Blogging for Business

First let’s get one thing straight. Neither I nor your customers want to hear about what you had for breakfast. Get your social media straight. Blogging is not Facebook and neither is it Twitter although of course you might use either of those tools to promote your blog. Neither is blogging generally a diary of your day-to-day activities and teenage angst – that’s LiveJournal.

If you’ve seen the 2009 Meryl Streep film Julie and Julia you’ll know the true story of an office worker and aspiring writer who loved to cook. Julie Powell blogged about her year of cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s epic French cook book. Julie chose her subject and blogged about her passion, attracted thousands of readers and ultimately a book and film deal.

All very well for an aspiring writer but you’re a marketer - why should you blog?

20 reasons to blog (rule number one of good blog writing – blog readers love lists!)

1. To engage with your audience and collect customer feedback (blogs allow comments and 2-way dialogue).
2. Because it makes SEO sense - search engines love websites with updated, unique, keyword dense copy. They reward it with a higher page rank. Blogging works for SEO. Seemples.
3. To enable you to sell more – a first visit to your website is like a first date – are you really expecting your customer to go all the way? Woo them. It takes time to develop trust and commitment.
4. To position yourself and your company as a thought leader in your market.
5. To create a place to think, plan and reflect.
6. To make a big impact with zero budget.
7. To showcase products and images and tell behind the scenes stories. You, rather than a journalist, are in charge of your content.
8. Because its a place to be more informal and risqué.
9. Because it humanises your company – people buy from people, not websites.
10. To improve your writing – good for your job and your career.
11. To create content for newsletters (I’ll blog about this in a future post).
12. To play with technology and ideas.
13. To force you to read and research about your market in order to gather the information you need for your posts.
14. To collaborate with others – guest posts are really effective and it gives you the chance to interview others in your industry, work with other departments, talk to customers, senior staff and even the odd celebrity.
15. Because there is no need to wait for the webmaster.
16. To express yourself and create a historical record of your content – in 18 months of blogging I now have hundreds of entries, a huge archive of brilliant marketing material that we ransack on a daily basis.
17. To podcast/videocast easily.
18. Because it is enjoyable, compulsive and rewarding.
19. Because it doesn’t have to be perfect.
20. Because interruption marketing doesn’t work any more.

But I’m not a journalist

You might not be the best writer in the world but I can guarantee that you know more about your specialist subject than most other people in the world. So you work for the most boring company in the world selling boring components in a boring industry (or at least that’s what everyone else outside your marketplace thinks). But inside your marketplace is a world of people actually quite interested in those components, in how they are made, who makes them, where you sell them, who else buys them, what they then do with them and what the stories are behind the brand.

I’ll create a detailed list of blog content ideas in a future post but try sitting down for 10 minutes and thinking about all the questions your customers (or the people you meet at networking events and tradeshows) ask. You’ll have yourself a list of topics to write about in no time that will be scratching where your potential readers are itching.

How to get started

The beauty of online publishing is that it doesn’t have to be perfect but it is very easy to get going. Copy shouldn’t need to be approved from everyone from the CEO through to the office cleaner. I’d recommend using software such as Wordpress and have the content added to your website hosting (www.yoururl.com/blog) rather than being hosted somewhere else (like blogger.com). Like that you get the SEO advantage and the right corporate association from the start. Wordpress is simple to use and there is even a magazine-like idiots guide to getting started (Bloggers Handbook – How to succeed in social media and blogging. ISBN 978-1-906078-38-6).

Now that’s assuming that you are writing the official blog for your company. If you are simply an employee and the blog is unofficial then by all means use hosted software such as blogger.com. Other platforms include Joomla, Typepad, Moveable Type, Vox, Drupal, Tumble, Silverstripe, Clear Content and Squarespace.

But I don’t know what I’m doing – I’ve barely even read a blog

Get introduced to the art of blogging by signing up for marketing guru Seth Godin’s blog. Apart from showcasing thought leadership, he’ll turn your brain inside out about marketing. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

The Marketing Profs Daily Fix is also full of bite sized marketing tips and advice http://www.mpdailyfix.com/

Stuff White People Like is a fun site which will have you forwarding links and content in no time

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

Innocent’s blog is a nice example of a corporate blog that nicely reflects all Innocent’s off the wall brand values

http://innocentdrinks.typepad.com/

Ice Cream Journal – another corporate blog with some very nice touches http://icecreamjournal.turkeyhill.com/

Idiots Guide to Blogging – the ultimate how to guide

http://www.idiotsguidetoblogging.com/

Likewise Thoushallblog is full of ideas to get you started

http://thoushallblog.com/

http://thexfactorfromapersonwhoknows.blogspot.com/ - topical blog written by a teenage friend of mine. She wants to be a journalist so has started blogging to hone her writing craft. It’s a nice example of how easy it is to get started and create a professional looking blog

And the one I write – very much for a niche market and the most effective marketing tool we have ever used. www.musicademy.com/blog

Marie Page runs an international e-business selling instructional DVDs teaching contemporary musical instruments. She blogs at http://musicademy.com/blog

To sell or not to sell, that is the question......

I think we’re all well aware of the importance of new digital (or ‘social’) media – enabled by internet technologies and populated by millions. These digital channels of communication have developed seemingly unlimited potential for reaching new customers and identifying new markets – but are they used to their full potential?

Well, here’s a short story for you about ‘Linkedin’ – a ‘professional’ social network designed to enable ‘reconnections’, ‘power your career’ and ‘get answers’… away from the younger, less-professionally focused and, at times, frivolous social network (you know the ones I mean!).

One thing that’s really interesting about Linkedin is the opportunity to ask questions on any business topic and draw on the knowledge and experience of all of your contacts. You can also join specific interest groups (for example the eMarketing association) and you can draw on knowledge and experience of thousands worldwide by asking questions relevant to your current need.

So, what’s the point here? Well, you post a question and wait for people to offer their responses and all of a sudden you see that it’s full of people selling – not subtle, or based on recommendations, but cold, hard selling. Is this right? Should these digital channels be used in such a way? A little bit of further research and you can uncover a variety of opinions from…

‘If you are on a professional network, you are usually there to sell something to someone. Maybe it is just your resume, in case you are fired or your company “lets you go”, or it may be a product or service. You are selling something. You know it, I know it so let’s stop wasting time talking about it.’

http://blog.emarketingassociation.com/blog/emarketing-association/0/0/selling-on-social-networks

…to something more considered…

‘Get to know a network’s policies on promotion, as it applies to your plans. The last thing you want is to be labelled a spammer. Understand that these tools are more about networking, building relationships, and communicating than blatant promotion, as in marketing and sales’.