Professional Services Companies: blog well and prosper

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:

Business Blog Design: Profile and Contact Details

While I’ve written on this subject before, I feel that it is worthy of inclusion again as part of the Business Blog Design series.

It’s all about communication!

When we talk to someone face to face, either at a personal or business level, there will be a point when the conversation turns to questions such as “what do you do?”, “where are you from?” or something akin to “what team do you support?”. Why? Because we are interested in knowing more about the people that we deal with – it’s in our nature.

In the same way, blogs are really all about communication too, as well as interaction and conversation. Personal blogs approach this with certain goals in mind – getting in touch with people with common interests or just wanting “to be heard” for example – while companies using business blogs have a different agenda and may be looking to generate trust, differentiate themselves and ultimately develop additional business.

Blogging in the News – w/e 25 February 2007

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.

Should PR try to “sway” online opinion?

talks about another product aimed at monitoring brand mentions in blogs and other social media. Key thing to take on board though the price tag on this product is only for the bigger players, one feels.

Best of Brit Blog Awards 2007

announced by Metro which is jointly sponsoring them this year. But, horror or horrors, no Business Blog category!! What is the world coming to … will they never learn … oh dear …!

Irish Blog Awards attracts international voters

in contrast to the Brit Awards and across a wide range of categories which encompasses a whole range of areas … including Business Blogs!! [Have I got the message across yet?]

Top 10 Marketing Blogs

A nice run through of some excellent marketing based blogs, some of which may take your fancy.

Lufthansa supports blog program

shows how advertising on blogs is taking off (sorry!) in the mainstream press as larger companies consider their benefits.

LIVE BLOG: Ireland vs. England

Not exactly a business blog but a nice use for one and a clear demonstration of the immediate publishing ability that it offers businesses. Pity about the result of the match though!

Great post titles give great reader figures

As you sit down and write the next post on your business blog, you’ll no doubt have a clear idea of what you want to communicate and hopefully how you want to do it. Nevertheless, unless you can entice people to read this latest offering, then all your hard work will be in vain, so take care with the title you use for the post as it plays a key role in that process.

Why are Post Titles important?

Well, they’re important in the same way that a newspaper headline is – they attract our attention, offer an insight or a “teaser” as to what the post contains and hopefully encourage us to read the full article. With the huge amount of information that we have nowadays, it is so important to grab people’s attention

Spotlight on Irish Blogs: Irish Blog Awards finalists

In a slight change to the normal Friday fare of putting the spotlight on UK Blogs, here I am passing on a list of the Irish Blog Award finalists for your delight and delectation.

This year, as I have already written, I am particularly chuffed because two of the finalists in the Best Business Blog category are businesses that I have worked with and so I am naturally very pleased to see that they are so highly recognsied here.