Last night I spoke at the Ultra Light Startups event in NYC. The majority of the time was spent offering some suggestions to the entrepreneurs in the room about how they can improve their startups. One of my top suggestions is to make sure you have a blog.It seems today that having a blog for your startup is common sense, but so many startups I review and/or speak with don't have one. Many startups that have blogs aren't using them effectively. There are two main reasons effectively utilizing a blog will help your startup.

First, I believe the right mix for a startup blog is 80/20. This means that 80% of the time you should be discussing topics related to the industry your startup is in. The other 20% you can talk about news related to your startup. This mix will help to establish, over time, you (and your other team members) as experts in the industry you serve. The more content you write outside of your startup news, the more likely that content will be shared across the Web. And, naturally, the more that content is shared, the more new eyes you'll have on your startup. In addition, all of the juicy industry-based content will rank in the search engines, which will drive organic search traffic to your site.

Think about your blog as your absolute best (and free) marketing tool. It could even help replace some of your paid search engine marketing campaigns.

The second reason is that by posting a good mix of content, you will get people to sign up to be notified when there is new content. In most cases, people won't buy the first time they visit your startup. But if you can get them hooked into your blog, they'll keep your brand top of mind and over time they just might convert into paying customers. Make sure it's easy for people to subscribe to your content in as many ways as possible. On my startup, most of our readers are consuming our blog content via our e-mail subscription service.

While it's not a guarantee of a future sale, a blog offers you a better chance than if you don't have one.