An important aspect of blogging is to keep your readers engaged. If you post long articles every day, the chances are people will not read them due to overload.

The way people read your blog posts will vary and some people subscribe to many blogs, so skim read or quickly scan through posts to 'get the gist'.

Try generating no more than one post per day and never more than one long blog post per week.

Why not throw in the odd small one paragraph post? Perhaps, simply a link to another website you think could benefit your readers. As long as it adds value.

Make sure you split the text in your blog posts up so if people do scan read, they can get an overview of the content.

Sub headings and bullet point lists are good for breaking up text, and a well chosen image or diagram can make the post look more attractive and accessible.

Try and keep your paragraphs short, as long paragraphs have a tendency to put people off with online reading.

6. Link to and credit your peers

Create links to any research or websites to which you have referred. It is good blog etiquette and also allows your blog to join in the 'world-wide web'.

If your content is good, people may also link to your blog. If they see you are linking out, this may encourage the 'link love'.

This may sound like wishful thinking but the blogging community has a certain unwritten code of conduct, which carries a lot of respect.

Attracting incoming links to your blog is good for two reasons. The first is that you may get a visitor actually click a link through to your blog, that could lead to a new reader.

Secondly, an incoming link can benefit your blog in search engines, depending on the anchor text - the text that is used for the link.

People are becoming better with the words they use for their anchor text, but there are still plenty that use the - waste of time - phrase "click here".

If lots of people link to you with a certain phrase, there is more chance that you will be found for it.

7. Encourage comment and debate

A blog is a place where you can, and should, have an opinion and allow your personality to shine through. People aren't looking for blog posts that sit on the fence and don't teach them anything.

Don't be controversial just for the sake of it, but a good strong argument can create debate; and that is good for your blog and your online reputation.

You could even end your blog posts with a question, creating an opportunity for someone to answer back, what do you think?

Expect some people not to agree with you, that is a natural occurrence in life. Just remain objective and respectful towards other people's opinions and rise above any personal attacks.

8. Find your audience

Rather than rely on people finding you and your blog, why not get out and interact with your potential audience? Find similar blogs and forums and start to interact with other users.

Encourage readers to publish your material on social news and bookmarking sites.

This can be achieved by simply adding appropriate links to the bottom of each blog post, eg. Stumble Upon, del.icio.us, Share on Facebook, etc. These tactics will extend your reach and your profile.

9. Measure

Like a website, you should measure what your blog is doing, with regards to web traffic, visitors and potential subscribers.

Where are the visitors coming from? What are they typing in to search engines, or which sites are referring them? When the traffic gets to your blog, are people moving towards your defined goal? If not, why not?

You will need to make some adjustments to your posts and your sales messages to increase that potential.

Blog traffic is harder to measure than traditional website traffic, however, as there are many different ways people can read your blog posts.

Some of your audience will view your posts through a Feed Reader and never even visit your blog, so it pays to have some sort of marketing messages within the odd post you write.

Don't make it to sales focused, otherwise you may be encouraging people to unsubscribe, but the odd, relevant marketing message should be included.

You can also utilise tools such as Google's Feedburner to track subscribers to your blog's feed.

10. Make time

This is the one that catches a lot of people out. Creating and managing a blog is an investment, either in your time, or budget; and it doesn't stop.

You will need to assign time to research and write articles for posting on a regular basis. There is nothing worse than seeing a blog that has not been updated for a few months.

If you see this as a problem, it may pay to take one of two steps. Either, refine your expectations and the schedule with which you post, or forget blogging altogether.

Craig Killick is founder of The Escape, a Hampshire-based design and web agency.

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