Don't Tease Your Audience. Update Your Blog.

A blog can become an important part of your PR strategy — but only if you keep adding fresh content to it.

The blogosphere is littered with abandoned blogs and blogs distinguished mostly by long droughts between new postings. Sporadic updating is akin to a date with a tease. You intrigue your readers only to disappoint by not delivering. Do this over time and you lose them completely.

Search engines thrive on fresh content. It's the key to search engine optimization and to moving your blog up the search listings. If you want your blog to be found and read, you have to feed it fuel so it can race to the front of the line. If you want it to engage your readers and build an audience that is engaged with your communications and gives you feedback, you have to add fresh content at least once a week. After you do, spread the word via email, Facebook, Twitter and however you can. In short, tell the Web world that you have posted something new.

Send out the bait and bring them in. Don't bait the hook and you won't catch a thing.

Fresh content doesn't mean a long posting. It doesn't mean it has to be Pulitzer material. It just has to be fresh, interesting and helpful to your target audience.

So don't be one of those businesses that starts a blog, then leaves the thing alone in the dark recesses of the Web. Give your blog the attention it deserves and update it every week to 10 days. If no one inside your organization has the time to do this, get with a good PR firm and bring them on board to communicate your voice.

TEN THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE YOU LAUNCH A BUSINESS BLOG

Blogging for business.

It’s so easy to get into— and just as easy to get wrong. A business blog is a vehicle for you to develop relationships with consumers. To educate them about your products and services. To build a community of people who are involved in a conversation about your company.

Designing, maintaining and updating a blog should not be taken lightly.

Here are ten things to consider before you launch a blog:

1. Is your company ready to make the commitment to doing a blog?

2. Will the blog be an integrated part of your marketing program?

3. Do you have a plan for your blog? What do you want your blog to accomplish?

4. How frequently will your blog be updated?

5. How will the blog meet the needs of your customers? How will you keep customers coming back to the blog for more information or to interact with the company? What business-related topics are most engaging? Why?

6. What will be the tone and “voice” of your blog?

7. Will one writer provide postings or several? If more than one, how will you insure the “voice” is consistent?

8. Will you provide for “guest” bloggers? How will they be identified/positioned?

9. Is there sufficient in-house writing and marketing expertise to do the blog correctly?

10. Is it more cost-effective and efficient to contract with someone to write blog postings regularly?

SOCIAL NETWORKING: WHY YOU NEED IT — EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU DON'T

Lately there's been a lot in the news about tweeting. No, the media isn't excited because spring is right around the corner and the robins are on the way. They're talking about Twitter, the latest social networking platform that's fast becoming all the rage.

If Twitter isn't already one of the tools in your public relations toolbox, then you need to come up to speed fast. In fact, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said that “Twitter is the messaging service we didn't know we needed until we had it.”

Deep, huh? Well, like a lot of quips, it speaks volumes.

Shaquille O'Neal tweets about being at the mall – just like a regular guy. And he's using this simple tool to build his fan base.

Ashton and Demi go directly to fans with their news, short-circuiting tabloid reports.

Perez Hilton tweets observations about the Hollywood glitterati. Grows his number of blog followers.

Interesting, but not serious enough for you?

Dell can trace the sale of over $1 million in its electronics to its 2008 Twitter program.

One of the world's only profit-making airlines, Jet Blue, uses Twitter to inform and communicate with its customers.

Overstock.com is building its legion of bargain-hunting buyers with little tweets about its latest deals.

Lots of smart businesses are using Twitter to driver traffic to their Web sites.

Got your attention now?

Twitter is the newest part of a social networking landscape that includes blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, My Space, etc. It's a micro-blog. Just 140 little characters that can pack a wallop. Think about how candidate Obama and his election team used Twitter to reach out to tens of thousands of people and build his base. That effort cost way less than expensive campaign commercials on TV. And it got results.

More and more, blogging and micro-blogging isn't just for kids or bored people obsessed with telling the world about their lives. It's a brave new world of “social media” that can be a useful business tool. You should embrace that world and make it part of your PR efforts.

Okay, you don't buy into the hype that social media is the end all and be all. I'm with you there. Like anything else, the early adopters are frenzied with enthusiasm. There are social media “gurus” so enveloped in the online world that they'd have you believe that people won't be getting their news any other way in the very near future. You can spend thousands going to seminars to hear social media evangelists – and they hope you do. After all, they're running a business too.

But if you're in the trenches of business every day, you know that we're in a transitional time for marketing. Publicists who only use the old tools of PR are heading the way of the dinosaurs. Ok, social media platforms aren't going to replace PR staples like press releases and good-old fashioned relationship-building with the main-stream media right now. But tools like blogs and Twitter are growing in importance as legitimate business communications channels.

Sure, it's troubling that news channeled through social media is often reported by folks who aren't trained like journalists. They have no boundaries, no ethical parameters, and no fact-checking rules. Their world is kind of like the wild, wild west. But, you can't deny that social media deserve a place in the PR toolbox. It's all about impact and influence.

So, put aside your prejudices and embrace social media as another communications channel. Only this channel talks back. And you have to listen. That provides a golden opportunity to interact directly with your current and future customers. It can also connect you to important media who are online and increasingly using social media to pick up tips and story ideas.

Social media fosters emotional connection – and that's the essence of relationships. It's people to people. One on one. Community. And, in the end, no matter what PR techniques or channels you use, your ability to educate and influence is directly connected to relationships and building a community of interest in your business and products.

If you haven't figured out how to network effectively online, then you need to do it soon. If you don't have the time or skill to do it yourself, then hire a PR firm that has the smarts and experience to help you. Build a following on Twitter, get a Facebook page, become LinkedIn, launch a blog, connect with bloggers interested in what you’re selling.

Oh, please. Stop thinking you already have a great online marketing program because you've got a Web site.

It’s not just about a Web site any more.