Business Blogging Pros

Writer's Block

Your blog is all set up and you are about to write your first blog post.

You sit down at the keyboard and it hits you: OMG, this is going out onto the Internet. People will read this. I have to get this right. And you freeze.

Close your eyes. In your mind, sweep away the blog, the internet, keyboard, and screen. Imagine instead that you are at Starbucks or your favorite cozy spot with a good friend you have not seen in years. There, feel the warmth and friendship? Good, now imagine your friend asks, "So how did you get into this business?" Then you tell her the wonderful story of your adventure that brought you to this point.

OK, this is important: Don't think. Just type.

Write what you just said to your friend. Don't change a thing. If you do that, I guarantee that magic wil happen because everyone will see that you are writing from your heart.

Seminar: Blogging For Business

Ray Silverstein, founder of Presidents Resource Organization and I have teamed up to present a two-hour breakfast seminar on business blogging.

You will learn what a blog is - and what it is not. You will come away with six things that blogging can do for your business. You will learn how easy it is to get started.

Date:
February 28, 2008
8:00 - 8:30am Continental Breakfast & Networking
8:30 - 10:30am Seminar

Place:
Wells Fargo
8601 N Scottsdale Rd Suite 250
Scottsdale, AZ

Cost: $25 ($35 at the door)

For more information and to register Click Here

Blog vs Website

I was speaking to a group of women entrepreneurs recently and one asked, "Why can't I just use a normal website for this?". Good question.

Conversation
The most important aspect of blogging is that your blog is part of a conversation. A website is a monologue - you talking to your readers. Your blog however, allows your readers to easy talk back to you via comments. The blogging software provides this commenting facility as well as a way for you to manage the comments and institute control over comments.

Easy to Use
The blogging software makes it easy to continually add content and updates (Which gives people a reason to keep coming back). You add an article to your blog by simply entering the text into an online form. Sure, you could update your website just as frequently, but then you have to deal with HTML or have a really cooperative webmaster.

RSS
I talk more about RSS here, but the important thing is that almost all of your regular readers will be reading your blog via RSS - because they are probably reading a bunch of blogs and RSS allows them to keep up with dozens or hundreds of blogs very quickly. Your website most likely doesn't have an RSS feed but the blogging software automatically creates one.

Google Loves Blogs
When you update your website, you may have to wait 4-6 weeks for the Google spyder to get around to finding and indexing your updates. On the other hand, the instant you click that 'Save' button at the bottom of your blog's 'Compose New Post' page it pokes Google and your updates are indexed almost immediately. I've seen blog posts show up on Google 45 minutes after they were written.

Image
Even with something like 121 million blogs out there, having one is still seen as leading edge.

Podcasting
Wanna do a podcast at publish it on iTunes? There is no easier way to do that than through a blog. In fact, if you have your blog's RSS feed hooked up through Feedburner then it's almost automatic.

Other reasons
There are other reasons too. You can configure your blog to actually also be your website. Doing so allows you to leverage the blog's great content management features to allow you to easily create and maintain your website.

Admitting Guilt

David Meerman Scott's Web Ink Now is one of my favorite blogs on the subjects of marketing and PR. He recently wrote a great post about Olympic athlete Marion Jones' emotional admission of guilt.

No matter what your feelings about Ms Jones' and her offense, you can't help but feel differently after watching the video. You can't help but feel a little more empathy and perhaps a little less judgmental. I know I am generalizing but I think we Americans as a culture are quick to forgive when presented with a heartfelt mea culpa.

Good businesses that 'get' blogging use their blogs this way: to say, "We made a mistake", "We have learned from it", and "Here is how we are going to do better next time" .

Sadly, a lot of companies when faced with the question, "Should we put this on our blog?" will respond with "If we don't put it on our blog then fewer people will find out about it". Wrong answer, wrong answer, wrong answer.

Markets are conversations. Believe me, the world will find out about it. And they will talk about it. Given that the conversation will take place anyway, it is better for that conversation to be on your own blog than somewhere over which you have no control. And you have a better chance to get your side of the story told and get your message out on you own blog.

On the other hand, suppose that by reading about it on your blog, someone does learn of your faux pas who would otherwise have remained ignorant? They'll come away with a positive impression of your company's honesty and integrity.

There is another benefit but it is more insidious. Changing the culture in a company - to one in which airing the dirty laundry is not only OK but is actualy advantageous - can be very disruptive. Once accomplished however, the company is better for it. The company doesn't just appear to be more honest and open, it actually is more honest and open. And then the entire relationship with the customer undergoes a welcome change too.

Leveraging Conversations on the Web

• Now that I have our blog up, how do we get visibility?  How do we get people to find it and open it and look at it and participate?


• Our target market is widget manufacturer CTOs. How do we reach them?

These are my favorite questions because this is what Business Blogging Pros is all about: Leveraging conversations on the Web to boost your image, exposure, and reputation.

Put simply, you must engage in a campaign comprised of the following four steps:

Find other blogs speaking to the same audience.

These may be other blogs on the same topic as yours. Remember though that Markets are Conversations. You may be selling widgets, but conversations about them will occur wherever your present and future clients may gather. This means that you should also look for other blogs about entirely different topics but are visited by your target audience.

For example, suppose your target market is the CTOs of widget manufacturers. First, find the ones that blog. Next what publications do they read? Almost every journalist has a blog these days.

And don’t limit your search to just blogs. Forums, Facebook Groups, and similar spots should not be ignored.

Read these blogs regularly.

Look for topics (conversations) you and your company are knowledgeable about and offer you the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise.

Leave comments that add to the conversation.

This is strategic. Comments that say ‘Great Post’ are worthless. Just as in a face-to-face networking venue, you must contribute to the conversation. Your objective is to write insightful, informative, thought-provoking comments. The comment form usually has a place for a URL. Always include your blog’s URL. You want people to find you.

What will happen is that after you’ve left a few really good comments, that blog’s author will begin to recognize you, recognize you are worth listening to, and begin to read your blog regularly.

Write articles on your own blog about what you’ve read.

An alternative to leaving comments on other blogs is to go back to our own blog and write about what you’ve read. When you do this it is crucial to do two things: First, include a hyperlink back to the blog post or article you are writing about. Second, include a trackback to that post or article. The trackback will notify the author of the original article, telling her about your article. Some blogging platforms will also place an excerpt of your article in the comments and trackbacks section of her article.

When would you trackback vs comment? At a high enough level of abstraction, comments and trackbacks do the same thing:

• Make another blogger aware of you.


• Make the other blogger’s readers aware of you.

Having said that, you would use a trackback instead of a comment for either of two reasons:

• What you want to say is too long for a comment. Sometimes you want to take the conversation further or in a different direction.


• You want your own readers to be aware of the conversation. Note that when you leave a comment, that blogger and his readers are aware of it but your own readers are not.

Of course, none of this will have the desired affect if you don’t write good, informative, thought-provoking content on your own blog. If you’re writing good comments then people will visit your blog. You must give them a reason to come back and read your blog regularly.

Admittedly, this process can be a lot of work. Done well, finding all those blogs and reading them regularly can consume several hours each week, but it can allow you to accomplish what large companies with millions to spend on marketing would be hard-pressed to accomplish.

Shameless commercial plug: This is our specialty. We offer a service whereby:

• We find those blogs.


• We scan them regularly. (We looked at over six thousand blog posts for one client this week.)


• Once each week, we provide you short list of a dozen or so articles that are right on target for you.


• We meet with you, strategize, and help you craft responses that are effective.

Technorati Tags: What They Are, Why They Are Important, and How to Use Them

Long, long ago, on a galaxy far, far away, in a time before The Empire, we had web directories. You would submit your website to the directory and along with the URL, you would provide a list of words or phrases that described what your website was about. When someone searched the directory and entered your matching keyword, the directory would serve up your site’s url. In a way, life was good then. Those primitive tools based their results not upon what some algorithm thought was important about your web page using keyword density and voodoo; they based their results upon what a real human being said the site was important about the site.

Technorati tags give us this same humanized approach today. When you configure your ‘Compose Post’ page to display the Technorati Tags field, it gives you the change to tell Google and other search engines what your blog post is about. Google recognizes that you, a genuine intelligent human being, are far better at determining what a blog post is about than Google can, even though Google’s brain is reportedly the size of a small planet.

If your post is about widgets, it will rank much more highly for the search term ‘widgets’ with a Technorati tag ‘widgets’ than it will without. Much more highly.

Do you want an example? Ok, I’ll give you one. My house is presently for sale and to prove I could do it, I created a blog that is essentially a brochure about my house. I tagged every post in that blog “85302 real estate”. After two weeks of posting twice a day, that blog was number one for the search term “85302 real estate”. (CAVEAT: Don’t interpret this as my recommendation that you try to sell houses this way. I did this only to demonstrate the power of Technorati Tags and a blog’s Google Juice.)

The lesson learned from this is that Technorati Tags and frequent postings can be combined into a powerful tool for boosting your search engine rankings.

Strategy

I recommend that you decide upon a small number of themes. These should topics that you write about frequently. You may write about many topics, but your themes are the topics you always return to. From your readers’ perspective your themes are your blog is about.

Then create a tag for each of those themes. The tag can be a single work or a phrase. Each time you write a blog post on one of your themes, tag it. You can include multiple tags by separating them with commas.

Be consistent in your use of theme tags. Always use the same word or phrase. Over time then, Google will see a large body of work tagged with the same search term and as a result your blog will rank higher in Google.

“What about Categories?”, you ask. For all intents and purposes, Technorati Tags and Categories perform the same function. My recommendation is to pursue the following methodology:

• Your Categories should be broad and less specific that your Technorati Tags.
• Your theme-related Technorati Tags should provide the next level of specificity.
• Include one or more additional tags or keywords in a posts Technorati Tag field that are very specific to that particular post.

One final caveat: Google is much less interested in Technorati tags that do not appear somewhere on the page. If you use a term or phrase as a Technorati Tag make sure that same term or phrase appears elsewhere too, even if it is in the sidebar.

Listen to the podcast or click here to download it:

What Your Business Blog Needs

Many web hosting companies are now offering a blolg as part of the package. In my opinion, most are - unfortunately - not really suitable platforms for a professional business blog. They provide the basic functions of an online diary or journal but a blog for your business needs to be more than that.

Here are some of the features and functions that a blog for your business must have:

• RSS Feed. The most desirable readers (the ones you want in your sphere of influence) don't read your blog by bringing it up in their browser. Instead they subscribe to your blog's RSS feed and read it in their Feed reader. If you don't have an RSS feed then your blog won't be read. I describe RSS feeds and their significance in a little more detail here.


• Your RSS Feed should be easy to subscribe to.The Mac Browser (Safari) and Internet Explorer 7 have their own buttons that are live when the browser detects that a blog has an RSS feed and allow me to subscribe to your feed wiith a single click. Other people are not so lucky. Google Reader is probably the most popular RSS feed reader today. You should strive to make it as easy as possible for users of Google Reader - and other online feed readers - to subscribe. That's why you see the chicklets in the sidebar of this blog under the heading Subscribe. A Google Reader user can simply click on the 'Google' chicklet to subscribe.


• Connection to Feedburner. Feedburner is the premier aggregator of RSS feeds. They also do a lot more. They provide great stats about your feed subscribers. They can integrate podcasts into your RSS feed and make it easy to publish on iTunes. Any blog that has an RSS feed can be connected to Feedburner, but some blogging platforms make it easier than others.


• Email Subscriptions. Your readers should be able to subscribe to your blog via email. I predict that newsletters will someday go the way of the Dodo bird thanks to this function. (Bringing you this capability is one of the great things Feedburner does for you).


• Technorati Tags. The combination of frequent postings and Technorati Tags is what enables your block to quickly climb to the top of the Google rankings for any given search term. Your blog should have a field on its 'Compose Post' page that allows you to easily enter Technorati Tags.


• Categories.You should be able to group your posts into categories - and you should publish the list of categories in your blog's sidebar. Readers can click on a category name in your sidebar and see everything you have written on that topic. In time, your blog will become a reference site. I often send people to the Blogging 101 category of my blog to give them a place to start learning about blogs.


• A Link to Your Website. Not only do you want interested readers to be able to easily find your website, consider this: Every time you create a new blog post it looks like a new web page to Google. If every one of those pages has a link to your website...


• Recent Posts. If your sidebar contains a list of recent posts, a new visitor can quickly get a feel for what your blog is about. (Yes, I know. I have no 'Recent Posts' section in my sidebar. That and other things going to change soon.)


• Trackbacks. The most important factor in the success of your blog is for you to engage in conversation with the blogosphere. Find other bloggers speaking to the same audience as you. Read their blogs regularly. Leave insightful comments. Write articles on your blog about what you've read and include trackbacks and hyperlinks in those posts. If you go to your own blog and write about this post here on my blog, and you trackback to this post, I receive notification that you have written about it. That notification includes the URL of your blog. When I approve the trackback, an excerpt of your post appears in the 'comments and trackbacks' section of my blog's post. You must be able to do trackbacks.


• Accept Comments. Don't just accept feedback, welcome it. (That's why you won't see CAPTCHA or other forms of authentication on blogs I configure.) Not only that, the comment form should have fields for the commenters name, email address, and website/blog URL.


• Comment and Trackback Moderation. You do however, want to make sure that inappropriate comments never see the light of day. You should be able to configure your blog so it holds all comments for your review and approval prior to publication. The same is true for trackbacks.


• Google Pinging. The other day at one of our Real Estate Blogging Seminars, Jay Thompson was live-blogging during the event. Before the seminar was over his blog post was on Google. You don't want to wait the 4-6 weeks for Google's spider to get around to reading your blog. You want your blog to automatically and immediately notify (we call it a ping) Google each time you publish a new blog post. The same is true for Technorati, Feedburner, blo.gs, and weblogs.com .


• Social Bookmarking. The social bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us can be powerful tools for spreading your message virally. For that to happen, you must have three things: (1) You must write good content that other people want to read. (2) Create engaging titles for your content, and (3) Make it as easy as possible for people to bookmark you. -- The first two are up to you. Your blog should take care of the third one for you.

You are going to be spending a lot of time and energy on your business blog. In return, it needs to do the best possible job for you. In order to do that I believe these features and functions must be present.

Great Example of Boosting Your Exposure

The Blog Squad over at Build a Better Blog have a great article today about a San Francisco Chiropractor whose blog is his number one source of new patients.

When someone is looking for a product or servicess they have lots of choices. The challenge is to convince them to pick you. They way to do that is to use your blog to educate and inform. Use it to share your knowledge and expertise. If you blog this way, your potential customers will see you as far more credible that your non-blogging competitors.

Sometimes I run into people who say, "If I blog to educate and inform, then I'm giving my expertise away for free and no one will hire me." Nothing could be further from the truth. You have far more knowledge, experience, and judgement than you'll ever be able to put into a blog. Your blog merely gives them a glimpse of what you can do for them.

Open vs Unmoderated Comments

Steve Groves asked today about the reasoning behind my practice of moderating comments. He follows Scoble's practice of leaving comments open and unmoderated. I've not left a comment on Scobleizer but I presume Bob also uses CAPTCHA (that tool that displays a graphic containing a few charatcers and requires you to enter them).

In contrast, when I set up a blog for a client, I turn off CAPTCHA and authentication but turn on moderation (comments must be approved by the blog owner before they are published. Here is my reasoning:

1. Make it as easy as possible for people to leave comments.
2. Make sure that negative, derogatory, or inappropriate comments never get published.
3. Make sure comments are read by the blog owner in a timely manner.

One big reason for our blogs is to solicit feedback. We want that feedback. If someone is going to take the time and energy to respond to my blog and provide me with a pearl of wisdom, I want to make sure that there are as few barriers as possible. To me, authentication and CAPTCHA are barriers. By using them, we are making legitimate commenters jump through hoops. CAPTCHA sends the wrong message: "Blogger to Commenter: My convenience is more important than yours."

We do however, want to make sure that comments are approriate. If someone is going to leave a comment saying mean things about my wife - as has happened to Miriam Scoble - I don't want that post to ever be published. I accomplish that by moderating comments.

To accomplish the third goal, I configure the blog so the owner is notified of each comment. Otherwise, if someone leaves a comment to a post I wrote months ago, I might not notice. On top of that, most business owners have their hands full just running their businesses. They are likely to be too busy to periodically check for comments if they have to do it themselves. Email notification is a great way to make sure that comments get read.

I'm not saying that Bob Scoble does it the wrong way. Bob Scoble has a different problem: He gets hundreds (thousands?) of comments and it is just not humanly possible for him to review and approve each one. CAPTCHA allows him to filter out the SPAM. It does not, however, prevent inapropriate comments from being published, but Bob knows that and it's something he is willing to accept.

Google Juice

As an example of blogging's Google Juice, I created a blog about my house for sale three days ago. Today if you type "A Nice House In Glendale" into Google, that blog shows up on the first page.

What Should I Blog About?

Like John Jantsch over on Duct Tape Marketing, I get asked this question all the time. John's answer was great and he certainly said it better than I could.

Way to Go, Connie!

A couple of days ago, my client and good friend Connie Kadansky related this story to me:

As a result of reading one of Connie's blog posts, someone from a large corporation called her and asked her to write an article on the same topic for their publication.

How's that for the power of blogging?

Social Media

“If you are not using social media to converse with your clients then you are already behind the power curve.”

My friend Francine Hardaway, CEO of Stealthmode Partners, said that the other day.

What is social media? Social media encompasses blogs, bookmarking sites, mySpace, YouTube, forums, and almost any website containing user-contributed content. The test for determining if something is social media is to ask, “Can your own voice be heard there?”. If the answer is “Yes” – such as putting your own video clips up on YouTube – then it is social media.

Why should you be interested? Because one kid in Iowa with a blog and five readers can ruin your company, that’s why. Because our markets are smarter than we are, that’s why. Because a small company can gain a reputation that large organizations with millions to spend on marketing would be hard pressed to create, that’s why.

Every consultant should have a blog. If you are a consultant, chances are there are at least a dozen others doing exactly what you do. You are unique however not because of what you do but because of how you do it. If I put a Jack Daniels in your hand at a party and ask you to explain some of the techniques you use and why they are effective, I will learn far more about you than I can from your website. After two or three such sessions I’ll have developed a sense of trust in your professional capabilities. And because we probably also connected on a more personal level, I will have also developed a personal trust relationship with you. People don’t do business with your company, they do business with you – And you will have become someone I am comfortable doing business with. We call this sort of activity networking. Your blog puts your networking on steroids.

You should be monitoring your reputation. In the old days, big companies had news clipping services. Once a week the top executives were presented with a copy of every mention of the company in any newspaper or magazine in the country. Such a service was expensive back then. It costs zero today. When some blogger halfway across the country says something nice about you in his blog you can know about it within minutes. Nothing turns that blogger into a raving fan quicker than a personal email thanking him for his kind words about your company. Conversely, if he said something derogatory you have a chance to reach out to him and make amends before it turns ugly. How can a kid in Iowa with a blog and five readers ruin your company? Because his readers have blogs too and at least one of them probably has a few hundred readers and some of them will post the story on their blogs. And so on until you have a supernova on your hands.

You should be learning from your customers. It is likely that the image you have of your company and it’s products and services is quite different from the image your customers have. Your company’s best chance for success is when the external image and internal image are in perfect alignment. A blog is the best tool for making that happen. Traditional techniques for discovering new markets for your product or service are expensive and error-prone. Instead, let your blog bring those new markets ideas to you.

Social media as a business tool is a new concept and so it is natural to be uneasy about it. A professional journalist recently told me that not long ago he and his colleagues actually feared it. The reason for this fear and discomfort is that it is a disruptive force, upsetting the old order. Every entrepreneur knows however that disruption provides opportunity.

Blogging by Consultants

I am a member of the Institute of Management Consultants and am active in the Phoenix, Arizona chapter. They have this great Email Tip of the Day that I subscribe to and it is the first thing I read in the mornings.

Today's tip was in the form of a question and answer about blogging. The question was:

Is blogging an effective way to get business?

Disappointingly, the answer was pretty lame and did not provide my fellow consultants with a clear picture of the benefits of blogging. A blog is such an effective tool that I think every consultant should have one. Blogging is a cutting-edge marketing tool that is immediate, personal, and engaging, and is within the financial reach of everyone.

The biggest challenge most consultants face is getting business. In fact, two of the three bullet-points on the IMC-USA website’s Education page are “Get Known” and “Get Business”, both of which are blogging’s strengths. Consultants can benefit from blogging is several ways:

Google Juice

Almost everyone with a problem to solve begins their quest for an answer with a Google search. There is no better way to raise your search engine rankings than a blog containing informative, engaging, and insightful content. Google likes fresh content and each blog post appears to Google as a new page, rasing your ranking. Not only that, other people who find your blog’s content informative will link to it, resulting in more links to you than you could afford to acquire by any other means.

Free exposure

Influential people read the blogosphere. A columnist for the Boston Globe is a regular reader of one of my blogs (and I read her blog too). There is no better way to get noticed by the mainstream press than to blog passionately about topics in your industry.

Direct Access to your Audience

Almost everyone has a story about spending time with a newspaper reporter only to either have the story spiked or appear so completely re-written that your original message disappeared. A blog is a way to bypass the gatekeepers in the media and get your message out to the audience most important to you: your current and potential customers.

Differentiate Yourself

Every consultant has his or her ‘What’ and ‘How’: ‘What you do’ and ‘How you do it’. The ‘What you do’ part is probably not unique. There are most likely several other consultants in your community doing exactly what you do. The important part is the ‘How’. You have probably developed your own unique ‘How’ and have demonstrated its effectiveness repeatedly. A blog is the perfect platform for showcasing your ‘How’ and its effectiveness, and is key to providing your potential clients with the perception of the difference between you and your competitors.

Build Trust

By blogging about your industry and writing about that which you are most knowledgeable, readers will begin to see you as a resource and authority on your topic. They will begin to trust you and your advice.

There is a second type of trust: personal trust. Through your blog, your current and potential clients will begin to see you not as a two-dimensional cardboard cutout but as a three-dimensional figure. They will connect with you and come to trust you enough to feel comfortable doing business with you.

Conversation

A blog is part of a conversation. No aspect of blogging is more important. Our clients are smart and saavy. They participate in various online communities and learn from each other. We can ignore those online conversations, in which case our markets will get smarter faster than we do. Alternatively, we can participate in those online conversations and learn from them, and create an opportunity for the other participants to learn about us.

The other aspect to this conversation is that other experts in your field are already blogging. The blogosphere provides you with the equivalent to an online industry conference where you and your peers can learn from each other and share the latest trends and news.

Improve Your Image

Several years ago, having a website or email address was enough to present the image that you were forward-thinking technically and marketing-saavy. A blog does that for you today. If your competitors are not yet blogging then you are immediately differentiating yourself from the pack. And your blog demonstrates that you are open and honest in your business dealings.

The bottom line is that there is no better way for a consultant to showcase his or her talents and boost exposure than a blog.

RSS: A Bicycle for your Blog

If you plot the various earthly species on a vertical line and position them according to how far and fast they can travel under their own power for a given unit of energy, guess who is at the top? The condor. Man, on the other hand, isn’t even close. But give that man a bicycle and he shoots out far ahead of even the condor on that graph. The bicycle allows a man to travel extraordinarily farther and faster.

Consider RSS to be the bicycle for your blog. By leveraging RSS, you and your blog can accomplish much more than you can without it.

What is RSS?

Most blog hosting software (such as TypePad, Moveable Type, WordPress, Blogger, etc) can publish your blog in two formats. The first format is designed to be read using your web browser. This is the format you are most familiar with.

The second format is RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS strips out all the graphics and formatting, leaving just the content. This format is also sometimes called a feed. RSS is designed to be read using a new breed of program called a Feed Reader or RSS Reader. Why would you want to read a blog using an RSS Reader instead of your web browser? Simple: An RSS Reader aggregates the feeds from multiple blogs onto a single, easy-to-scan page. Not only that, it plainly marks the blogs containing new posts. Here you can see a snapshot from Safari. The little ‘(3)’ next to Seth’s Blog tells me that Seth’s Blog contains three new posts that I have not read. Burnham’s Beat, just below it, contains no new posts. Bookmarking feeds in this way is called subscribing to feeds.

At last count I track over a hundred blogs every day. If I had to visit each blog in turn using my web browser this would be an impossible task. Using the feed reader built into Apple's Safari web browser, it takes only a few minutes.

This capability is not restricted to Macs. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 also has a built-in feed reader. NewsGator offers very inexpensive stand-alone feed readers for Windows, Mac, and Windows Mobile. There are also several free online web-based feed readers, such as Google Reader, My Yahoo!, Bloglines, and Netvibes. (Of these, my favorite is the new Google Reader).

Why RSS?

Now we’re getting to the bicycle part. Blogging is a conversation. For your blog to be part of that conversation you must read other blogs in your market or industry, comment on the posts you find there, and create posts of your own on the same topic (and don’t forget to create a trackback when you do!). As a result, you will create personal relationships with other experts in your industry, become more plugged in to industry changes and events, and greatly expand your visibility and exposure.

Don’t limit your RSS subscriptions to just blogs. For example, did you know that Google allows you to create an RSS feed of search results from Google News? The combination of your RSS subscriptions and an RSS reader provide you with a giant drift net stretched across the Internet, keeping you abreast of industry trends as well as providing you with an endless supply of topics to blog about.

RSS-Enable Your Blog

Now that you see how important RSS is to you, think about the readers of your blog. The people who would subscribe to your feed are your most loyal readers. They are the people who regard you so highly that they don’t want to miss a word of what you say. If you have a blog, you should enable its RSS feed if you have not already done so. (For TypePad, go to Weblogs>Configure>Feeds and turn on Weblog Feed.)

Not only that, you want to make it very easy for your readers to subscribe to your feed. Safari and MSIE 7 make it easy to subscribe to a feed. Users of online web-based feed readers (like Google Reader) are not quite so lucky, but you have the power to make it just as easy for them too. You can use free services like FeedBurner to add Feed Subscription Buttons - like those shown to the right - to your blog’s sidebar. Anyone using Google Reader can simply click on the Add to Google button to subscribe to your feed, for example.

Faster and Farther for the Same Energy

RSS is a bicycle for you because it enables you to track an enormous number of blogs and absorb vast amounts of information – far more than you could accomplish without it. And RSS is a bicycle for your blog too because it enables you to turn casual readers of your blog into regular readers, and regular readers are more likely to link to you and propagate your message.

How Blogging Helps Your Business: Direct Access to Your Audience

Earlier this year General Motors decided to pull all of its advertising from the Los Angeles Times. They were eviscerated by the mainstream media. GM chose to tell its side of the story through it's own blog Fastlane. The comments left there by the general public were overwhelmingly supporting of GM.

For the first time, you have a tool that enables you to get your message out directly to your audience, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers in the media.

This ability is valuable not just in times of controversy. Picture this: You are interviewed by the local newspaper. You work hard to convey your message clearly and concisely to the reporter and as the interview concludes you appear to have been successful. Unfortunately (and much to your disappointment), by the time the reporter is done writing and putting his own slant on the story, and the Editor is done editing, little of your original message survives.

A blog lets you tell your story in words you choose.

What About Negative Comments?

Mark White at Better Business Blogging wrote a satirical little post today addressing the issue of negative comments. I actually told one client to hope and pray for a negative comment from his biggest customer because then he would be aware of and able to address a problem he heretofore did not know existed.

Mark makes the often-forgotten point that if people are going to say something negative about your business, better that they do it on your blog so you can become aware of the problem and address it.

Actually, my experience is that once my clients understand that they can moderate the comments, their concerns tend to go away.

Blogging Success Study

Northestern University and Backbone Media have recently published a study of the factors that make a business blog successful. They interviewed twenty highly successful corporate bloggers and asked each one a series of stndardized questions.

While there were no surprises for anyone who has read Naked Conversations, I did find a few recurring themes:

• Engaging other bloggers in online conversation is crucial to your blog's success. Locate and read other blogs in your industry and leave thoughtful comments on them oftem. Even before you write the first post on your blog, you should be searching the online world for places where conversation and discussion about your industry occurs.
• Create interesting, compelling content. Write about your industry, your marketplace, and the concerns of your customers related to your industry. Write about ideas and events that encourage reader feedback, and then leverage that feedback.
• Be open, transparent, and real. Don't be afraid to reveal the human side of the inner workings of your business. Be open and forthcoming about how or why decisions are made that affect your customers.

"What should I write about?" is a question I am often asked. The following paragraph in the study is one that I will quote often:

The Stonyfield Farm blog was the most successful blog run by Stonyfield Farm. Jonathan the farmer, Stonyfield’s organic farming blogger, writes about whatever is happening in his life, the calving season or maple sugar season. The success of the Stonyfield Farm organic farming blog is because it is all about a farmer’s unique experiences in farming an organic farm. What must seem mundane to the farmer is refreshing, compelling and entertaining content to most readers.

I can't emphasize enough how important I think this is. This is the kind of content that creates a bond between you and your customers or potential customers.

How Blogging Helps Your Business: Exposure Part II

I predict that years from now, the launch of Krugle will be used as the textbook example of how a startup can leverage the power of the blogosphere to become successful.

Krugle is the pioneer of a new type of search engine designed by programmers for programmers who are searching for open source code. For guys like me who don't want to reinvent the wheel and want to build applications quickly, open source - and building upon the open source works of other programmers more talented than I - is wonderful.

Don Thorson has a great descption at http://donthorson.typepad.com/don_thorson/2006/03/krugle.html, but while Don makes it sound like everything took off with a bang at DEMO, I can tell you that Krugle was receiving a huge amount of attention before that. In January, Shel Isreal was talking about this remarkable story on the Naked Conversations blog.

The lesson for all of us is that it is possible to gain exposure by leveraging new mediums and methods instead of relying upon the traditional - and expensive - marketing tools such as advertising or even PR.

How Blogging Helps Your Business: Exposure

A few months ago, one of my blogs was mentioned on the CBS News website:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/28/blogophile/main1352629.shtml

How did this happen? It happened because I participated in an online conversation. It happened because this conversation involved several food bloggers, and influential people read the blogosphere. It happens like this:

Bloggers tag their posts, and I don't mean with a spray can. Tags are keywords that descibe the post's topic or subject. (In Typepad, your posting categories are automatically tags.). You can also configure the Typepad form to display a field for tags. So if i am posting about Coq au Vin, I might put the post in the category 'Chicken', but will specifically tag the post with 'Coq au Vin'. And since I am using Julia Child's recipe I might also add a tag 'Julia Child'.

There is a whole new breed of search engine today (like Technorati) that searches blogs based upon the tags. Furthermore, in Technorati you can always see the tags that are the most popular in the blogosphere at the moment. If there is a big conversation then the tags associated with that conversation will float to the top. And lots of people will click on them and read the associated posts.

If you participate in conversations in the blogosphere your blog is almost guaranteed to be on the regular reading list of several other bloggers. If you make your posts interesting and engaging, they will mention you and link to you often. Pretty soon, you'll find you are on the BlogRoll of some very influential people.

How Blogging Helps Your Business: Google Juice

Type Pete Wells loves cheese sandwiches into Google and depending upon how Google is feeling that day it will return somewhere between 190,000 and a million results. Ranked right up there near the top will be one or two posts from the Fumbling Foodie blog. That's me - my alter ego. I am amateur chef, blogging about the trials and tribulations (and occasional excitement) of learning to cook.

How did I get such a high Google ranking, you ask? I didn't do that, my fellow food bloggers did. Enough of them thought what I had to say on the subject was interesting enough to link to me that the Fumbling Foodie's Google rankings for certain keywords is pretty high.

We call it Google Juice. A well-written, informative, and interesting blog can do more for your search engine rankings than a whole platoon of search engine marketers, and for a lot less money.

What do I Blog About?

I am preparing some training that I am about to give to a groups of one of my client's employees who are about to begin posting on the company blog. I know the question, "What do we blog about?" will come up.

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion has a great piece on this very topic. I think he does a better job than I have done. I disagree though that Google is a better choice than an RSS reader. I scan a couple hundred blogs a day using Safari on my Mac and it is quick and painless.

What is a Blog? Part II

The most important part of the answer to "What is a Blog" is that a blog is part of a conversation. It is a way for you and your customers to about each other. Your present customers can learn more about whatis going on in your business. Your future customers can learn about you and see your expertise first hand, learning that you are worthy of doing business with. Just as importantly, you can learn from them.

We all know that word-of-mouth is the most powerful form of advertising. It goes by many names but the currently in-vogue name is networking.

Blogging is networking on steroids

The Blogosphere
If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it fall, does it make a sound? The blogger's version of this question is, "If you blog and nobody reads it, does it help my business?" The power of blogging comes from online conversations between you and your readers, and between you and other bloggers.

Comments and Trackbacks

The key is to seek out and regularly read other blogs in your industry or market. Quickly you will discover some other blogger in your industry blogging about a topic that you can contribute to. Do it. If your contribution is short, simply leave a comment on his blog (Almost every blog supports comments), along with your email address and the url of your blog. That blogger will see your comment, undoubtedly check out your own blog, and if he likes what he reads then he will probably scan your blog on a regular basis.

On the other hand, you might want to respond with something longer than approriate for a comment. Not only that, you think your own readers might be interested. In that case, create a post on your own blog and leave a trackback to the other bloggr's post. Trackbacks are behind-the-scenes links between posts on different blogs. Again, the original blogger will notice your trackback, check out your blog, and if he likes what he reads then he will probably scan your blog on a regular basis.

Trackbacks and comments are the enablers for conversations to take place across multiple blogs. People reading one blog in the conversaton will be led to all the other blogs participating in the conversation. Soon, hundreds of people are reading your blog.

Markets are conversations, and markets as a whole are very smart and getting smarter. We can choose to leverage the intelligence of our markets or not. If we choose not to, our markets will surely get smater faster than we do.

What is a Blog? Part I

Blog is short for Weblog.

A blog is a website, but it's content is much more informal and free-flowing than you will find on a business website. A blog is also typically updated much more frequently than a company's website, sometimes as often as several times a day.

When you visit a blog, your first impression is that it is an online diary or journal because that is exactly the way it is organized. Each entry or post is displayed in reverse chonological order with the newest at the top.

It is important to understand that while your blog could be your company's website, the more typical scenario is that your blog is seperate and distict from your official company website and each has its own URL. The usual arrangement is that the content on your company website is pretty static and plays the role of your company's official brochure. Your blog, on the other hand, has a much more informal tone and can be used to educate and to expound on topics in your industry that you feel passionate about - your soapbox, if you will.

An additional thing that makes blogs so attractive is that you don't have to wait for your webmaster to update it for you. The blogging software is easy to use and it takes no time at all for you to bang out a few sentences and publish them for the world to read.

A Blog is Part of a Conversation

When I talk about blogging, most business owners tell me they have heard of blogs but don't know much about them. They are naturally curious but simply lack the bandwidth to dig into the subject themselves.

A lot of business owners view blogs as personal journals or diaries. Most have not yet encountered the idea that a blog is part of a conversation. In fact, this phenomenon is so widespread that I seriously considered naming this business Conversations on the Web instead of Business Blogging Pros.

The conversations are what makes the blogosphere so powerful, and for the blogger, it is powerful in both directions. Granted, a blog helps you get the word out, but it is interesting that for some businesses that blog, the real value is in the feedback and input they get.