Deborah Sweeney believes that blogs continue to serve a valuable purpose for businesses, especially small businesses without an endless stream of marketing resources.  But the small business blogger needs to blog with a purpose.  And to that end, she says that new bloggers should follow the lead of journalists (not in their business decisions, mind you) in considering the Five W's: Who, What, When, Where, and Why.   Let's take a look at the What, from Sweeney's online column at Forbes:

What should you blog about? If you are a new start-up you could blog about the issues you faced- create a trouble shooting entry. Think about your community as a whole and blog about your industry. Do you know of other products, applications or ideas that will help your community?

For example, if you are a bakery and recently changed the type of eggs you buy due to how it affects your product, blog about that experience. Offer relevant advice. Go nuts!

One word of caution- If you’re going to pump out regular content that is meaningful, you obviously need to blog about a topic in which you’re knowledgeable,  and that you also care about. Without these things your content may be ill received, if read at all.

Read about all five W's here.