Some people prefer to be passive observers and use blogs primarily for research, while others make use of their full potential and develop their own ‘community’ around their own corporate blog. For me there are 6 main types which I would describe as follows:

The Listener

The Listener (or Onlooker) isn’t actively engaging with blogs or other bloggers but does have an interest in what is going on, and so browses blogs just to look at and listen to what others are saying. Being a Listener is a key start point for anyone (or any business) intending to start a blog because it helps to find out which topics are important, and it also gives a feel for what does and doesn’t work. Using an RSS reader, it’s wonderfully easy to follow a number of blogs once you have found them.

The Researcher

Similar to the Listener, the Researcher has a specific purpose in mind when checking the content of the blogs. This may be to monitor what is being said about the organisation (akin to the “press cuttings” file of days gone by) or about the industry in which it operates. However, in many more cases, this research is a key phase in planning and launching its own corporate blog as it provides invaluable information on who the key bloggers are and what conversations are currently taking place.

The Contributor

The Contributor has taken its first steps in interacting with the blogosphere, by leaving comments on other blogs and so participating in those conversations. An excellent way to gain visibility, leaving comments is a good way to practise one’s own blogging style as well as promote the organisation’s own blog if it is to be set up.

The Builder

Having done the research, taken advice and planned the blog accordingly, the Builder is now in a position to start and build a company blog. With your own blog, you can now initiate the conversations, spread its own message and attract and communicate with people interested in the area. It also gives a place to direct people as you continue to comment on their blogs. The Builder is now in control of what is being said rather than simply reading or reacting to others’ posts, allowing them to guide the conversation and the topics to meet with the requirements of the company.

The Host

Finally, there is a full immersion in the blogosphere with an active blog and an active community around it which you engage with at all levels. Here the Host, through the blog, is facilitating not just a two way conversation with readers but a multidirectional conversation with a number of participants. Using the blog as a key central marketing and communications tool, the Host can develop the relationships it has with the blog’s readers and, in doing so, build up both its own reputation and trust.

Of course, you could just remain a Sleeper who is aware of what business blogs are but decides not to participate at all in the blogosphere, thus allowing competitors to gain the first mover advantage.

So what type are you and, more importantly, what type would you like to be? Let us know!

Tags: Business Bloggers, Blogger Types, Comapny Blog Setup

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However, as you might have already guessed, there are no hard and fast rules for this – Jonathan Schwartz posts on his blog at Sun once a week more or less, whereas Darren Rowse at Problogger serves up several posts on a daily basis. Both are well read, well respected and successful.

What has made each of them so successful is that they have focused in on what their readers want from their individual blogs and provided them with it. They are intrinsically very different but perfectly in tune with the reason why they are blogging, the audience they are writing for and what that readership expects.

If I were to offer some guidelines, then these are the ones that I would pass on:

• Post as often as you can without compromising the quality
  Quality beats quantity every time in my opinion. Quality will get you noticed and is more likely to encourage people to develop relationships with you. Granted, a single post in a month had better be really really good, but you get my drift.
• Post when you have something relevant/interesting/significant to say
  There is a lot of information being pumped out onto the web and much of it fails to make any sort of impact or contribution. So, when you post something, do all you can to ensure that it is worth reading and won’t just be making up the numbers.
• Post as regularly as you have told your readers you are going to
  If you have made a commitment to your readers then try to stick to it – if you need to change it then inform them and then stick to your new commitment. It’s all about communication.
• Post as regularly as your subject area / topic requires
  There are some subject areas where a constant flow of information is highly valued; other topics require fewer posts and more in depth analysis. When you write on your specialist area, judge your own rhythm of posting accordingly.

Remember that one of the main benefits of a blog is the interaction it allows you with your readers - so use it and talk to them! Actually ask for their opinion on how often you should post and be guided by them (within reason!). Let them know what you are going to be doing and, if that changes, communicate that as well. If you won’t be posting for a while (and we all need a break from time to time), then let your readers know rather than just leaving the last post hanging unceremoniously.

And don’t forget that writing does not have to mean publishing – you can write and then edit your posts over a number of days before ultimately pressing the publish button. Give yourself the time to hone and refine certain posts if you feel so inclined; alternatively, if you are feeling particularly creative, write a number of posts at one sitting and then schedule them to be published in line with your normal rhythm.

Does this lose a little bit of the spontaneity of blogging? Perhaps … but business blogging may still be about authenticity and conversations, but above all it’s about developing trust and connections.

Tags: Company Blogs, Writing your Blog, Business Blog, Problogger

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A blog can play a central role in the marketing activity of a Small Business but, like all forms of marketing, it needs to be planned, targeted and measured, so remember the three key . Consequently, a key phase in creating a successful Small Business blog happens ahead of its launch when you plan out how you want to use your Blog, who your target audience is and what you want to achieve with it. All three of these elements are key to its success.

If we now take a look at some of the potential types of focus that a small business Blog can take, then you will see what a powerful tool it can be.

Demonstrate and communicate your expertise
Most small businesses offer specialist knowledge and skills - it’s what differentiates them - but what they often lack is a way to demonstrate them to potential customers. A Business Blog offers the ability to do this and much more beside. By what you write in your posts and also how you write them, you can show your expertise without overtly selling to your readers – this gives you the chance to build up a positive reputation and a degree of trust with potential clients and partners alike.

Great Search Engine rankings
With so many people using the internet to research products and services before they buy, small businesses need to achieve a prominent position and high ranking in Search Engine Results for their chosen key phrases. Business Blogs can help immeasurably in this. The structure of a blog combined with the focused nature of the posts, regular updates and the interlinking which is part and parcel of blogs, will all push you towards to the top of the rankings. This makes a Business Blog ideal for small businesses looking for greater visibility and enquiries.

Build individual networks and foster collaboration
Small businesses may be specialists but they also need a strong support structure and partners around them. Business blogging is not only an ideal way to start to engage with customers, as we have seen, but also to foster partnerships, collaborations and joint ventures with others in your industry. As you attract other players in your marketplace to your blog, opportunities for collaboration and networking will develop naturally through the conversations taking place.

Developing reputation and trust
We all need to get closer to our customers and a Business Blog is an excellent way to achieve that. It allows us to engage customers and readers of our blog in a way that no other online method can achieve. This in turn gives us the time and the opportunity to develop our reputation in their eyes and foster a high level of trust between ourselves and our customers.

Dominate a Niche Market
Small businesses usually have a set of services or products which are designed to answer the needs of a specific, and often, niche market. Getting exposure in that market is key to being able to dominate it and ensure that your business is the one that the market itself recommends. Using a Business Blog, you can raise your profile and lead the discussions on any aspect affecting that market. Talk about it and get talked about!

Project your personality
As a small business, you will tend to work very closely with your customers. Your expertise is highly important but so are you as a person and how you get on with your customer - a strong relationship will help to ensure that the project develops well. Blogs can let your personality shine through before you enter the relationship and may give you the edge in being selected.

Easy Web Publishing – no webmaster required!
While we rightly focus on external benefits, we should not forget that there are also solid internal reasons for using a blog in a small business and ease of use is right at the top of that list. Blogs can be used in addition to a business website or as part of it – they can also be used instead of a website. In all of these cases, once established, you can publish new content or change pages on your site without relying on a web designer or webmaster. Reader friendly, user friendly and cost effective.

Research your Market
Your Business Blog provides you with a two way communication tool, and the information that you can get from your readers may be highly important. By participating in the discussions that your posts will generate, you should be able to get a clearer idea of what the up to the minute interests of your clients are. Surveys and focus groups can achieve this to a certain level but open conversations on your Blog will achieve much more, both in terms of depth and breadth.

Finally a word of advice: don’t get hung up about the word “blog” – a blog is a tool and it’s what you do with it that counts. Many people use Microsoft Word but the documents that they produce are as varied as the author. The same is true with Blogs for small businesses. So, evaluate what you need as a business and then focus strongly on using the Blog for that purpose and it will be successful for you.

Tags: Small Business Blog, Blog marketing, Blogs and Search Engines, Niche Marketing

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Anyway, I went through some of the methods that work for me in the two main areas that seem to cause most concern:

a) coming up with ideas for the posts;
b) actually getting down to writing and posting them.

Even though my own blog time management could do with some help just at the moment (!), I thought that I would share them here as well along with a couple of other methods which I’ve seen used successfully on other blogs.

Generating ideas for your posts

• Always carry a notebook with you to jot down ideas as they occur to you. Sounds simple and it is but this is probably the biggest source of ideas that I have. If you want to use your blog more fully in this process, you could also use the blog itself as a notepad, posting notes to unpublished post to then use later or perhaps doing it via your mobile using one of the voice to text services around such as SpinVox.
• Your RSS Feed Reader should be a goldmine of information, keeping you up to date with news from sources covering your areas of interest - the information comes to you, you don’t have to go looking for it everyday. Most people find that other bloggers are a great source of inspiration as well as information;
• Use Google Alerts to generate ideas and research your marketplace and industry - you’ll find some more thoughts on using google alerts as a research tool here.
• Use questions that you have been asked as the basis of a post. You might have been asked via email, at a seminar or conference or just in conversation, but if one person has asked then the likelihood is that others are wondering the same thing and so the answers in the post will be of interest to them all;
• Develop ideas which expand on one of your earlier posts or themes, or from the comments which have been left on your previous posts. They come from your readers so are likely to be relevant to them.

Writing your blog posts

• Schedule a regular time when you sit and write your posts - it could be at any time during the day but set some time aside just as you would for other marketing tasks;
• Use the (non private!) content of emails that you have written on the subject as these will often contain the core of a good information post. The same with presentations you’ve given - use small chunks of them (and of course promote your future presentations at the same time);
• Focus on what your readers want to read and this will help to focus your writing too - as Seth Godin commented recently on his own blog, “The mistake most blogs and books make: they are about the writer, not the reader”;
• Consider writing a number of posts in one go. Some people find it much easier to write when they are in the flow so if “the mood grabs you” (!) then make the most of it - you can then schedule the posts to appear over the following days;
• Plan and write a series on an important subject area for your readers - it’s much easier to keep going once you have started to write on a subject so a series is a great way to achieve that;
• Divide a longer post into smaller chunks and present them over a couple of days;
• Bring in additional authors to post alongside you, either as guest bloggers or as co-writers on an occasional or semi-permanent basis.

When you are looking to write 2 - 3 posts per week on a company blog, it can be a daunting prospect at the start so it’s important to get organised. These are some of the methods that work for me but ultimately it’s a case of using what works best for you. If you’ve got other ways you use to decide what you want to write and then actually write it, then do let us know!

Tags: Blog writing, Blog Management, Ideas for Blogs

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For me, there are two main sources of ideas: you and everyone else.

Blog Post Ideas - You

You’ll find that during the day you’ll start to think “Oh, that would make a good topic for my blog” (sad but true!) and you’ll want to make sure that you capture all these ideas that come to you. Personally I use a nice and easy solution for this: I keep a notebook with me all the time. Why? So that I can note down any ideas that occur to me during the day - and, believe me, they can come at the weirdest moments.

They could be triggered by any event, by something that I see which sparks a connection or by a comment that somebody makes to me. I note down the idea and any associated thoughts that crop up at the time and then I go back, review and use these ideas as and when I need to.

Blog Post Ideas - Everyone Else

When it comes to “everyone else”, the best people to take ideas from are your customers, your prospects and your partners - these are all the sorts of people who are likely to ask the sort of questions which others would benefit from as well. Ideal to get more people interested in your blog and a great source of inspiration.

So, make a note of the main ones and make a point of talking about them on your blog. You can treat it in the same way you do when you get a question from the audience when you are making a presentation or giving a talk - that’s to say, repeat the question that has been asked so that the rest of the audience can hear and then go ahead and answer it.

Do the same in your blog. You could even wrap it in a story about how the question came about, stories are always more memorable to your readers. In this way, you’re sharing information which will answer relevant and real questions that should help your customers use your product better and help your prospects to understand its potential better.

So that you have this resource developing on an ongoing basis, I suggest that:

• you keep a folder in your email system and make a copy of both the question you receive and the response you send back - this will in itself form the basis of your business blog post;
• after meetings with clients, prospects or suppliers, note down some of the key questions that they asked and which were clearly on interest to them;
• at Conferences and Exhibitions, keep a record of the questions or the areas that visitors to your stand keep asking about and are showing most interest in.

You’ll soon find that you have topics for your posts planned out well in advance and as you write the posts, you will hopefully also start to receive comments which will start to take the discussions and questions in other directions as well.

Tags: Business Blogs, Creating ideas, Writing blog posts, Blog idea generation

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A Blog at the end of the day is a website, albeit one which has a number of special characteristics - therefore, it will certainly appear in the main Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. In fact, blogs are much more likely to rank highly in the main Search Engines because they have some key elements that the Search Engines find very attractive:

• the fact that they are generally updated on a frequent basis and therefore have a continual flow of fresh content. Search Engines particularly like sites which are regularly updated because the more recent the information, the higher its relevance is likely to be and therefore the better the results they can deliver their customers;
• the inbound links from other blogs (and websites) which is a key part of the ethos of the blogosphere - when you comment on subjects then you reference the source and other commentators you value. Inbound links is another of the major factors in ranking sites;
• their internal structure, which is highly organised and groups similar posts together in categories. This creates highly relevant pages on individual topics which Search Engines love;
• the very focused nature and quality of the content in a good Business Blog which is at the core of what Search Engines are looking to offer their users.

The main Search Engines will find your Blog by following links to it from other sites that are already in their index, or blog directories so there is no need to submit it directly to them. (Google has its own specific blog search engine which you will automatically “ping” anyway and which helps feed into the main results.) It will then be ranked using the criteria that are applied to any other site, criteria which will rank you well if you are using a Blog to good effect.

You can use other Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) methods in addition which will give an additional boost in your rankings, but you already have a number of advantages which will serve you well. Using a blog should in fact be a valuable addition to your company’s SEO activity, so make sure that you write quality and targeted posts on a regular basis and ensure that you promote your blog well.

Tags: Blog SEO, Google, Yahoo, Search Engines

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So what does RSS mean and how does it work?

There are two commonly held views of what RSS stands for - Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. Both touch on one of the key uses of RSS. Firstly, from a publisher’s perspective, it provides a method to distribute and hence “syndicate” news and content that you have created instantly and, for the reader, it gives a summary of every new piece of information from a favourite site.

If you want to subscribe to and read an RSS feed, then you will need to have an RSS reader (also known as an RSS aggregator) which will either be one that you have installed on your PC or one which you access online. You can find some more info on (RSS Readers here) Then, when you wish to subscribe to an RSS feed, you simply copy the relevant URL of the feed into the reader and everything else is done for you. Couldn’t be simpler!

Publishing your own RSS Feed

If you want to publish your own RSS feed so that visitors to your blog can receive an automatic update when you add new posts, then you are in luck. Most blog software creates the feed automatically for you, so all that you have to do is tell people where they can find it - the best way is with the new orange icon which is now becoming the standard as it gets included in both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox. You will also find branded buttons from Newsgator, Yahoo and other major RSS readers for people using those particular RSS readers - however, they all supply the same information so you are just making it easier for your readers to subscribe.

In case you think your readers will not want to use an RSS reader, there are also programs which will automatically send an email message with your new blog post or article content - all powered by RSS and with all of the work done for you. All you need to do is publish your article.

So, should I use RSS?

Absolutely and both as a publisher and as a reader. RSS feeds are a great way to provide easy access to information and create a sense of community among your readers. From the reader’s point of view, using RSS feeds can save hours of work looking for new information or keeping up with developments in your marketplace or areas of interest.

And from a Business Blog’s perspective, they provide a simple way of promoting your blog by sharing the great information directly with the people who want to receive it. A match made in heaven!

Tags: RSS, RSS Readers, Using RSS, Business Blogs

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As you plan out your Blog, you need to have a clear idea in your mind what you want to achieve with it and who you want to attract with it. The answers to these will help you to focus the layout and design of the blog and also the content of your posts and make sure that they fit as closely as possible with the requirements of those who will be reading them.

So, as you start to plan your blog, try to answer three key questions:

• What is the Blog looking to achieve?
  You need to be clear as to why you wish to start the Business Blog. Are you looking to build a network of contacts for your company, or perhaps position yourself as an expert in your field, or promote a particular service or product using ‘educational marketing’ or even help create a group of “evangelists” for your new product? All of these are excellent goals for your Blog, but you should identify and focus on the one that you want to achieve in order to make it really successful. If it is because “you think you should”, then a quick rethink is probably in order.
• Who is the Blog aimed at?
  You need to decide who is the target audience for your Business Blog, just as you would do with your products or services, or with any other marketing activity. This will dictate the content of your posts and also the way in which you write them - both elements will influence how you are perceived by your readers.
• What results are you looking for?
  You should also have an idea of want you wish to achieve with the Business Blog in terms of results. A Blog is not best used as a direct sales tool and yet there are many ways in which you can measure its direct effectiveness. These might include number of visitors, subscribers to your RSS feed, sign ups to a newsletter, contacts or clients initiated through a contact form on your Blog etc.

Make sure that you spend time on this part of the set up of your Business Blog. If you do, you will reap the rewards because you will ensure that the Blog maintains its focus in terms of its content and, as a consequence, provide your readers with what they are looking for.

Tags: Business blogs, Small Business Blogs, Planning a blog

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Well, the technology they use is the same but that’s really where the similarity ends - they are in fact very different beasts because of their focus and their aims. Personal blogs were first on the scene and gave people the ability to voice their opinion to the world in general using the internet and early weblogs (subsequently Blogs) as their medium. They effectively provided a personal publishing system in the form of an online diary where people could express themselves in whatever way they saw fit about whatever they wanted!

The main point is that the blog could be about anything and everything … and it usually was. The subject matter was therefore diverse and the topics they posted about from one day to the next were often unrelated - people would simply switch between subjects as the mood took them, much as we all do when speaking to friends.

Business Blogs developed from this start point. They use the same technology but should be very targeted in terms of their subject matter with a clear focus on a specific market area, subject matter or niche. The most successful are set up with both an audience and a business objective in mind right from the start which they then stick to. Why? Because the audience they are looking to reach will expect it - that is why they were attracted to it in the first place and that is why they will return and recommend the blog to others.

In addition, with the arrival of Search Engines as THE research tool for companies and individuals alike, this focus proved to be doubly beneficial for a Business Blog owner. The tighter the focus of the content, then the more likely it is to be keyword rich and so gain the type of Search Engine results that would make an SEO expert weep! A well set-up Business Blog has a structure which just adds further weight to this.

So to summarise: a Business Blog and a personal blog both use the same technology, but it is what they do with that technology that differentiates them. A personal blog will tend to be wide ranging and, well, very personal; a Business Blog will be much more focused in both its content and aims, and will have generally have a specific audience in mind.

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Tags: Blogging Basics, Business Blogs, Corporate Blogs, Personal Blogs

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