Business blogging can be one of the most effective methods of inbound marketing - if you do it right. The following are seven business blogging habits that you should learn to ensure that your blog is successful:

1. Don't be afraid of adding personality

Too often, bloggers are afraid to throw some personality behind their words. This usually leaves their blog sounding a bit... stale. You don't want your content to sound like it was written by a robot writing an essay. It might be a business blog but your readers aren't going to be able to connect to your brand if there's no personality behind it. However, you should avoid the other end of the spectrum too - especially depending on the subject matter. For example, cracking jokes while writing about depression is probably not the best idea.

2. Post blog content regularly

The more regularly you post content, the more steady your readership will be. Posting once a day - or once every two days - is ideal. When you do post content, make sure you publish it at the same time and on the same day so that your readers are never left wondering when the next blog post will come out.

For example, post your blog content on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon. This will help readers settle into a routine - they will learn to visit your blog during the same time on these days of the week.

3. Create a series of posts

One of the most effective ways to hook readers and make sure that they keep revisiting your blog is by creating a series of blog posts on the same subject. Think of these series of posts as a sort of "to be continued" serial. If the original post is captivating enough, your audience will make sure to return in order to read the rest of your series of posts.

For example, if you're running an interior decorator blog, then you could do a series on affordable ways to decorate your apartment. Each post could concentrate on a different room, from the living room to the bathroom and so on.

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4. Implement visuals into your blog posts

To keep your business blogging from getting too bogged down in text, integrate visuals into your posts. Visuals, such as photographs, videos, infographics, charts and more, help to break up the monotony of text as well as draw the eye of readers. Visuals are also a great way to make your content easy to scan since they should give readers some context as to what your content is about.

5. Utilize outside sources

Internal linking helps to keep readers on your website and also helps make it easier for Google to index your blog - but don't be afraid to send readers away from your website either. The following are a few of the benefits of linking to outside sources:

• Substantiating the facts and data that you use by linking to credible sources is a great way to build trust with your readers.
• Providing readers with additional information on another website that is related to your blog post shows readers that you care about providing them with helpful content, no matter where it comes from. This helps to build brand loyalty.
• By linking to other authoritative sites, you'll gain the attention of those sites. Good websites pay attention to where their external links are coming from. If they didn't know about your blog, they will soon - and they may even return the favor by providing external links to your site.

6. Offer varying perspectives

Consider having other people write for your blog in order to provide a different perspective, whether it's a different partner or one of your employees. You can even have bloggers from other businesses within your industry write guest blogs for you. In fact, this is a great way to not only build a relationship with other companies, but to share audience's with one another in order to increase readership.

Another way to offer an additional perspective is by allowing some of your customers to write testimonials for your company. It can be difficult for companies to gain the trust of readers - but readers do tend to trust the word of customers much more. This means that testimonials can be an excellent way to build trust.

7. Always end with a call-to-action

Readers don't know what you want them to do unless you tell them. So provide an actionable call-to-action at the end of each post encouraging them to contact you, sign up for your email newsletter or download one of your eBooks or whitepapers.

Try to pick up these seven business blogging habits to ensure that your blog is as effective as it can be.