1st It can help your reputation as an expert in your industry.
2nd It can help enormously in the search engine rankings.
3rd It can drive directly to your site from people, find your content on other sites.
4th It can lead to products you can sell, generating additional revenue for your company.
I can see how content creation and distribution as a cycle. The cycle goes something like this: blog content feeds in content of the article, which feeds into press releases, books and other material.
It all starts with the seed of discipline. You have to be disciplined enough to content on a regular basis. A blog is a great vehicle for them. A blog entry can be as long as you want, so it does not matter if you do not have much to say. Just say something. Force your blog three times a week, at least.
After you have done your blog for a few weeks, you should have enough material to start down Repurposing it for other purposes, such as articles. If you are in your blog consistently to your industry, then a lot of your blog posts should fit together. Take three or four blog posts and combine them into one article. In my company, I do it so long that there are a lot of time that I reverse the process. I will write an article and then break them in a few blog posts. But only for those at the beginning, it is probably better to start with blog posts first, because they can be much shorter.
Once a few blog posts in an article, the article should be distributed on Article directories. These will enable anyone who has content for its Web site or Ezine too easily find your content. The advantage for you from a search engine optimization position is that users of the content of the article are obliged to the author bio at the end. The bio is a keyword-loaded link back to your site.
Given the content cycle a step further, a collection of articles can be the basis for a book or a different type of content, you can either sell or give it away. If you sell, you have the opportunity to generate revenue. But it can be a better idea only to Give It Away to third parties providing their contact information. Promotional items such as free books and reports are great opportunities to build a mailing list.
If you are very confident in your typing skills and a bit of time, you could even this whole process on its head. You could write a book first and then break up the contents of the book, articles and blog posts. However you do, you must have a content creation and distribution strategy that works for you. It does wonders for your business, if you are patient enough to see him through.