We all know that blogs have emerged as powerful marketing weapons in this, the digital age 

Blogs fare well in search engine results, hence, a blog that promotes women owned businesses website or affiliate links are sure to garner a lot of traffic composed of highly interested folks.

This fact alone has led to the emergence of many marketing tactics revolving around the most efficient utilization of blogs as advertising tools. We have the blog and ping method, for example, which alerts users of blog directories as well as search engine spiders every time a new entry is published.

We have the tag and ping strategy, which makes good use of tags - what many people have labeled as user-driven keywords - to gain better position for the blogs as well as win the attention of the right kind of internet users. We have the blog linking technique, which maximizes the interconnectivity that web logs possess and milks the same for every ounce of its worth.

Indeed, we all know about the innate brand marketing potentials of blogs.

But do we know how to use them?

Knowing what a tool is capable of is totally different from knowing how to wield the same. Blogs are undeniably powerful, but without the right knowledge on how to harness such power, they'd be useless.

Here are five scintillating uses of blogs which you can consider implementing. Each of them is guaranteed to deliver terrific results.

1. Use your blog to tell engaging stories

Blogs are most effective when they garner a loyal readership (which is quite easy to accomplish, given the intimate nature of these online journals). And the best way to do this is to NOT bore your audience. Give them something entertaining, something that is worth their time but something that is not a burden to read. Stories are great tools. They arouse interest. They build up excitement. And they present any scenario in a manner that anyone can relate to. Start with the events of your life, or the happenings of your day. Then proceed to the marketing aspect of your agenda.

2. Use your blog to conduct product reviews

Promoting some affiliate links? Do effective pre-selling by subtly building up excitement and favor for the products you are marketing. Compare them with other releases in the market. Shoot down the other products with an objective voice. Push for the products you are affiliate with, with the same objective tone. Then hyperlink the name of the product with your affiliate link.

3. Use your blog as your customer service center

Blogs have comment boxes where readers can leave their feedback regarding your entries. You can use this to gather the questions, complaints or suggestions of your customers. This channel will also allow you to instantly answer their queries. Additionally, each entry you will publish can also include the updates you have implemented for your product, thereby informing your customers of the same.

4. Use your blog as a venue for some inventive contests you can cook up

Want to challenge your readers to write the most moving testimonial for your products? Have them leave their submissions on your comment box. Want to hold a raffle? Have your readers leave their names in the same comment box. The possibilities for contests are limitless, and blogs make all of them possible.

5. Use your blog to gather essential feedback

Market research should be an ongoing undertaking. Blogs allow you to interact with your readers efficiently and expediently. Hence, you can use blogs to gather the necessary feedback from your target market. You can use this feedback to improve your offerings, or to discover new needs and new solutions you can provide.

About the Author

Mark Flavin is an expert at targeted website traffic generation.