Posts Tagged ‘Business Blogging’
Business Blogging – Do You Have What It Takes?
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010Though blogging provides significant business benefits (e.g. increasing a firm’s credibility and visibility in search), developing a blog isn’t the right move for every organization. The web is littered with abandoned blogs; according to Technorati, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs it tracks have been updated in the past four months, and just 50,000 to 100,000 blogs generate most of the page views. To illustrate these figures visually:
That’s a lot of writers trying to join a very small club. How do you get there? To make a blog really worthwhile—to join that elite 0.08% of successful blogs—requires (at least) the following six characteristics.
Curiosity. Successful business bloggers are interested in and knowledgeable about much more than just their own products and/or services. They study the bigger picture, keep up on trends, understand their customers’ issues and enjoy learning and sharing industry knowledge.
Passion. This is what makes a blog not just informative, but interesting. It brings life to the writing. It’s also a prerequisite for the persistence needed to keep writing, and making it interesting, long enough for the blog to really start getting traction and succeeding.
Organized thought. Whether you are sharing information primarily through writing, audio (podcasting) or video blogging, it all starts with the ability to tell a story, weave a narrative, or present an idea in an organized and coherent fashion.
Social skills. What separates blogs from other forms of writing (white papers, articles, e-books, etc.) is the interactivity–blogs are meant to be conversations, not monologues. Good bloggers are social creatures; they link to other bloggers, write copy that attracts links, leave relevant comments on other blogs, respond to comments on their own blogs, and interact with other bloggers through other social media such as LinkedIn and Twitter. The result is that other blogs and social networking sites become productive sources of blog traffic, as well as being helpful for search.
Patience. Even if you use best practices for a successful blog launch, building traffic still takes time. Why? The three primary sources of traffic to any website are direct visits, referrals (links) from other websites, and search. When a blog is new to the world, it doesn’t have high awareness to draw a lot of direct traffic, high credibility to attract links, or loads of content for search engines to index. It takes time to build that. Many bloggers fail at this point because they get discouraged and abandon their blogs. Many others succeed simply by being too stubborn to quit.
Commitment. To be successful, a blog must be continually updated and constantly promoted. This isn’t a “toe in the water” exercise (unless your plan is to join the 94.4% of abandoned blogs that unattractively litter the online landscape). Blogging is wasted effort unless you are willing to put in the time, even (especially) in the early ramp-up days when traffic seems disappointingly low, even when a post falls flat with readers, even when you expect tons of comments and get only a few (or none).
Blogging isn’t for everyone. But for those with passion, curiosity and determination, they can pay off by showcasing your company’s expertise, building its brand image and enhancing its search visibility in ways no ordinary corporate website can.
Corporate Websites vs. Blogs – Similar Goals, but Very Different Tools
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010While most businesses today have websites, the majority still don’t have blogs. While blogging isn’t right for every business, it does offer compelling benefits. Though the ultimate objective of either a website or blog is ultimately to drive increased sales, the two platforms have fundamentally distinct characteristics. Here are six key differences between business blogs and websites.
Website: static content
Blog: frequently updated content
Other than a few select areas (e.g., company news, upcoming events, prices), depending on the type of business, most of the content on your website stays pretty much the same for a long time. You don’t update your product features every day, the descriptions of your services stay pretty much the same, your hours of operation don’t change, your address doesn’t change unless you move the business (an infrequent event for most enterprises), and your “about the company” is only revised when major developments occur. Blogs, on the other hand, are updated frequently – generally one or more times weekly – with fresh content. The search engines have always favored fresh content, particularly Google with its latest Caffeine release. Certainly standard websites can rank well in search, but a blog provides an extra SEO kick and is more powerful at driving repeat visits.
Website: formal / professional tone
Blog: informal / conversational tone
For a variety of reasons, web copy generally reads more like official corporate communications, while blog copy seems more like someone just telling what he or she really thinks. One reason is the editing and review process; web copy often gets written, then reviewed by subject matter experts, then reviewed by management, then reviewed by upper management, then reviewed by legal, then proofread, then glanced over and fine-tuned once more before publishing. Each blog post, on the other hand, is usually written by one person on a tight deadline.
Website: broadcast
Blog: dialog
Website content is one-way, one-to-many communication. It’s like speaking with a microphone. Thanks to commenting, a blog is (at least potentially) more of a two-way conversation, like using a telephone. On your website, visitors are information consumers. On a blog, they can also be contributors.
Website: transactional
Blog: educational
Company websites are generally designed to get visitors to take some specific type of action: buy a product, download a white paper, call or email for more information, sign up for a newsletter, visit an establishment, do something usually designed to lead either directly or indirectly to a sale. Though blogs may also have calls to action, these tend to be more subtle. From a business standpoint, a blog is more like PR than marketing or sales; it’s purpose is generally to build credibility, enhance a firm’s brand and image, and establish a position of thought leadership and expertise.
Website: products and services
Blog: industry and customer issues
In terms of topics, a website is usually inward-looking; it provides information about a company, it’s products, services, unique value proposition, pricing, hours of operation, location, sales channel, partnerships and other information. A blog is more outward-facing. Posts deal with industry trends, observations, insights, and with issues important to customers. Such issues normally have some relationship to the company’s products and services of course, but the purpose isn’t specifically to market those offerings as much as to demonstrate knowledge of the industry and how to resolve dilemmas that clients and prospects may be facing.
Website: (almost) mandatory
Blog: not for everyone
Finally, websites have become essential for most businesses. Whether the question is about where to order pizza for dinner tonight or which enterprise software system to install – or almost anything in between – most people start by searching online. Few businesses can thrive without at least a basic website, and web-generated sales or leads are critical for many firms. Blogs on the other hand aren’t right, or necessary, for every business. But where they do fit, they provide opportunities for search, communications and brand-building that go well beyond standard company websites.
Five Benefits of Blogging for Business
Monday, June 21st, 2010Blogging provides business executives and marketers with opportunities beyond and distinct from a typical company website. Because they are less formal, more interactive, and focused on industry issues—as opposed to just the company’s offerings—they provide a forum that is viewed much differently by readers than a vendor website. Blogs are seen as key sources of information rather than just promotion. Blogs are also core to a successful social media marketing strategy.
Here are five key benefits of blogging for businesses.
Establish expertise and credibility. Winning the business, particularly in the b2b world, is usually about doing the best job of solving the customer’s problem. Your website is about your product or service, and the benefits it provides to buyers. Your blog is about something related but much larger: your expertise. If your offering is unique, your blog provides a platform for demonstrating your industry understanding and insights that led to your approach. Even more importantly, if your product or service is difficult to differentiate, a blog gives you a way to create differentiation via your knowledge. Expertise is a powerful differentiator; in commoditized markets, it may even be your only effective one.
Become a resource. Following from the first benefit, establishing a position of expertise makes you a resource for industry influencers such as the media and other bloggers. You’re no longer just a source of information about your specific product / service / company, but also about bigger industry issues, trends and developments. This leads to coverage and quotes in a broader array of media, further enhancing the reputation of your blog and the image of your company as an industry leader.
Create a dialogue. Websites are one-way communication, a broadcast medium. I write about my stuff, you read it. Blogs in contrast are interactive: I take a position on an industry issue, you leave a comment, I respond, another reader chimes in with a follow-on comment, etc. Each post can potentially become a conversation, not just a monologue. That creates reader engagement, a deeper level of relationship than just passive information consumption.
Develop new relationships. Becoming an industry expert and resource, and creating dialogs, enables you to establish relationships with prospective customers, potential partners and other industry influencers that likely wouldn’t have happened otherwise. A blog lets you attract readers with your knowledge, interests, opinions and observations in a way your website can’t, expanding your circle of influence and business relationships.
Search engine visibility. Blogs are very powerful in terms of SEO for four reasons:
- • Thought leadership: due to the difference in the nature of blog content versus vendor websites (thought leadership vs. promotional), search engines often give more authority to blogs.
- • Blog-specific directories: while blogs are eligible for most of the same types of links as standard websites (e.g. directories, social bookmarketing sites, news sites, articles), blogs also have their own unique link opportunities through blog-specific directories and RSS feed syndication sites.
- • Recency: blog content is typically updated much more frequently than commercial website content, providing an advantage in increasingly real-time search results.
- • Link bait: again due to the informational rather than promotion nature of the content, blog posts are more likely to draw natural links (e.g. from news stories, articles and other blogs) than website content.
A blog isn’t right for every company (more about that idea in an upcoming post), but where feasible, they provide a powerful complement to standard websites with unique strengths for building a brand’s online presence and impact.
In Minnesota? Don’t miss the SCORE Social Media and Internet Marketing Boot Camp, Thursday, June 24 in Bloomington.
How to Find Killer Topics for Blog Posts
Monday, April 12th, 2010There have been many excellent pieces written on how to find topics for blog posts, such as The best 50 blogging ideas to choose from by Aswani Srivastava and How to find topics for your blog posts from Mike Consol.
But the most powerful blog posts are those that answer questions your readers have. What kind of question? There are a couple of obvious criteria: first, it has to be an important question, not a trivial one—and the more important, the better. Second, it has to be the type of question that can be answered in roughly 300-1000 words.
So how do come up with such a question? One method is to use strength-weakness-opportunity-treat (SWOT) analysis. The SWOT model, developed at Stanford University back in the 1970s, is commonly used in strategic business planning; but it can also be valuable for developing blog post topics.
Strengths: think about tasks or processes your readers are already good at, but would like to perform even better. Such posts often have titles that begin with phrases like “Advanced Tips for…,” “Optimizing Your Use of…,” “x Ways to Improve…” or “Fine-Tuning Your…”
Weaknesses: these are areas where readers may not have a lot of experience, but want to learn. Post titles frequently include phrases like “Getting Started in…,” ‘____ 101,” “Basic Steps for…,” “Avoiding Common Mistakes in…,” “x Simple Tips to…” or “A Beginner’s Guide to…”
Opportunities: consider trends, new tools or developments that can provide better ways to accomplish existing tasks, or even the chance to do things not previously possible. These posts often begin with phrases such as “Capitalizing on…,” “How to Take Advantage of…” or “A Whole New Way to…”
Threats: developments, events and trends can lead to new dangers as well as opportunities. What are your readers concerned about—or what should they be concerned about? Regulatory or legal changes, economic developments, new sources of competition, changing consumer tastes and other developments can have potentially damaging impacts. Think of topics that help your readers address these worries. Common post titles include “Watch Out For…,” “The Looming Threat of…,” “Plan Now to Be Prepared for…,” “Don’t Overlook…” and “The Emerging Danger in…”
Anticipating and answering common but challenging reader questions can help generate fresh topic ideas, draw more traffic to your blog, and provide your readers with valuable content they will appreciate and be likely to pass along.
Best Business Blogging Tips of 2009, Part 2
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010How can you develop a steady stream of new topic ideas to write about on your blog? Attract more blog traffic? Which WordPress plugins are most essential? Which highly successful blogs should you emulate, and what can you learn from them? What common blogging mistakes should you avoid? How do blogging and other “real time” activities like social media posting affect Google search results?
Discover the answers to these questions and others here in the final batch of the best articles and blog posts on business blogging from 2009.
5 outstanding corporate blogs by iMedia Connection
Defining an outstanding corporate blog as “one that accomplishes the clearly articulated goals of the organization,” Chris Baggott provides five examples, including Carhartt’s Tough Jobs blog (focused on user-generated content) and the Alerding Castor blog, targeted at attracting high-value clients.
58 ways to build a better blog by How to Make My Blog
Marko Saric presents a huge collection of tips for maximizing business blog success, ranging from the basics (get your own domain name, think of a catchy title, be SEO-friendly) to the less obvious (make your blog tough to hack, “declutter” your blog, don’t make assumptions about your readers, and include a media kit for potential advertisers).
101 Steps to Becoming a Better Blogger by Lifehack
If those 58 tips in the post above weren’t enough for you, Kim Roach provides more than a hundred more suggestions for improving your blog, broken into categories like must-have plugins for WordPress, ways to monetize a blog, and writing tips.
9 Useful Twitter Retweet Button Scripts For Blogs by Cheth Studios
Noting that Cheth Studios gets 40% of its blog traffic from Twitter alone, this post reviews nine scripts, tools and plugins to make your blog content easily tweetable, from TweetMeme (my favorite) TwittLink to Retweet.com and BackType.
The Most Important Blogging Analysis Ever by ViperChill
Noting that blogs grow by having their content shared, Glen Allsopp studies “the most linked-to blog posts on four of the most popular blogs in the world and analyse(s) what made them so popular.” Not surprisingly, resource posts and techniques for solving specific, common problems top the list of how to make your content spread.
5 Simple Tips for Creating a Content Culture at Your Company by Hubspot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog
A common challenge for corporate blogs is maintaining a steady stream of fresh content. To help, Adrian Mott provides recommendations ranging from implementing an “idea bucket” (an application that makes it easy for folks to submit their ideas about your products or services) to looking “at your analytics everyday and see what’s working and what’s not,” then analyzing why certain posts became popular and replicating that success. Another noteworthy post from HubSpot is 10 Ways Blogging Will Simplify Your Marketing Program, in which Rick Burnes outlines several beneficial results of blogging, from improved SEO and social media traffic to establishing thought leadership and brand building.
The best 50 blogging ideas to choose from by Future Perfect
Still wondering what to write about? Aswani Srivastava provides an outstanding list of topic ideas sure to jumpstart your muse, such as special events, news, book reviews, product reviews, “top tips,” definitions of terms specific to your industry, interviews, beginner’s guides, and if all else fails—soliciting guest posts.
How to find topics for your blog posts by My Blog
Mike Consol takes a different approach to coming up with new topics for blog posts. He looks at the headlines of some of the top posts on Google’s corporate blog (one of the most successful in existence) and reviews each to see how its subject matter might be applied to other blogs. Among the topics he ferrets out using this process: recent product or service enhancements, new partnerships, good causes supported, helpful tips and insights, or recent industry research.
A few mistakes that beginning bloggers should be aware of by Blog Design Studio
A brief but helpful list of common blogging mistakes new bloggers should avoid, including poor design, boring posts and ignoring SEO.
Real Time Search and It’s effect on Corporate Blogging by Chris Baggot’s Guide to Blogging
After stating that “the introduction of Real Time Search is yet another major signal that Social Media is an SEO tool more than anything else,” Chris Baggott proceeds to dissect Google’s approach to integrating “recency” signals from blogs and social networks into its search results.
