By Jill Kurtz, Owner, Kurtz Digital StrategyBlogs are one of my favorite social media tools because they are great ways to communicate your thought leaderships. They are also a great way to build traffic to your website and other online efforts.Communicating with a BlogA blog is a place for you to share your expertise. In posts of 500 words or less, you get to tell readers what you know and why it is important. You don’t need to say you are an expert – your words do that for you.When writing blog posts, there are a few things you can do to go beyond informing your reader:Research the keywords related to each posts topic. Use about three keywords per post. Use them in the headline, subheads, and body text.Link your post to relevant further information at your website, on your other social media sites, or to other posts within your blog.Setting Up Your Blog for SuccessBeyond making each post great, your blog set up does a lot to attract readers. You need a professional template that is attractive, easy to use, and helps them to navigate around.Make sure the template allows for you to associate an attractive image with each post. Visuals draw readers to your content.The navigation of your blog should connect to your website and other social media sites and vice versa. Interconnect your content because you never know where someone will start, but you always want interested people to find all of your content.Make sure there is a way for the blog visitor to subscribe to get alerts when you publish a new post and/or to sign up for a newsletter or other regular communication from you.[author]About the Author: Jill Kurtz founded Kurtz Digital Strategy to help clients see the communication potential of the newest trends and technologies. She is an expert at website strategy and redesign, social media planning, and developing exceptional content. [/author]