, or vice versa, and expect to make any substantial profit.  Both the blog and the business need to be successful.

A blog is basically meant to facilitate your small business marketing, not to replace it.  You create your blog and post regularly, you make a success out of the blog by offering very informative, useful content, you drive tons and tons of traffic, and then you have a huge ready-made audience to promote your products or services to. Since your blog is related to your business, chances are these readers are interested in what you are selling. You take your time and create an expansive marketing plan to promote your new product and then promote it, via your blog as well as other means.

We have seen entrepreneurs who spend so much time researching ideas and writing great blog posts and editing those posts and looking for graphics – their time is totally consumed in the blogging itself and they neglect the actual selling of their products or services.

Once your successful blog is created, you must incorporate the promotion of your products and even test the waters with new ideas.  You can't neglect the blog if you want it to remain successful, but you also shouldn't expect the blog itself to become a gold mine.  Even the most popular bloggers in the world generally get most of their income from products that they promote via their blog, not the blog itself.

Guest blogging, SEO work, and regular updates are all great ways of ensuring that your blog remains successful. With a successful blog you will have a great launching pad for future business promotions.  This is how blogging really stands to improve your small business marketing.(Source: ArticlesBase.com)

* Karen Scharf is a small business marketing consultant who helps small business owners attract and retain more clients.

* The views expressed by the author in this feature are entirely his/her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of SME Times.