Blogs, once described as a vehicle for narcissistic oversharers and people who found cats amusing, have certainly come into their own. Today, though there are still plenty of hobby bloggers out there, the tool is being embraced by businesses and thought leaders in record numbers.

The benefits a blog can bring to a business are multifold:

• Blogs, when built properly, can have a significant impact on search engine results.

• Blogs can establish expertise and credibility for a business.

• Blogs can drive traffic to your Web presence.

• Blogs can shorten the sales cycle by establishing a relationship long before the first inquiry.

• Blogs can encourage thought leadership within your organization.

• Blogs can lead to media interviews and other opportunities.

• And many more!

Sadly, most companies that launch a blog either do it badly or don’t sustain the blog for more than a couple of months. If you’re thinking of launching a blog, here are some basic best practices that will help ensure a solid start:

Build it on a platform optimized for blogging. I can’t imagine why anyone would build a blog today on anything but WordPress. It is relatively inexpensive to use, it is constantly being improved with new updates and plug-ins, the search engines love it and it has a simple interface so that anyone who can work with Microsoft Word can add, modify or remove content.

Whatever you do, don’t let anyone talk you into building your blog on proprietary software that doesn’t allow you to change hosts and servers and control your own site.

Have a strategic plan and editorial calendar. Don’t put your first finger on the keyboard until you have thought about why you’re doing this in the first place. Put some SMART goals in place, know which audiences matter to you and map out the logistics of writing and maintaining a blog. We literally invest most of a day with clients who want to map this out properly.

Write to and for your audience. A blog is not a place for you to put your press releases, talk about what’s on sale or push your products. You need to know who your audience is, and you need to know what matters to them.

Unlike other marketing tactics, a blog is permission-based. People choose to read your content or they don’t. If all you do is talk about yourself, they will not choose to keep reading.

Practice before you publish. For many companies, blogging sounds great in theory, but when it comes to actually having the discipline and desire to sustain it over time, they fall short. To blog well and right takes a significant time commitment. Not only do you need to create the content, but you also need to respond to readers who add to the conversation.

We have all our clients blog for 30-45 days “behind the curtain” so we can help them find their voice and identify potential problems, and they can get a taste for what blogging is all about. If they decide they can’t sustain it, we haven’t publicly launched something new and then have to explain why it’s going away. Or worse, is just left there, dormant.

For many businesses, a blog should be a no-brainer. But a blog is an organic, constantly evolving marketing tool that at best, you have some control over.

Make it work for you by doing the work to get it right.