Blogging Your
Business
Author: Richard D S Hill
What is a blog? The term was coined in 1999, and today
Webster's dictionary defines a blog as a "diary; a
personal
chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page."
More
importantly, it says that blogs are "typically updated
daily"
and that "blogs often reflect the personality of the
author."
But think seriously about frequent blogging. According
to
Technorati - an internet search engine focused on the
world of
blogs - only 11% of all blogs update weekly or more.
What
matters more and more is what you write not how often
you write
– quality not quantity or frequency.
For a business, there are several potential reasons to
blog,
but, (there is always a but, isn't there?) what you
really need
to consider before blogging, is: Why are you doing it?
Is it a forum to have a more personal relationship
between you
and your customers?
Is it to create a channel where media regularly check
what you
have to say, instead of media just being passive
recipients of
press releases.
Is it private, a workspace where project members keep
each
other updated without wasting time?
Is it to establish your company as a thought leader so
that
people in your business will pay attention?
Is it to test ideas or products, a place where people
can
comment, and provide you with a measure of value or
interest?
Is it a bit more `cynical' another attempt to rank
higher in
search engines because they reward sites that update
often,
that link to other sites and have many inbound links?
Blogging tools (our
favourite is b2evolution) will allow you to publish news, information
and opinions widely. You do not need any real technical expertise to
write a blog. You just add
pages or articles through a "Windows" type of interface so there is no
need to rely on a web designer to update it for
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Business Blogs can be very effective. Blogs can put a
human
face on your company and the products and services that
you
offer, which increases the value of your organization in
the
eyes of your customers. This in turn will build much
higher
levels of trust so that, in fact, the readers of your
Blog
often become your most passionate word-of-mouth
ambassadors.
The key issue is discovering what a Blog really can do
for you.
However, I find that once a business has the chance to
have
their questions answered about blogs and understand what
they
can offer, the question tends to change from "Why have a
blog?"
to "Why haven't we got a blog?"
Northeastern University's Professor Walter Carl, the
students
in his Advanced Organizational Communications class
(Spring
2006), John Cass and his colleagues at Backbone Media,
Inc.
carried out the "Blogging Success Study".
The research team interviewed twenty corporate bloggers
from
companies of varied size and industry, and asked each
blogger a
series of standardized questions. Only bloggers who had
been
blogging for over one year and considered their blogging
efforts successful were eligible to participate.
They identified five factors for success.
1. Culture: If a company has particular cultural traits
worth
revealing or a bad reputation it wants to repudiate,
blogging
can be an attractive option.
2. Transparency: Transparency is critical to
establishing
credibility and trust with an audience. People want to
see an
honest portrayal of a company.
3. Time: It takes a lot of time to set up, research and
write a
quality blog. Companies need to identify a person who
has the
time to blog.
4. Dialogue: A
company's ability and willingness to engage in a dialogue with their
customer base about topics that the customer
base is interested in is critical to its blogging success. |
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5. Entertaining writing style and
personalization: A blogger's
writing style and how much they are willing to reveal
about
their life, experience and opinions brings human
interest to a
blog, helps build a personal connection with readers and
will
keep people reading.
Nevertheless, they missed out the most important:
6. It takes time and dedication to build a good business
blog.
You must stick with it and expect it to take months to
build up
a sizable audience. Lots of people blog for a few months
and
stop. You need to blog constantly and at a constant
pace. You
need to find time to write posts, to reply to comments
from
readers, monitor other blogs, keep up with the latest
industry
news and build relationships with other bloggers.
However,
sticking with it is actually the only hard and fast rule
to
creating a successful business orientated blog.
About The Author: Richard Hill is a director of E-CRM
Solutions
and has spent many years in senior direct and
interactive
marketing roles. E-CRM [
http://www.e-crm.co.uk/profile/ecrm_newsletters.htm
]provides
EBusiness, ECommerce and Emarketing and ECRM.
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