Blogging tips for businesses
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several years, you’ve no doubt heard about the explosion of the blogosphere. Smart businesses have been leveraging the success of blogs for a few years now. The social web isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so it’s not too late for businesses to capitalize on the power of blogging. Blogs are a great way to connect with customers, employees, vendors, and partners. They can help push information, drive sales, and gather feedback. So, how does a business tap into the blogosphere?
The primary difference between blogs and news is the comments readers leave at the end of a post. Blogging is conversational rather than a unilateral communication. If I can impart any bit of wisdom on a aspiring business blog it is this: Have a face. People read blogs to connect with other people, not with a brand or a product. Active blog readers want to be engaged, and that’s easier to do with a person.
Here’s a list of some tips relating to the cultural practice of blogging that pertains to business objectives:
- Select a person or persons that people can start to like or hate.
- Post regularly! This one is huge. At Webvisions this year the guys behind Ask a Ninja emphasized this point explaining that it took them two months to recover their traffic volume after 1 week of slipping on their posts.
- Be transparent. Read my post “Can corporations leverage blogs?”to learn more about this one.
- Adapt. If you want to get the most out of your blog, you’ll need to optimize it. This means that even the best laid plans will not hit the so you will have to adjust your blog based on performance results. That also means that you’ll need to monitor your blog’s activity, aka traffic stats. Traffic stats are to a blog what a P&L is to a business. Like P&Ls, traffic stats mean nothing without a larger plan to compare them against. Adaptation will likely lead you down a road you never envisioned. You’ll be surprised about what things elicit comments, pulls in search traffic, and turns into nothing.
- Figure out why you’re blogging and make that your first post. I know this can be a tall order for people new to blogging, but if you don’t know why you’re blogging, you’re audience won’t either. It’s ok to start by saying, I’m not sure exactly why I’m blogging but it may have something to do with these loosely coupled concepts.
- Get educated. Simply outsourcing your blog isn’t good enough. As a business, you need to understand at least some blogging basics in order to properly manage the project as well as understand when it’s going well or not. Here’s a starter list of terms and concepts to know:
- For more blogging tips, read 20 tips for your blog.
Perhaps some of my experienced readers could add to this list. What else should businesses know about blogging?
I believe content is the king in the blog arena.
The right topic and the right content is the key to success of a blog.
I also like to make it more interactive where a discussion takes place with the help of comments.
this increases the life of the blog.
Also dont forget to have a web stats tool.
Stats are sometimes discouraging make sure you have a reliable stat tool.There are many on the web, I recommend GoStats.com , they are reliable.
From AD on July 19th, 2007 at 3:17 am