A blog can be a powerful tool in the right hands, but far too many businesses dump time and effort into unfocused blogs and see nothing in return.

When a business sets out to make any endeavor, it should set out with firm goals in mind. And thus a blog, like any part of your business, should work in concert with your overall strategies, tactics, and operational considerations. It’s not enough to write whatever gets eyes on the page, whatever pops into the mind of the writer in the moment.

Keep these seven blogging tips in mind as you develop your business’s blog, lest you too fall prey to unfocused blog syndrome.

1) Establish a driving goal for your blog

First and foremost, before even glancing at these other blogging tips, stop and figure out what your blog is meant to do. If you have no answer, or too many answers, you have a problem—because a blog needs something to focus upon, a driving force that will push you in the right direction. It’s pointless to chase ten different goals with twenty different categories and fifty target demographics. You can have broad appeal, you can do more than one thing, but it all needs to revolve around a central premise, a central idea, a central effort: Selling to this group, branding for this market, shoring up this PR weakness.

If you have this idea firmly in mind, the rest should come naturally. If you don’t, you’ll struggle with the other blogging tips on this list.

2) If it doesn’t help with your goal, don’t write it

You have an excellent idea, the greatest post anyone has ever posted to a blog. Does it belong on your blog, though? If you can’t say clearly how it will help you achieve your goals for your blog, it doesn’t. If it might actually undermine your goal, burn the idea with fire and sweep away the metaphoric ashes.

If you’re thinking that seems obvious, then stop and think again. People and companies undermine themselves regularly chasing singular ideas that look excellent in a vacuum, but harm the big picture. If your brand is exclusivity, resist the urge to post tips about frugal use of your product. If you’re making an entertainment blog, leave the politics out of it (unless they’re part of your image).

You don’t have to overthink this, but you should keep it in mind with each blog idea.

3) Think about how your content fits together

Is your blog a pile of independent ideas? It shouldn’t be. A good blog should allow readers to enjoy a particular post, but encourage a more structured reading. Each post should work as an entry point for a reader, and guide that reader to something a bit more advanced, something that builds upon previous ideas. By structuring your blog in such a way, it becomes far, far more powerful in building an audience and conveying the ideas you wish to convey.

4) Always write for an audience

If your blog has a goal, it should also have an audience—or multiple audiences. Make sure everything you write is written as if it were a performance piece. Think about how each sentence will read to your target reader, how each post will come across for the regular or the newbie. It’s okay to give yourself some wiggle room so a piece works for two different groups, but don’t write completely without thought for your audience and convince yourself you’re aiming for ‘broad appeal’.

5) Stay mindful of structure

It’s easy to go freeform with blog posts, but a consistent structure will keep your blog focused and appealing to the readers you’ve already caught. That’s not to say you can’t be creative, but it’s worth thinking about how you’re laying out your articles before you start writing them. If you’ve hit on a winning formula for your audience and goals, then it’s a good idea to stick with it as best you can.

6) Dive deeper

So you know your focus, but now it feels like a straight jacket on your imagination. How do you keep the content flowing? The answer is depth. It’s easy to come up with a million different shallow dives into a million different topics. To keep content flowing on a single topic, you need to go deeper. Research your topics exhaustively, both in formal and informal contexts; you can get as much inspiration from social media as you can white papers.

Don't fall for the trap of infinite freedom.

Set limitation on your subjects, your goals, your structure, and you'll find there's still just as much freedom inside that box as there was outside of it. Work with these blogging tips, and you'll get ten times the result for your effort.