Adding new features to your business or website? Then don't forget to build a blog into your marketing plan. It's a powerful way to help visitors discover your website, build trust and to keep in touch with your regular visitors.

Getting found in search engines is a top marketing activity and blogging brings many SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) benefits.

New content makes Google happy as it seeks to gobble up fresh content. The blog should also have a central theme meaning it has topical relevance. Have you ever been spammed and seen a page with random words in order to try and pretend to be good content in order to get a good search index ranking? Fortunately most search engines can see through these unethical attempts at SEO and in fact mark them down for the rubbish that they are.

Good for your customer

If it's good for your customer then it will be good for you. A blog keeps you in touch with your target audience and unlike other forms of social media, allows you to put out considered content rather than the quick fire style of message that other social media allow.

Authorship

Google looks for great content from great authors. By linking to your Google+ profile you can gain the benefit from your reputation and a highly visible search result - though you must built up a great history of authorship first of course!