I took an interest in building  a blog/website several years ago when I first started my company and working for myself. Over the years I have tried many different approaches and over the last few years I have settled on using my blog to build my brand.

More recently a monthly MeMe has started in the SQL Server blogger community that talks about blogging or meta blogging as it is known. This Meme has got me thinking about blogging and how to go about building a successful blog. This MeMe was started by Jason Strate (Blog) and is now approaching its third monthly run.

To coincide with this my good friend Matthew Bird (Blog|Twitter) and I had a discussion over lunch a few weeks back about the benefits of blogging and how it can help build your business. Matt was a little negative about bogging initially, he struggled to see the benefits in giving something away for free. Lets be clear Matt is a very successful business man in his own right, he has interests in many different businesses and he is currently building a business in the world of financial services and financial advice.

Matt and I talked and discussed  how a blog can help build his presence and his brand in his  field. It can be used to document your knowledge on a subject area and it can also be used to provide your opinion on certain subjects.  I think Matt took some of that advice on board as he now has a  blog all of his own. Please don’t misunderstand me I’m not an SEO guru, nor am I the greatest blogger in the world. Matthew won’t mind me sharing this with you, and I think our discussions can help and benefit other people who are considering building a blog so I have decided to write some posts on subject.

This is the first. I will be running a short series on blogging, how to go about setting up a blog, what platforms to use, what to write about, how to get ‘inspiration’ for a post, how to get noticed by Google and how to use some of the the social networking sites like twitter and LinkedIn to help increase your readership and your traffic.Nobody will stick at blogging for long if they think nobody is reading it so its important to discuss this and how to increase your readership. I may also include a short post adverts and monetizing your blog

I’m not an not an expert in this subject, so please do feel free to correct and error or provide additional information or make or suggestions via the comments, your opinions and view will be most welcome.

I got a lot of information when I first started blogging  from this book which has some really good tips and advice in it ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income