I never bought into the argument that blogging is a dying art. With money still being poured into search engine optimization and social media marketing, blogging still holds a valuable place in the internet marketer's arsenal. That is, if you use it right. Here are some ways you're probably not using your blog right.
1. You Use it to Advertise
Free advertising is great, but too much of it and you've lost its effectiveness. Your blog should only advertise ten percent of the time. The rest of the time you should be building your audience. Think about it: would you want to read endlessly about why you should buy a particular product from a perfect stranger? Of course not. You want to buy from people who you get reliable information from. The other 90% of your content should be reliable information.
2. You Aren't Active
Sad to say, I think 80% of the blog articles being published week in and week out are apologies for not posting more frequently. I'm guilty of this too. You have to keep at it on a regular basis if you want your blog to add any value to your business. Does this mean post every day? Only if you want to. I think once or twice a week is appropriate for most companies; make a schedule and stick to it. An active blog does two things for you, in addition to attracting more readers. First, it increases the size of your website. Google invariably likes bigger websites. Each web page has some quantity of PageRank and adding pages to your site increases your overall importance in Google's eyes. Granted each page is a very small addition, but over time this will help your entire website do better across the board. Second, it gets Google to come back more often and your new content has a better chance of being ranked high just because it's new (Google's algorithm assumes that the information is about something new and new is usually better for searchers).
3. You Aren't Ranking
As I said, an active blog has a better chance of ranking in search engines. A well targeted blog has THE best chance. In order to leverage your blog to its full potential, you should be using it to target sub-niches in your market. Here's an example. Let's say you sell home repair and contracting services and you want to attract traffic that might be interested in hiring you down the road. If you wanted to incorporate blogging into your internet marketing efforts, you might want to start writing home improvement articles. Writing about new trends in gardening, architecture, energy saving tips, and so on will attract traffic as people are generally interested in these things - especially the latter since it's summer and money is sometimes tight.
Discussing affordable air conditioning options, how regular maintenance can help save energy over the long term, and how planting trees can provide shade will appeal to a broad search audience...who may then want to find someone who can help them with these projects. And where better than somewhere on the same page as the article that inspired them? Your blog should be leveraged to rank for industry relevant traffic which you can then work to convert to customers.
All this highlights a critical function that blogging serves for businesses: it establishes thought leadership. By writing about your industry, things that relate to your customers, and so on you establish yourself as an authority in your field. When people trust what you have to say, they will trust your products and services. Your blog needs to set yourself apart from the crowd.
Recommended read: How to revive a dying blog