Spotlight on UK Blogs – 16 February 2007

Back again after a bit of a long respite, but still following the same format as previously. Each week, I will be highlighting some of the Business Blogs which exist in the UK. The aim is to show a cross section of what people and businesses are writing about and how they are approaching the task of using blogs in their business activities. As a result, you’ll find that these posts will contain a mix of Blogs displaying a range of topics and styles.

In addition to this weekly selection, I am working with others to build a comprehensive list of Business Blogs in the UK. So if there are UK blogs which you have visited and would recommend (including your own!), then please let me know by leaving a comment or sending me a message. Thanks!

Krishna De’s Biz Growth News
A real find is Krishna’s blog which looks at Brand Building and Business Development for Professional Services Firms, though to be honest the lessons and advice here is applicable to companies across the board.

John Eaton’s Reverse Therapy Blog
Recommended to me by another blogger I respect, so dropped into the mix here, this is a blog looking at the concept of Reverse Therapy to address the symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and a variety of other problems.

David Miliband – Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Well, with the recent outbreak of Bird Flu up in my part of the country (that’s to say, Suffolk), it only seems appropriate to highlight the blog from the minister in charge of this area for the old government. Not exactly ‘Bootiful’ but a good first step nonetheless.

Iain Dale’s Diary
Just so I can’t be accused of any political bias one way or the other, another blog and this time on the right-hand side of the political spectrum as this former Conservative candidate and now prolific blogger amongst other things tells it how he sees it.

Righttrack Consultancy
Nice idea to get across a feel of what the company offers but in a slightly different way to other blogs you might see as they offer it through the diary musings of 4 fictional characters – so it’s a blog within a blog then? They explain what they are up to here.

Linking to other blogs: business benefits

Linking is part and parcel of blogging … and it’s an important part of it as well. The blogosphere thrives on links & connections and those blogs which create those outbound links will tend to thrive with it.

Put simply, linking out is good – good for your blog and good for your business.

As you link to others, you strengthen your own position. Partly because you are validating and supporting the content of your posts but also because you are developing a repository of information which will benefit the readers who are attracted to your blog.

In fact, there are lots of positive reasons for linking to other blogs and sites which I tend to categorise as follows:

Informing your readers and Supporting your posts

Links are probably the sincerest way of recommending other blogs as valuable sources of information – you are effectively giving them a big thumbs up. Equally, they are an important way of providing reference sources to support and corroborate the arguments or assertions you are making in your own posts.

Business & Blog Promotion

By linking out, you will also be spreading the word about your own blog. If you use trackbacks to the sites you link to, then you’ll appear in the comments section of the post you’re referring to, giving more people the chance to find your blog. Owners of blogs are also generally interested in who’s referencing them, so you’ll often get a visit from them, and hopefully they’ll like what they find!

Developing Reputation and Creating Value

You will get more readers using your blog as the start point for their research, primarily because they trust the information and the links that you provide – effectively, in your area of specialism, you act as their online directory and general resource. For them, you become THE person to go to.

Creating Community & Networking

By linking to other sources, you are creating a mini resource in your area of expertise – this in turn can start to generate a community or network of readers using it with you and your blog at its centre. The links you provide help your readers to learn more about the subject and direct them to discussions going on elsewhere. Essentially your blog becomes the place where your readers know they can get up to date information on issues that they consider to be important.

Two good posts on the subject and, just to prove that it works, I found one through a link posted in the other:

Kevin Keefe writing on Lexblog gives a clear example and some no nonsense commentary of why linking to competitors is smart from his perspective in the Legal blogging arena. However, the lessons he outlines are equally relevant in any business sector.

Brian Clark at Copyblogger picks up on this in Why Linking to other blogs is essential and extends the argument slightly further. I tend to prefer Brian’s use of the word “essential” rather than just “smart” to describe linking (though both are valid) but either way the message is the same. Linking out is good for your blog and good for your business.

Blogging in the News – w/e 11 February

Get to grips with business blogging

is an article which first appeared in PC World and looks at how business blogging can help companies as well as opinion from a number of commentators (including yours truly).

Getting the blog spammers to hang up their affiliations

looks at the problem of comment spam and particularly that caused by affiliate marketers looking for inbound links to their sites. [Comment: luckily using an anti-spam solution from Akismet, I've cut mine down to almost zero and there are other simple ways to stop it. We'll be looking at this subject in more depth soon.]

Business Link Urges Yorkshire Businesses To ‘Get Blogging’

shows that Business Link is helping to encourage businesses to look at the benefits that blogging can bring. Hopefully this will extend across more of the country and we’ll be able to get interested businesses quickly up to speed.

New Sony viral marketing ploy angers consumers

is actually from the end of December last year but reflects just how badly wrong even large companies can get blogging and social media marketing.

Blog your way to success

appeared in The Independent (and I get another short mention!) and focuses on how business blogging is proving successful in the US but is still in its infancy here in the UK, indicating the opportunities available for those companies which embrace it this year.

Generating Ideas for your Business Blog posts

In the early stages of writing their business blog, I find that a lot of people often worry about how they will find topics to write about. Don’t! I can guarantee that this will not be a problem. You know your subject inside out (or else the likelihood is that you wouldn’t be writing about it) and so you’ll find your main task will be picking the right topics for your readers.

For me, there are two main sources of ideas: you and everyone else.

Blog Post Ideas – You

You want to make sure that you capture all the ideas that come to you and personally I use a nice and easy solution for this:

Green Cross Code of Business Blogging

[For those not of a certain age, or not from the UK, the Green Cross Code is a road safety campaign for pedestrians which was launched in the 1970s which initially used the instructions Stop - Look - Listen - Think - Cross.]

When you are starting a blog for your business, it can be all too easy to get carried away, rush into setting up a half baked blog and start writing immediately. If you are in this situation then try employing the Green Cross Code of Business Blogging. I first wrote about this idea at Better Business Blogging but I think that the message is so important that it warrants a reposting here with some additional commentary.

Stop! Wait, don’t rush into writing your blog immediately, you need to plan first and decide the focus of your blog.

Look at some established blogs and see how others go about it. Make sure you read some of these to get a better feel for blogging from those already doing it.

“Listen” to the conversations going on in the blogosphere and to what people are saying in their posts, as well as to as much good advice as you can get.

Think about what you have read and take the time to plan your blog in terms of what you want to say and to whom, as well as in terms of your overall goals for it.

Finally, start to blog with all of these elements in mind but make sure you keep reading other blogs, listening to new ideas and thinking how to develop your blog.

To make a success of a blog, you need to spend time planning a variety of elements on your Blog as you start to develop it, and crucially you should also spend time looking at what is being written about and listening what is being said, before you put “pen to paper” on your first post.

I recognise that there are advocates of a more immediate approach – that of simply starting to blog and gaining experience by actually writing one. I can see the advantages of that and of not falling into the trap of “paralysis by analysis” (ie thinking about it for so long that you don’t actually ever do anything).

But I also know that whatever you write while “gaining experience” will still reflect on you and your business and that once it is out on the internet, then there is no easy way to withdraw it. By taking the time to plan and to read what others are writing about, you will gain confidence when you start to post as well as having a framework to work with – remember that when you start blogging, it is the equivalent of entering an enormous noisy stadium full of people talking rather than sitting down to a quiet one-to-one dinner. It can be intimidating so it’s good to be as comfortable as possible when you start.

So, taking it back to basics, to make sure that you start blogging with confidence, I recommend that when you start your business blog, you follow the Green Cross Code of Business Blogging: