Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

What I Wish I'd Known About Blogging

Today I'm heading to Las Vegas for the 4th Annual BlogWorld and New Media Expo. I'm looking forward to connecting with long-time friends and colleagues and as well as new folks I've met through my blogs, twitter and Facebook. Oh yeah, and attending a lot of content-rich sessions on blogging and new media. I'm particularly interested in the sessions on video and podcasting to see where those media are headed as related to blogging.

That brings me to today's post - a guest post - by a woman I knew in high school. I was good friends with her and her twin sister but lost touch over the years. It was the web and and social media that reconnected us a few months ago. At that time, they were starting their first blog for their fitness business. Recently Alexandra Williams sent me this article she wrote about 10 things she wishes she had known about blogging when she started. It seemed appropriate to share it while I'm at a blogging convention. I hope you enjoy the humor!

What I Wish I'd Known About Blogging

I recently came across this great question on a directory site for healthy living bloggers: "What do you wish someone would have told you in your first week of blogging?"

That got me to thinking, or musing, as the case may be. I wish I'd been told that:

1. There are places to get photos for the blog that don't cost money and are free legally. Who wants to go to jail for Photo Poaching? "Whatcha in fer?" "Bank robbery." "Murder." "Stabbings, maimings." "Bad Monty Python Quotes." "Illegal photo download." Really, who will sit with me in the commissary after that?

2. I'd be mainlining Twitter. If you haven't gone there yet, don't do it. You'll get sucked in. Too many twerps, goons & stalkers cool people.

15 Articles to Boost Your Blogging and Your Business - Guest Post Round-Up

A few weeks ago I announced I was going on vacation and had lined up guest posts for Build a Better Blog and Biz Tips Blog from some of my esteemed colleagues. In case you missed an article or two, here's a round up the expert posts covering everything from mindset to customer service to tactics for managing your blogs.

I am truly grateful for the generosity of my colleagues who shared so many great ideas.

Biz Tips Blog

Kathleen Gage - Three Things You Must Know Before You Create Information Products

Dr. Rachna Jain - Mindshare Marketing Touchpoints

Susan Creal - 7 Powerful Steps for Overcoming Uncertainty

Terri Levine - 8 Tips to Avoid Messing Up Your Marketing Message

Kellie D'Andrea - Take a Moment and Wear Your Customer's Shoes

Lou Bortone - Lies! Rumors! Scandal!

Maritza Parra - Visibility + Authenticity with Transform Your Business

Jeff Herring - Article Marketing and Online Visibility: The Quickest Path to Hearing "I See You Everywhere"

Ellen Britt - Get Visible! 3 Steps to Being Seen Everywhere

Janis Pettit - The Wheel and Spoke Marketing Method

 

Build A Better Blog

Rich Brooks - How to Turn Your Blog into a Lead Generation Machine

Christina Hills - How to Manage Your Blog Sites with Google Docs

Dr. Rachna Jain - 3 Secrets of Great Content Creation

Phil Hollows - From "Like" to Subscribe: Integrating Your Facebook and Email Marketing

Rich Brooks - Yes, You Do Have Time to Blog

Many articles generated insightful comments and questions that were answered by the author, so be sure to read those as well as add a comment of your own. And, if you like a post, be sure to tweet, "like" and share it with your communities and let the author know you found their article useful.

Blog on!

Tweet

Blogging for Business Success with Sugartone

Blogging is a great way to promote your business expertise and craft top level visibility online. But the path towards success is a long one and it's not always easy to stay on track.

Learn How To Make Your Blog A Success

Of course, one of the first things you can do is make sure you start off properly. You can learn a lot about the best business blogging practices simply by reading this blog and following my programs. But what else can you do?

Communities of Business Bloggers

As you get into the routine of blogging for your business, you'll probably also enjoy hanging out with other business bloggers. Here are 2 places you should look into: BizSugar is a social bookmarking platform for business articles. So if you are blogging about business, you can submit your articles here. But it's also a small and friendly community to network with other business bloggers who come here to read the articles. Bloggertone is a community of business bloggers. It's based in Ireland and after only a few short months Bloggertone has already developed a friendly social business networking community.

Sugartone: the Sweet Business Blogging Contest

As it happens, both BizSugar and Bloggertone are teaming up to run the Sugartone Sweet Business Blogging Contest March 15^th- 19^th 2010. It should be easy for you to join in the Sugartone event because there are 2 different ways to participate:

• Write an original business article writer with a great title
• Vote and comment on the business articles submitted for the contest

And this means there are 2 sets of prizes for the:

• Top 10 Titles
• Top 10 Commenters

$6921 in Sugartone prizes for professionals marketing their business online.

• Lead Page Machine - a software to automatically generate squeeze pages so that you can use this to tailor your squeeze pages to specific audiences, to build your email subscribers and increase your sales conversions. Valued at: $5200
• Animoto - a year's membership to this easy tool which creates videos from photos. Valued at: $249
• Traction Call - a 45 minute call with the Traction Coach Gary Barnes to help you to quickly get some "sand under your wheels" so you can move forward toward the life you want to live. Valued at $175
• ClickMillionaires - 2 x 6-month membership to Scott Fox's social network helping business owners upgrade their marketing to make more money online. Valued at $174
• 5 Critical Tactics for Business Blog Success - this is my own CD and special report on how you can easily make your blog a winner. Valued at $97
• Start.Grow.Run - 8 x a software package with 45 essential tools and services for the 3 different phases of your business. Valued at $49.95 each

Plus there are 2 books for the winners of the Top 10 Titles and the Top 10 Commenters. And the books include:

• Wordtracker Masterclass: Blogging For Business - 50 Steps to Building Traffic and Sales by Chris Garrett. 5 books valued at $39 each
• Sociable by Shane Gibson & Stephan Jagger. 5 books valued at $25 each
• New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg. 5 books valued at $16.49 each
• Guest Posting by Chris Garrett. 5 ebooks valued at $10 each

Click through here to find out more about the contest and how you can win a copy of my CD and special report 5 Critical Tactics for Business Blog Success as well as the other prizes there.

New to Business Blogging? Start here.

Everyday I meet business owners and service professionals who have not yet started a blog for their business. I also know that everyday new people land on this blog because of organic search results. So, I've put together a list of essential articles about business blogging that I've been developing through other projects. They are longer than blog posts and shorter than a book! You can also find them by clicking on the link in the navigation bar that says "New to Blogging?"

These articles are a good place to start if you're wondering about what it takes to start a blog for your business and how to make it work for you. New articles will be added over time. The first 3 articles are:

Top Ten Easy Steps to Starting a Business Blog

7 Tips for Better Blog Posts

The Secret to Growing Your Blog Following

Feel free to post your blogging questions in the comments and I'll get to them as time permits.

I'm also toying with the idea of having a blog Q&A day every so often where I'll answer questions in the comments of a designated blog post during specific hours. This is not my original idea. Liz Strauss has been having "open mic" blogging conversations for a very long time on Successful-Blog and Paul Colligan did something similar recently on his fan page.  What do you think of the idea?

Blogging about Blogging: Round Up of Posts

Even though this blog is about business blogging, every now and then I think it's important to share what others are saying...especially when it supports our position that blogging is an essential tool for businesses of any size to get found, get known and get new clients.*  Here are a few posts that illustrate why blogs and blogging are important...

10 Reasons A Blog is Better Than a Website
by Terri Zwierzynski (note: we are guest experts on business blogging for Terri's community in February and that is the inspiration for her post)

Why Blogs Matter
by Shannon Paul (Thanks to Debbie Weil for the head's up)

27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community
by Chris Brogan

Stop Blogging?
by moi - Denise Wakeman

*Ok, I know this may be one sided, but hey, it's our passion to share the power of having an online presence that you control, that's inexpensive and that can generate real, tangible results for your business!

What's your opinion? Does having a blog matter for your business? If not, why not? If yes, how does your blog support your business?

Stop Blogging?

An article on WebProNews quotes an article on Wired that it's time to stop blogging -- that somehow blogging has run its course, it's too impersonal and other tools have made it unnecessary.

They contend that using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, makes blogging unnecessary. I don't agree.

I believe your blog is the hub and foundation of your business communication.  It's where you drive people from your social networking sites so they can go deeper and more intimately with you.

Once people arrive on your blog, you have the opportunity to deepen your relationship, beyond the 140 characters available on Twitter.  The blog is where you educate, entertain, engage and enrich your reader.

From there, your reader begins to know, like and trust you and barriers are dropped. Readers are more likely to subscribe to your newsletter list, register for your teleseminars, buy your products.

Out of curiousity, I put this question out to my Twitter followers and got a few vehement responses:

Execs Prefer Coffee & the 'Net Over Morning Newspapers

"I'm not so sure my clients read blogs or use the Internet," said one of our clients who is a  consultant to high level executives. To which we had to pull out some recent research that proves otherwise.

According to an online study from Forbes.com and Gartner, the Internet continues to be the most influential and important source of business information for C-Level executives around the world, at 67%.

Instead of morning coffee and the newspaper, CEOs prefer the 'Net.

This information was brought to our attention by colleague Newt Barret of Content Marketing Today, and quotes a Media Post report. (registration required)

The research shows that “the Internet continues to be the most influential and important source of business information for C-level executives around the world."

Here are highlights from the research as quoted in the MediaPost blog:

• 67% of c-level execs say the Internet is their most important source of business information.
• That’s an increase of 37% since 2004.
• First thing in the morning Internet use is up 22%.
• First thing in the morning newspaper readership is down 11%.

Business Week Updates a 3 Year Old Story

Three years ago, Business Week published a story about blogs.

"...you cannot afford to close your eyes to them [blogs], because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself.  And they're going to shake up just about every business - including yours...Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective.  They're a prerequisite.

-- Business Week Magazine, May 2, 2005

According to business week that cover story, Blogs Will Change Your Business, archived on the Web received hundreds of thousands of page views and still comes up #1 on Google search results for "blogs business."

This week's cover story updates that important story: Beyond Blogs - What Business Needs to Know. I haven't had a chance to pick up the magazine, but I did read the online version.  The focus has changed a bit and shows the evolution and importance of social media like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Del.icio.us, all of which did not exist in 2005.

Social networks like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn are what's happening now, though we still contend that your business blog provides the foundation for your content creation.  The networks can drive people with whom you've established relationships, back to your blog, giving them a more indepth experience of you, your business, your expertise and how you can serve them.

Want to know more about business blogging? We've just released a free report called Better Business Blogging: 4 New Concepts for Getting Spectacular Results. Download the report here.

Where do you think business blogging is headed?  Do you participate in social networks?  How do you integrate your blog with your networks?

We want to know!

Personal Branding with a Blog

We recently published an article called "Personal Branding with a Blog" in Personal Branding Magazine for May (Issue #4) in which we state:

There are essentially four problems you’ll encounter when you want to get known, get found, and get hired for your best job ever:

• Nobody knows what you do
• Nobody’s heard of you
• Nobody is moved by your message
• Nobody can find you

Blogging is good for your career. A well-executed blog sets you apart as an expert in your field. A professional business blog will get you found more easily by people looking for your expertise in a way a traditional website can’t.

We predict that all successful professionals will soon have a personally branded blog where all career experience, expertise and published works will be available as an online portfolio.

What do you think about this idea? You can read the full article here...

Wall Street Journal Features Comments by The Blog Squad

How to pitch bloggers is once again a hot topic. Today's online version of The Wall Street Journal has an article called Attention, Bloggers. And for a little shameless self promotion...I was interviewed for the article! Whoo hoo.

NOTE: If you are not a WSJ subscriber you'll be asked to subscribe. I created a pdf of the article you can download instead. Download Attention Bloggers

There are good case studies of successful blogger pitches including one I submitted from Becky Sciullo about how she and her father, artist Robert Yonke, pitched bluegrass music blogs to promote his paintings of bluegrass musicians.

When I asked Shelly Banjo, the WSJ reporter, how she found me, her response: "Google, of course!"