Many businesses struggle with the challenge of brand development, getting seen, or becoming well known. Effective and frequent blogging, both internally and for key, targeted blog communities, can be an excellent way to help drive brand visibility online, including search rank and target acceptance.

Before you can start blogging, several steps must be taken:

1. Ensure that you have created a professional brand identity that will stand behind your blog premise

2. Work with a proven team in developing business-driven web sites to design and develop your business

3. Take lengths to establish a realistic and profitable online revenue model

4. Dedicate the appropriate resources and time to both the building out of a blog and management of a blog outreach program

5. Complete an examination of key corporate or personal strengths to identify the blog theme. Further, that theme is something that can be truly developed and where the business’s core competencies can shine through.

Once you have taken these appropriate steps, then you can start to blog. When blogging, you must make sure that you have done your research to support any facts you will include in your posts, that everything you write is your own, or you give it the author credit it deserves. You should follow the standard blogging rules of 500 to 800 words and to include two to three instances of your top two to three keyword phrases.

Remember that blog posts are meant to provide value, information, and entertainment to the reader. Not everyone can blog effectively. This is why business owners hire firms like mine to ghost blog for them or hire freelance bloggers to do so. However, if you or someone on your staff is deemed a good writer and can blog, then it makes sense to involve them. That person or team should certainly have a plan of attack in terms of topics and frequency. Further, each blogger will need his or her own bio to support their work.

Blogging can be useful not only for your own website but also even more useful as guest blogging opportunities present themselves. Guest blogging for relevant and qualified online publications (meaning relevant to your business and your audience and qualified in terms of search rank) is a key instrument to your success in brand development online. This requires you to look beyond your corporate blog and get into the minds and eyes of audiences on potential blog partner sites. To do this as a DIY, be prepared to commit to this work daily in developing relationships, understanding new audiences, and writing and editing blog posts and articles.

The best place (and least scary) way to start with blogging is by identifying what you want to, can, and should be blogging about, which will help to drive awareness around your core business competencies. An effective, proactive, and frequent blog program should be a crucial part of your online marketing program.

Jasmine Sandler is the founder and CEO of Agent-cy Online Marketing, a NYC-based full service online marketing consultancy and agency which has been helping small businesses use the web more effectively to drive business since 2006. Jasmine is a go to web consultant for business owners as well as industry speaker, teacher, and contributing writer. She can be contacted through her blog, company site, Facebook business profile, or via Linkedin, where she is a corporate trainer.