Check out Better Business Blogging

May 3, 2007 by The Blog Coach | Leave a Comment
Filed under Blogging News

I wanted to let you know that, for the time being, I will not be updating The Blog Coach site with further articles and posts. The arrival of my first child has meant that I don’t think that I can maintain two blogs in the manner that I want at this time with everything else that is going on.

Instead I will be focussing on the Better Business Blogging site where you will still be able to keep up to date with the advice, tips, thoughts etc. on blogging and new media that would have appeared on these pages.

You will also be able to find me on the BT Broadband Office blog where I will be writing on the use of blogging as a marketing and business tool for small and medium sized businesses.

I hope to be able to return to posting here later in the year but, as I say, if you come over to Better Business Blogging then I’ll make sure that you’re kept up to date on that!

In the meantime, thanks for reading and participating and see you over at BBB.

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Tags: The Blog Coach, Better Business Blogging

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Thinking of starting a business blog? Consider this …

March 13, 2007 by The Blog Coach | Comments (5)
Filed under Setting up your Blog, Blog Marketing Tips, Corporate Blogging, Business Blogging

It doesn’t matter whether you are a small business, an independent entrepreneur or a large corporate organisation, when you are looking at starting a Business Blog, there are going to be some key elements that you need to look at if you want to give it the best possible chance for success.

While the specific requirements will vary according to the goals and expectations, you should be able to answer the following questions from the start:

a) What do you want to do with your Business Blog?
It’s really important that you have a clear idea from the start of what you want to do with your Business Blog – this will help it to have the focus that will benefit it with both readers and search engines alike. The more focused it is, the more successful it is likely to be.

b) Who is your target audience for your Business Blog?
Avoid trying to make it “all things to all people” – it’s just not possible. It’s all about focus again and so decide on who your target audience is and then write the blog for them with content they’ll be interested in and a style that they will warm to.

c) What results are you looking to achieve?
It’s all well and good for me to say that you should be considering these elements if you want your blog to be a success, but just what is “a successful blog” for you? What goals do you have for your Business Blog and just as importantly, how are you going to measure them? You will need to show results for the time and effort involved - therefore, from the start, make sure you know what results you are looking for, what criteria you want to work with and how you wish to measure them.

d) How will it integrate with your other marketing activities?
Blogging is an excellent marketing tool. However, it is not a magic wand to cure all marketing ills, so take time and effort to use as well as possible with your other marketing, business development and customer service activities. (Check Marketing and Promoting your Business Blog.

e) What Blogging software to choose?
There are a number of options available, each with their own plus points and negatives – what you need to do is decide which is most appropriate according to the control, customisation or future-proofing you require. Probably the best advice I can give is to choose one which will grow and develop with you as well as fitting with your current business and technical requirements. Free hosted software (such as Blogger) will seldom do this or give you sufficient control, so look at Wordpress (full version) or Typepad as good starter points. [My own preference is for Wordpress.]

f) What to call your Business Blog?
Rule of Thumb: choose something which you are still going to feel comfortable with in a year’s time. Either let it reflect your company and branding, or make sure it contains your keywords … or preferably both. You might like to check some additional ideas on choosing a Business Blog name here.

g) Host it on your website or on a different domain
As a general rule, if it sits comfortably alongside your website and complements the information on it, then integrate it into your website. That will be good for your company both from a branding and a Search Engine point of view. If, on the other hand, you are looking to present an objective view on your industry or want to create a separate identity then a separate domain name would be more appropriate.

h) What domain name or subdirectory name to use?
Try to use something descriptive - if you are using a separate domain, then choose a domain name which either reflects the branding you wish to achieve or contains your main keyword (or preferably both!). If it is a subdirectory then describe the purpose it will be serving such as “Information Centre” for example. Please, please, please … only use “blog” as a name as a last resort!!

i) Look and Feel of the Blog
If you are using it as part of your website, then integrate the look and feel with the rest of the site. There is absolutely no need for your visitors to know that they are on a blog - and of course they really won’t care! Remember it’s the benefits that blogs offer that is important, not the technology. If it is on a separate domain, then design your Business Blog with the image you want to portray but don’t use the default template that comes with your blog software. Default template = zero differentiation!

With all of these elements in place then you are starting off on the right track and should have the foundations in place to create a successful Business Blog. By doing so, you will find that it will save you a lot of time and inconvenience in the future and will make the blog that much more effective in achieving your business goals.

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Tags: Starting a Blog, Business Blogging, Corporate Blogs, Blog Design, Blog Focus, Naming your Blog, Domain Names, Blog Appraisal, Blog software, Typepad, Wordpress, Blogger,

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Blogging in the News - 11 March 2007

March 11, 2007 by The Blog Coach | Leave a Comment
Filed under UK Blogging News

Some articles which have appeared in the UK online press over the past week which looks at blogging (primarily business blogging) and its uses. If you find any good articles that could be highlighted here, then please post the links below or send them to me directly at news[at]theblogcoach[dot]co[dot]uk and I’ll do the rest.

Interview: Honest bloggers win over customers

Phil Cross, audience group manager at Microsoft, argues the case for corporate blogging and gives some good advice to those considering using a corporate blog in the process.

Ecademy Founders Share on ‘The Future of Social Networks’

looks at the way that social networks are likely to develop in 2007 and beyond in the opinion of two people who set one up.

Big Blogger: week three

allows the Guardian Unlimited to deliver some of their favorite sports posts from blogs over the past week. Good to see people getting involved!

Companies ignore online brand ‘buzz’ at a cost

looks at the fact that companies, both large and small, need to keep an eye on what is being said about them online and particularly in blogs.

What is a blog?

where David Cox talks to Norah Ephron of the Huffington Post about blogging and journalism.

PS - you can find my own take on What is a Blog? (at least from a business perspective) by following the link.

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Tags: Blogging News, Business Blogging Articles, Corporate Blogging, ecademy, Social Networks, What is a Blog,

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Business Blog Design: Navigation & using your Content

March 8, 2007 by The Blog Coach | Comments (2)
Filed under Business Blog Design

[This is part of a series following on from a post on Better Business Blogging called “Business Blog Design“]

Making it easy for readers to get around your blog is essential - it’s also very sensible. You put a lot of time and effort into writing your posts, so you want to make sure that they can be found easily and any associated information also highlighted to your blog readers.

As I mentioned in the original article, if you have special elements - these could be promotions, services, products, giveaways etc. - that you are looking to highlight, then these should be positioned accordingly at the top of your blog, above the fold. This will make these elements easy to locate and additional variations to the blog, as they will no doubt vary over time as your business priorities change.

However, the rest of your content also needs to be shown off to best effect! The main methods will be via the individual categories and the archives and, from personal experience, the categories which will be most frequently used, so make sure that they are prominently positioned.

There are some other ways and means that you can include to help encourage people to explore your blog further and therefore allow you to gain maximum benefit from the time that you invested in your posts. Some that you might like to consider are:

Related posts

Link to other posts on your blog which contain information related to the post that they are currently reading – they are clearly interested in the topic, so help them find more details about it. In Wordpress, you can do this with a plug-in called Related Posts.

Links in your posts

Within your posts, reference other posts on your blog so that you make it easy for people to find them. Just as you should reference other people’s blogs in your posts as sources of additional information, there’s no harm in referencing your own as well.

Key posts

You probably have set of key posts (which I call Foundation posts) and which contain information that is key to your services and your business in general - so highlight them, perhaps by creating a list under the heading of “Key information”. If you can’t specifically identify ones, then check your stats package for the posts that attract the most hits or appear most prominently in the Search Engines and then highlight them.

Most Popular posts

Check which posts attract most comments or which have the most visitors (again a plug-in can help Wordpress users here) and make sure that they are highlighted so that more people can read and share them. The sidebar is a good place to create this list although you could alternatively make a special page.

Recent Posts

List your last 5 posts in the sidebar thus encouraging people to read your most recent (and possibly most relevant) offerings. You might avoid these on the main blog homepage as they will be visible but is great for individual post pages - a quick modification to your template will allow you to achieve this.

Recent Comments

With blogs being all about communication, show the last few comments in your sidebar so that people can read not only your initial posts but also the comments that your readers have taken the time to leave.

Show Categories in the Post headers

Include the names of the categories that the post appears in alongside the title or at the bottom of the post. It will help people to find other posts which are related and that you have categorised in the same way.

By using these methods, you are giving additional value to your readers by helping them find further information that is relevant to them - at the same time, you are of course promoting more of your own content and so helping the marketing of your blog. As an added bonus, you are also extending the internal linking within your blog which the Search Engines will be pleased to use and give you an extra “plus point” for.

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Tags: Blog Design, Business Blog Design, Related Posts plugin, Wordpress, Wordpress plugin, Key posts, Internal linking, Popular posts, Business Blogs, Corporate Blogs

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Professional Services Companies: blog well and prosper

March 6, 2007 by The Blog Coach | Leave a Comment
Filed under Blogging Strategy, Corporate Blogging, Business Blogging

Business blogs are an excellent business marketing tool for professional services companies. In fact, organisations such as consultants, lawyers and accountants are some of the best placed groups of professionals to capitalise on the key marketing and business development benefits that blogs can offer.

Since business blogs can be both quickly and easily updated, and because they are inherently interactive, they provide the perfect medium both to display expertise and to help to start a relationship with clients. The additional benefits such as a more prominent profile with Search Engines is a clearly a plus but the ability to clearly demonstrate what you can do and the knowledge and experience that you can bring to a client’s situation are critical.

Looking at it from an overall business perspective, some of the main benefits that can be achieved through business blogs are:

• Differentiate your business: help to break down the impersonal corporate wall that can surround professional services companies and provide a personal face to what you do. The knowledge and expertise that you bring is of course, but who you are and your personality are also key to a successful commercial relationship, as well as being critical branding elements and business tools - so USE them!
• Educational Marketing approach: use the developing content of your blog to show your potential customers what you can do. This is a much more powerful approach than traditional direct selling methods and it will help to build better relationships with your marketplace. It will also help you to become a “partner” rather than simply a “supplier”.
• Demonstrate your Expertise: as you offer a specialist service, then gaining recognition as an expert in a certain field and being able to demonstrate real credibility is hugely beneficial. A blog can act as a shop window to these skills and is doubly effective if it is THE place to go for information in a specific niche. Using the internet for research, potential customers will certainly find the information they are looking for - so make sure that they find it on YOUR blog!
• Interact with your marketplace: open up the services that you offer and the benefits they provide by letting people interact with you by commenting on your articles, case studies or news releases. When your service offering is strong, then the more that people know about you and have the chance to talk with you, the better your situation will be.
• Knowledge Leadership: when people are interested in what you are writing about, they will want to hear more and will recommend you to others. By expressing your ideas and thoughts openly you will encourage this and help position yourself as a leading exponent in your field. But to be considered a leading light in your area, first you need to communicate your ideas with others.

There is still a reticence on the part of companies and individuals alike to open up and share more about what they can do - they prefer to keep that under wraps until a contract is signed or reveal parts only behind closed doors.

In today’s environment where information is readily available, the likelihood is that there will be many others in the marketplace offering similar services to you. To ensure that customers find you first, it is critical to broadcast the knowledge you have - the greater the level of quality information that you share, the greater the chance of being found and your services being demanded.

Your blog can help you to achieve just that.

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Tags: Professional Services, Accountants Blogs, Blawgs, Legal Blogs, Consultant Blogs, Small Business Blogs, Business Blogging, Marketing with Blogs

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