One of the most obvious reasons of investing time into a blog for your startup is that people find out more about your product. But that doesn't mean you want to position your product around the content and just use it as link bait to try and sell it to visitors - you won't build an audience that way. You need to do the opposite.

Make sure you make it easy enough (and appealing) for them to want to look into what your product/service is without pushing them through a hard sell.

I've mentioned this before, but at Buffer we generally blog about productivity and social media tips. Anything about how to share better content, generate more engagement, save time, posting relevant information, growing your following etc.

Perhaps 2 out of every 10 posts on our blog are directly related to news about Buffer, using the product more effectively, or updates/partnerships.

We do however, make "soft sell" approaches to the readers about our products.

The only mention we have of Buffer is the branded bar across the top and the minimalistic navigation in the top right corner.