Intel is on a bit of a spending spree at the moment. Last week the company announced it was buying computer security giants, McAfee. Today they have confirmed they are buying the wireless part of the German chip maker, Infineon. It seems that the company is continuing its trend of getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But does that really work? Ten years ago the Intel share price was almost $73 now it is just $21. Getting bigger does not seem to be getting better.

In the past it was always thought that bigger was better. Google assumes that to be true today - bigger websites generally get higher ranking than smaller websites. And we will pay more for bigger things than smaller things. Consider a pot of face cream. You can buy 50ml of the stuff in a giant pot and pay some ludicrous price to get rid of your wrinkles. Or you can get the same kind of cream in a small tube and pay much less. The only difference is the size of the container - you still get 50ml of face cream. Similarly we pay more for a thicker book than we do for a small, thin one. Yet, with careful use of layout the bigger book only has the same number of words as the smaller one; we end up paying more for the same thing simply because it is bigger. We value bigger things than smaller things.

So it is no surprise that it has always been thought that big cities are better than small towns. Indeed, economists have pointed to the fact that financial power is linked to the size of a city. But, perhaps those economists have been blinded by the bigger is better argument. New research shows it is not size that matters, so much as interconnectivity - networks. This study found that small towns and cities have emerged as powerful economic forces because of the connections they have made - both physical and electronic. The more connected a city, the more economically powerful it becomes. The research suggests that in the past it was not the size of a town that really mattered. What was happening was that the population size enabled greater networking. Size only mattered in that it afforded more connections between people which then generated more financial power.

These days, of course, cities do not need the population in one place to be able to network. Thanks to the internet, those economic networks can be established even if your town is only small. Big is not best, it seems. Rather, connected is best.

So, what does this imply for your blog. Too many people appear to be chasing traffic, subscribers - sheer size. Indeed, blog popularity lists are based on numbers of subscribers or readers; you can even get badges to show off your size. Whoopee...!

But remember Intel and their share price. Perhaps size is not better. Perhaps your blog would do better if you simply had it more connected. Establishing connections between your blog and other blogs would be more beneficial than chasing numbers. Perhaps working together with other influential bloggers would do you more good than trying to get another 50 readers today. Perhaps the size of your blog doesn't matter as much as WHO reads it.

Focusing on size may be taking your blogging journey in the wrong direction. Concentrating on networking your blog - enter social media - is much more likely to produce success.

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Jackie Evancho is after Susan Boyle's mantle. The 10-year-old singer has appeared in America's Got Talent and has wowed the audience with her operatic aria. It is a reminder of the fact that when you produce an outstanding solo performance, you get an ovation and many, many admirers. So, how outstanding is your blog? How much of an aria is it singing? Or is it just one of the chorus singers, the backing band, the also-rans of the blogging world?

Your blog needs to stand out - just like little Jackie. Do your readers get goose-bumps, like the judges of America's Got Talent? Do your readers emotionally connect with you so much they feel close to tears of joy? The performance of any operatic aria can do that, if done well. But most blogs are here today, gone tomorrow things. If you want huge blogging success, you need to do more than just produce the ordinary.

And the word "aria" can actually help you achieve this. For any successful blog you need to do four things:

• Appeal
• Retain
• Involve
• Advocate

Your blog must appeal to people - it needs to attract them, captivate them and make them want to read it. Just providing the same as anyone else will not do that. You MUST be different.

Once you have appealed to readers, you need to retain them, make them want more, get them shouting "bravo". Make your blog so engaging that your readers cannot wait for the next instalment.

Then, you need to involve them. You need to establish that mental connection between you and your readers which makes them feel they know you, that they are really connected with you, thereby enticing them to comment, take action (including buying things) and to click on all the links you want them to.

After they have become involved, people will want to recommend your work to others, they will want to be an advocate for you. And that's where you start the process all over again with a new reader.

The ARIA approach to blogging makes you consider everything you do as you produce your blogs. Will a post you write appeal? Will it help retain people? Can it lead to involvement? Will readers recommend it and advocate your work? Ask yourself these questions for each post you write and you will find your blog increasingly successful.

And if the only involvement you have with this blog post is to recommend that your friends and colleagues watch the video, then I've done my bit as an advocate for Jackie Evancho, the new opera star in the making. But as you do it, ask yourself this - are you a blogging star in the making?

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Children who write well at school all share a common feature - their homes are filled with books. Ask any primary school teacher and they'll tell you they can work out what a child's home life is like simply from things like how well they read and write. Several research studies have come to the same, solid conclusion - when homes have books in them, children are both better readers and better writers. The best writers in the world tend to have large libraries at home; walls filled with books, shelves groaning under the weight of all that printed paper.

So, it begs the question for people who want to add vibrant, interesting content to their websites - how much do they read? In my discussions with some popular bloggers it turns out there is one common feature they share - they read loads of blogs. Tons of them. Thousands of posts are devoured. It seems the best bloggers in the world probably are the best blog readers in the world too.

If you want your website content to be good, if you want your blog posts to attract readers and if you want to have ideas pouring out of you as to what to write, the best starting place is not with your keyboard under your fingers poised over a blank page ready to write. Rather, you should head off to the lounge, grab a good book and start reading. Or, use something like Netvibes to draw together loads of content and review as much of it as possible. And if that doesn't work. get yourself a Kindle from Amazon and start downloading books and blogs to read "on the run". But whatever you do - read. And then when you've finished reading, read some more...!

The link between writing and ability is well established. If you want your blog to attract more readers, or if you want your website to get more visitors you probably need more engaging content. In other words it probably needs to be better written. The answer to that is not to learn how to write (though that will help), but rather the real solution lies in reading. Read more and you will write better.

The first step to a successful blog is not worrying about whether you should use WordPress or Blogger. Neither is it getting your knickers in a twist over exactly what to write. The real stepping stone to blogging success is to read other blogs.

I'm often astounded by the number of would-be bloggers who tell me they don't have the time to read blogs, that they are far too busy to bother themselves with that kind of thing...! What they are really saying is they are far too busy to aim for success. I haven't yet met a successful author who doesn't also spend hours and hours reading. Neither have I met a professional blogger who doesn't spend many hours each week reading other blogs. If you want your blog to succeed, the starting point is reading other blogs. And what could be simpler than that?

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More than 3m people have been affected by the dreadful floods in Pakistan. It is shocking news and I am sure your heart goes out to them - and perhaps your cash. Our TV screens have been full of appalling scenes, the newspapers have had page after page of coverage and the internet is piled high with news and images. But think for a second what would have happened if these floods had not occurred. Yes, millions of people would be in a far better position than they now find themselves in and thankfully many would still be alive. But, thousands of miles away in the newsrooms of London and New York, the reporters and editors would be happily carrying on with their work, regardless. The pages that currently have floods from Pakistan on them would have had something else in their place.

The fact of the matter is, newspapers, TV news and the like simply HAVE TO put something on their pages. The amount of space they have is fixed by the amount of advertising - or the number of minutes in a news programme. They can't change the space or time they get. That means if no disasters happen in the world, the reporters have no choice - they have to write something.

Why? Well, partly it is commercial; if they don't fill the space, the advertising is reduced and so the income is lowered. But there is an important psychological point in the readers - we expect EVERY page to be filled. We expect the TV news programme to be 30 minutes, not 10 because they couldn't find anything else to fill the time with. Audience expectation is a significant driver in the news business.

What this means is that the reporters don't worry if they "don't have anything to say". They always have something to say, it's just that on some days, like today, the news is more dramatic and of higher importance to the world. On other days, frankly, it's rather lame and potentially boring. But the advertisers are happy that they can push their products and the readers are - to some extent - happy because they have "their newspaper" (albeit a little less interesting than yesterday's, for instance).

Now consider blogging. Bloggers often only write when they "have something to say". The problem with that is the blogging becomes sporadic, occasional and thereby difficult for readers to know when to expect anything. If you blog every Friday for instance, your readers know they can look forward to your insights each week. If you blog every day, similarly - like a daily newspaper - people know it will arrive; they can trust you to write something for them. Blogging regularly, helps maintain reader loyalty. So even if you have nothing to say, write something. True it won't be as good as the blogs you write when you truly do have something on your mind. Some days you will be brilliant, others you will be ordinary. But your readers will know that you will provide something. Equally, some days your newspaper is full of gripping material, such as the Pakistan floods, on other days all you get is a skateboarding duck or the latest tittle tattle from a C-list celebrity. Hey ho.

But there is another reason why regular blogging is important. Simply "being there" with your blog encourages people to want to do business with you. Research from HubSpot shows that regular blogging produces more business leads than occasional blogging. Merely producing blog content on a regular basis leads to more online business than blogging when you "have something to say". Other studies, such as that from EngagementDB, have shown similar results - regular and frequent blogging is more important than occasional blogging when it comes to generating business.

More than this, regular blogging has another impact; it affects your Google ranking. Google prefers blogs which are regular, compared with blogs that are occasional. Search for anything you like and you will find that the higher rankings go to sites with regular blogs. Again, research by HubSpot has confirmed this by showing that blogs which are updated regularly and frequently get more pages indexed by Google and higher rankings than web sites with blogs that only have infrequent posts.

So, there are three reasons for blogging even if you have nothing to say:

1. Your readers become more attached to you because they know you will provide something
2. You will produce more business leads than if you only occasionally write things
3. Your website or blog will get higher rankings in Google

Simply blogging when "you have something to say" will not help you achieve these things. It means you need to blog regularly - and frequently - even if you can't think of what to write about. And don't go complaining about quality. One thing we know is that regular writing improves quality. Blogging only occasionally actually makes it more likely your quality will be lower than you could achieve if you wrote every day. So, there's a fourth, bonus reason for blogging even if you have nothing to say:

• Regular blogging improves your writing quality

The result? Better blog quality over time leading to more readers, more interest, more business. And all of that even when you have nothing to say..! Not bad eh?

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Bloggers are right; there is a powerful case for blogging. Yet, blogging is seen as a bit of a "side issue" online - most companies do not have a blog and most blogs are personal affairs, rather than business related. But that doesn't mean you should ignore them. In fact, companies that place blogging at the heart of their business are amongst the most successful online businesses you can find. So, if you have yet to take the leap into blogging - or indeed if you already do it - here are five powerful reasons which confirm that blogging is the right thing to do.

1. Readership
In spite of the vast amount of online video added to the web each day, the number-one activity on the web (by a long, long way) is reading. People are scouring the web for new and interesting stuff to read. If you write a blog you are providing that new and interesting material they are looking for. People are avid consumers of blogs - if you write a blog you will get readers.

2. Sharing
Blogs are the most shared items on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. In a simple analysis of my Twitter stream I identified that 80% of the shared items were blog posts. The remainder were videos, interesting sites and comments on blogs or in forums. If you write a blog, the social side of the web will promote it for you. Without a blog, you are much less likely to get your material mentioned on social networks.

3. Competition
Most businesses do not blog. If you write a blog you have a competitive advantage over your nearest rivals. Simple.

4. Lead generation
Research conducted by Hubspot confirms that businesses that blog generate more leads online than businesses without blogs. In other words, if you write blogs you get more people interested in doing business with you. That's nice.

5. Profits
A study performed by EngagementDB demonstrates that the brands which blog - and who blog frequently - are the ones that made more money last year. Companies that did not blog actually made a loss. Their research shows a clear and straight-line link between blogging (and other social tools) and profits. The more blogging you do, the more your profits rise.

Well, they seem five good reasons to blog but wait.....

6. BONUS REASON
There is another excellent reason why you should blog. Regularly writing material that will be of interest to your target market changes your thinking patterns. It forces you to think about everything much more from the perspective of your customers and prospective clients. Blogging makes you "step into their shoes" - otherwise you cannot write anything interesting. One of the main reasons why companies lose business is because they fail to see things the way their customers do. If you blog regularly this becomes almost second nature. Even if you don't benefit from the other five reasons (and you will!), blogging will change your thinking - and that could have the most impact on your business than these five reasons added together.

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