Building a successful business blog takes commitment, persistence and patience.  Most importantly, there are a few fundamentals that you need to make sure you address if you want your business blog to thrive in the long term.

Five of the most important fundamentals are described below to help you take your business blog to the next level of success:

1. Unique design and branding

Don’t start a blog using one of the free templates that comes with your chosen blogging application.  Doing so does nothing to communicate your brand promise and makes your business look “small-time” because there are likely to be many other blogs of varying calibers across the web that use the same design.  Instead, invest in a premium theme or custom design by working with a freelance blog designer to make your business blog match your business brand and instantly communicate your brand image.

2. Well written About page

Take the time to write a concise yet compelling About page that describes who you are, what your business does, and what sets you apart from competitors.  Also, make sure that your About page communicates what value your blog brings to your audience.  Consider working with a professional copywriter to make this page really shine.

3. Contact form

Your business blog needs a good contact form.  If you use WordPress.org as your blogging application, check out the free Contact Form 7 for an easy-to-use solution.  If you use WordPress.org and are willing to invest a bit of money to get a powerful contact form tool that you can use for far more than just contact forms, check out Gravity Forms.  This plugin has a price tag, but it’s excellent!

4. Social links

If your business has a presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, SlideShare, or any other social site, make sure you promote those destinations on your business blog by including prominent links and inviting visitors to connect with you on those sites.  You can even include social media icons to cross-promote your other social profiles.

5. Subscription area

Take the time to create your business blog’s feed using a tool like Feedburner, and then include an area on your business blog where you can invite visitors to subscribe to your blog via feed reader or email, which gives you an opportunity to stay top-of-mind amongst an opt-in audience who has already made it clear that they are interested in you, your content, and your business.

Image: stock.xchng

Therefore, if you’re a U.S. business or using images on your blog owned by an individual from the United States, then you need to either have permission to use that image or pay to use that image.  Alternately, that image needs to hold a copyright license that allows you to use it on your blog without paying a royalty or asking permission.

That’s a lot to consider.  How do you find images to use on your business blog without violating copyright laws and without having to pay or ask for permission all the time?

Fortunately, there are website that provide free stock photography or images with Creative Commons licenses that allow you to publish them on your blog as long as you provide attribution with a link back to the owner (as well as any other requirements listed with the image).

Following are several trustworthy websites where you can find images that you can freely use on your business blog as long as you follow the requirements published with each image:

1. stock.xchng

Stock.xchng offers a variety of royalty-free images that you can use on your business blog for free as long as you follow the restrictions provided along with each image.  The site also offers a lot of premium images, but you have to pay to use those.

2. morgueFile

MorgueFile, like stock.xchng, offers a variety of stock images that you can use for free as long as you follow the specific requirements attached to each image (typically just providing attribution is enough).

3. Picapp

Picapp is a great solution for people who need images of celebrities or current events for their business blogs.  Images are published on your blog with a link back to Picapp where visitors can find more images (it’s like a form of advertising for Picapp and how it’s how they’re able to allow you to use the images for free).  Image owners are paid when their images are used by publishers and bloggers like you.

4. FreeFoto

FreeFoto offers a wide variety of royalty-free images that you can use for free as long as you provide attribution.  These images do include a small FreeFoto watermark.

5. Dreamstime

Dreamstime is another good source that you can use to find free images that you can legally use on your blog.  You can also access Dreamstime images through morgueFile.

Image: stock.xchng

The Related Posts plugin can help boost the amount of time a visitor spends on your business blog and increase page views on your business blog.  It works very simply by adding a list of posts that are deemed to be related to all of the blog posts that you publish on your blog.  The list of related posts is created automatically and is based primarily on keywords, so the list isn’t always perfect.  However, it definitely works to increase page views.

Similar WordPress plugins are Similar Posts and Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP).

You can also publish related posts at the end of your blog posts along with thumbnail images (if you include images in your blog posts) using the handy LinkWithin widget.  Check out the image below to see how the LinkWithin widget results section looks at the bottom of a published blog post.

You can find additional similar WordPress plugins by visiting the WordPress plugin directory and searching for “related posts” or “similar posts”.

Stay tuned to BusinessLogs for a post later this week that will help you learn what to track!  In the meantime, take a look at the five Web analytics tools listed below to begin researching in order to find the best tool to help you meet your business blogging goals and budget.

1. Google Analytics

I use Google Analytics for my blogs for a couple of reasons.  First, the statistics provided are fairly comprehensive and second, it’s free.  That’s a combination that’s hard to beat.

2. Omniture

This is an expensive tool, but it’s one of the best if you have the budget.  Many large companies and Web-based companies choose Omniture’s Site Catalyst tool.

3. StatCounter

StatCounter offers a free and paid Web analytics tool.  The free tool offers basic information on a limited number of recent visitors at a time.  For full site performance statistics and history, you need to pay.

4. SiteMeter

SiteMeter offers a limited free tool and a paid tool that offers more comprehensive data.

5. AWStats

AWStats has dropped in popularity in recent years under an online buzz among users that questioned the accuracy of the data provided by the AWStats tools.  However, it is a free tool and might be worth testing before you make a judgment.

Remember, no Web analytics tool is perfect.  Therefore, don’t “bet the farm” on the data provided by these tools.  Instead, use them for trend analysis and strategic planning.

Image: stock.xchng

Following are five easy tips to help you pick the best domain name for your business blog:

1. Understand extensions.

There are many Web address extensions available these days with .com, .net and .biz being the most popular options for business sites.  While .com is still the most popular, it’s perfectly acceptable to use a .net or .biz domain name, and doing so won’t detrimentally affect your site’s traffic.

2. Remember search engine optimization.

Do some keyword research using a keyword analysis tool like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery or the free Google AdWords Keyword Tool.  Including keywords in your domain name that your target audience is likely to use in searches when they’re looking for sites and information like you provide on your business blog can provide a significant boost in search engine traffic.

3. Avoid confusing elements.

Your domain name should be easy to remember and spell.  Therefore, avoid using unusual spellings of common words.  Also, avoid using numbers and punctuation that can be confusing (e.g., 4 or four?).  The best domain names can be verbally communicated without any spelling or clarification required.

4. Consider intuitive vs. creative concerns.

Just as specific elements within your domain name can be confusing, so can words or messages in domain names.  For example, you might like the idea of making up a word for your domain name, but doing so can cause confusion until people learn what that word is, how to spell it, and what it stands for.  That doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to have success with a domain name that is highly creative — think of domain names like Squidoo.com or Flickr.com.  However, it takes longer to build recognition of a creative domain name than it does for an intuitive domain name.

5. Don’t worry if the domain you want is already taken.

It is very possible that you might put together a list of 10 domain names that you would consider using for your business blog, search for the availability of those domain names, and learn that none of them are available with a .com extension.  Don’t worry!  There are a number of options you can pursue to get a suitable domain name if the one you want is already registered by another person or entity.  First, consider using a less common extension as mentioned in #1 above.  You could also add a descriptive word to your domain such as best, fast, and so on.  Many people add an article somewhere in their domain name, like a or the, and others add characters to the end of their domain names making a word plural by adding an s or adding an er or est at the end.

Most domain name registrars offer domain name alternative suggestions if the one you want is not available.  You can also find alternatives using a domain name suggestion tool.  Finally, if you’re really attached to a specific domain name but someone else already owns it, you can find the domain name owner and contact information, and then contact that person to learn if they’re willing to sell it to you.

Image: stock.xchang

Freebie Images by Crestock

From one of the best stock photography sites out there comes this WordPress plug-in aptly named “Freebie Images”. Basically, what it does is allow you to use any of the free stock photos in their library. Once you’ve installed the plug-in, simply search their library from within WordPress, and if you see something you like, simply drag and drop it into your blog post. You can also search according to image orientation (portrait or landscape)and filetype. Because Crestock has such professional, high-quality images, this one’s my favorite.

Photodropper Plug-In

Photo Dropper works almost the same way, but it searches Creative Commons-licensed photos in Flickr. You also have the option to only search for photos that can be used commercially, which is important when you’re running a commercial or business blog.

PicApp

PicApp also makes it easy to find high-quality photos and use them legally. What I like about PicApp is how easy it is to search for either “Creative” or “Editorial” images, depending on whether your blog post is a news item or a feature. Once you select a photo you like, PicApp gives you a snippet of code to use in your post- and voila! To show you how quick this is, I just did a search for “Business”, and got this picture on my first page of results:

Faster Image Insert Plug-In

Finally, if you want to use your own photos but aren’t too happy about how slowly WordPress inserts your images, check out this plug-in, which works simply but can make a world of difference if you use a lot of photos. It gives you full control of the built-in Media Manager, and allows you to insert multiple images, or edit mass info in one-shot.

A big reason bit.ly has risen in popularity is, of course, because it’s Twitter‘s default shortener- but it’s also an awesome service. For example, bit.ly will not only shorten a link for me, it will keep a history of all the links I’ve shortened (provided I’m logged in to my bit.ly account), and give me statistics on those links as well- how many people clicked through, when they clicked, and from where. And to see all that, I need only add a plus sign (+) to my bit.ly shortened URL, for example, this link points to a previous post on BusinessLogs:

http://bit.ly/B3dqD

To see stats on the link, I just have to add the plus sign:

http://bit.ly/B3dqD+

and here’s a screenshot of what I see:

Then there’s the bit.ly Sidebar, a browser bookmarklet that shortens your link, shows you the link’s traffic, conversations and history- and allows you to share it on Twitter, Gmail, Email or Facebook. Here’s a short video clip showing how it works:

Two other bit.ly-like services I’ve used with good results are is.gd, which I like because- well, because it says it’s “gd”!- and u.nu, which is fairly new to the game, but offers the shortest URLs (apparently, nothing’s shorter than u.nu) and refrains from using “look-alike” characters such as l, 1, I, 0, and O.

Do you use URL shorteners?