If you are going to take the time, effort and energy to blog, you should make sure it builds your reputation at the same time. Create trust and rapport with these blogging strategies.

Last week, we discuss the fundamentals of business blogging.

Writing original content for your blog is hard work; it takes time, thoughtful consideration and energy. As William Zinsser says, "Writing is 99 percent perspiration and one percent inspiration."

Leave the bravado, self promotion and broad-sweeping generalisations for the competition. Write with purpose and write with the consumer in mind.

If your blog is new and you have yet to build up trust and rapport with your blog readers, you can skip ads and affiliate links on your home page.

Consider the following tips to improve blogging.

Search engine optimisation strategy is tied to the development of a blogging strategy by developing the keywords and strategies that will get your blog highly ranked, or have your blog support an existing site.

Content blogging strategy for a company has to be developed within the constraints of client copywriting resources and what will work for each client's industry. At the end of the process, you will know your blogging content strategy will achieve your goals; be they thought leadership, customer support or product development.

Blogging platform choice is important if you are going to build a blog that allows comments, trackbacks and really builds a successful audience through RSS, email and by demonstrating the authority of your blog. Backbone will help you to pick the best platform for your company, custom design your template and get you up and running with your blog.

Blogging outreach strategy is important, if you are going to build a successful blog in terms of links and standing in your industry. Condut a thorough assessment of your industry's online media landscape, research blogs, websites and forums on where you should post and blog about on your own corporate blog.

Communications planning for your company involves planning for quick response to negative and positive PR situations. Work directly with your public relations agencies and get their advice on how to respond to online crisis situations.

Leaving comments is part of the foundation for starting a blog community. Generally, there is a link below each post allowing someone to fill out a comment form. In the form, you can fill out your name, email address, website address and comments. Comments are fundamental for all blogs for several reasons:

1. You can get discussions going on a blog post.
2. It makes it easier for customers to directly comment on what is being discussed in the post.
3. There is a field in the form that allows you to fill out your website address. This shows other people that you, too, have a blog, and people are likely to click on the link to hear what you have to say.

Tags
Tags make it easy to navigate a blog and find what you're looking for. Tags are category names, and people can select keywords for their posts. Usually, you will see keyword names on the side navigation of a blog. If you click on one of the keywords, it will show you all of the blogs that are categorised under one of those "tags". For example, a company writes posts that are usually about the following topics: customer service, product development, or industry news. If someone finds their blog and wants to read all of the articles about product development, tags will make this very easy. Tagging is recommended, especially if you write about a variety of different things.

Gary Gopinathan is founder and director of G.S. Quantum Multimedia (GSQM).