Thinking about adding a blog to your company's website? With 409 million internet users reading nearly 20 billion blog pages monthly, blogging can be an effective digital marketing tool for reaching your target audience. More than half of all marketers consider blogging to be their primary content marketing strategy but no two businesses are alike. Consider the following before adding a blog to your company's website.

Consider why your business wants to have a blog and the type of information you plan to share. Blogging can be an effective tool for relationship building. Providing quality, useful content to customers and prospects can build your company's reputation as an industry authority and offer an additional touchpoint for customer communication.

Before you start the blog, brainstorm potential blog posts. Do you feel your business has a unique perspective to provide advice to prospects and customers, or are you simply restating information that's available elsewhere? The most effective blogs avoid overly promotional content and focus instead on information that is educational and useful.

Business blogging is all about quality over quantity. When you make a post, it's important that this content is well-written, informative, and relevant to your target audience. To achieve this, you'll need a strong content writer who understands your business, industry, and audience. Consider your current team: Do you have an employee on staff who could create four quality blog posts per month? Or, perhaps you have a good relationship with a marketing agency or freelance writer that could support your blog content production.

An additional consideration is blog design. How easy will it be to add a blog to your company website? Once the content is written, do you have the right resources to update your website. You may wish to outsource blog production and maintenance, or you may feel comfortable handling the entire process in-house. Either option can be effective; what matters is that you've carefully considered the amount of time and financial resources necessary to managing this effort.

Even with great content in place, you'll still need a plan to ensure that content is actually read. Many businesses share their blog posts on social media or include links back to their blog in an email newsletter. If your business is already in these spaces, you've got a great head start. If you rarely post on social media or don't have a newsletter, you'll need to spend extra time considering your distribution strategy.