If you have an online business, you know how hard it is to get Internet traffic to stop and give you a look. If you’ve been searching for a new way to bring attention to the products or services you are offering, have you considered a blog?

Blogs, in spite of their somewhat mysterious name, are really miniature websites. As an online business owner, you’ll feel right at home with a blog. You’ll become a “blogger”, and your input to your blog will be called “posts”, with the older posts being moved off you blog’s front page as newer ones appear. You can use software to help you create your blog, and let your readers participate by posting their own comments, which become part of your blog’s official content.

Your blog can be about anything you choose. Blogs began as private affairs between their authors and cyberspace, and many bloggers still use them as substitutes for leather-bound diaries or journals.

But blogs have now come to serve other purposes, both individual and corporate; and a blog is a perfectly acceptable tool for you to employ in promoting your online ventures.

As a novice blogger, you will be joining the Blogosphere, the Internet community of diehard bloggers who have their own culture, complete with ways to identify you as an up-and-coming, reputable blogging superstar. The point of this article is to show you how you can blog your way to online business prosperity, while becoming a valuable member of the Blogopshere.

The Blogoshpere has established a “code” to which you must adhere if you are to expect any success. The first tenet of the code is that your blog must contain content, and not merely advertising. This rule arose in response to an epidemic of “splogs”, counterfeit blogs which presented huge amounts of ads in the guise of reader-friendly content.

You may be thinking, “How am I going to promote my business in a blog if I can’t advertise?” But when you better understand how your blog will build an audience for your product, you’ll realize that it has very little to do with plugging your online business in veiled ways with every paragraph you write.

Do not use your blog to actively sell your products or services; use it discuss them, their uses, products with which they compete, the fields to which they are related--anything which can give your readers a broad-based look at whatever you are offering, so that they can respond with their own thoughts and suggestions.

The Blogosphere can either help or hinder you in getting your online business recognized. You won’t be able to control the reactions which your potential client base post on your blog, and they may draw attention to certain of your products’ qualities which you’d rather remained overlooked.

If you choose to ignore their comments in the hopes that they will drop the subject, your readers will notice. And they will wonder what they can expect from you in the way of customer service, should they actually purchase, and have a problem with, your product.

Your readers, and possible clients, are all part of the Blogosphere, and it would be very easy for them spread word of your indifferent or negative response to their criticisms. Stop trouble before it starts by focusing on topics that do not generate negative reactions. This approach will keep you one step ahead of your online business competitors, and those who advertise through more established media.

Building a large blog readership based on your solid reputation will give you a good SEO ranking. That’s how your blogging efforts will pay off big time. Your blog posts will show up at the top of any search engine results for queries on your online business products.

The only caution: if you do not absolutely, positively believe in the product or service you are offering through your online business, blogging will be a waste of time. Because blogging requires you to stay completely in the loop regarding what is going on with your product, you will soon tire of the effort involved. And your lack of enthusiasm will drive away your readers faster than a getaway vehicle leaves a bank robbery!