Blog Coach - Blogging Consultant » Setting up your Blog

Thinking of starting a business blog? Consider this …

The Blog Coach — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:50:10 +0000

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.

The Blog Coach and the Irish Blog Awards

The Blog Coach — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 21:49:48 +0000

Well, I am very pleased to say that two of the blogs which have made the short list for Best Business Blog in the Irish Blog Awards 2007 come from organisations which The Blog Coach has been working with over recent months.

Two very different sites as well and it’s nice to see that they have been so well received after all the hard work put in by Krishna De and Ann Greene who write and run them.

Biz Growth News – Krishna De

A traditional blog in terms of format, though one that is absolutely full of information for a business looking for ideas and new information about anything and everything to do with developing business and building a brand online and offline. Podcasts, webinars and offline seminars as well as the blog itself and yet that is still only scratching the surface of what Krishna offers.

In March, we’ll be looking in a little more detail at the thought processes that went on in terms of the modifications and the implementation of the final result that you see now. However, as you read the posts, you will see that all that this does is complement the great content that Krishna provides. A blog which just cries out to be in your RSS reader!

Allagi Consulting – Ann Greene

This is a full Blogsite (that’s to say a complete website including a blog which is all built using Blog software) which has given Ann Greene, who runs Allagi Consulting, total control over the whole of the site in terms of being able to add and change content as she requires, as well as the ability to add pages and so grow the site when she needs to – with little to no intervention from anyone, including me.

The site also incorporates the Allagi Blog which Ann uses to great effect to look at her specialist area of expertise of team building and team development. Although it’s still in its infancy, the blog was already considered worthy of a place in the shortlist and you can’t say fairer that that!

Do check out both blogs and I wish them both the best of luck in the final which will be announced at the Awards Dinner on March 3rd. In the meantime, so as you don’t miss any, I will be listing the nominees in the main categories in a special version of Spotlight on UK Blogs (in this case Spotlight on Irish Award Blogs) this Friday.

Use Graphics: make people want to read your Blog

The Blog Coach — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 21:54:41 +0000

There is a lot of talk about what you write on your blog being all important (and it is!) – as you can imagine, this is going to be an area that we will be coming back to on a regular basis here at The Blog Coach.

However, it’s also important to make sure that the look and feel of the overall blog (including the individual posts) both support and promote the information that it provides. In fact, through careful use of graphics, we can influence the way in which people react to our blog and make it as easy as possible for them to take on board what we are writing about.

Make your Blog stand out from the crowd

The way your blog is presented also plays a key role in differentiating not only your blog, but also you and your business. After all, that‘s what we are looking to achieve in business, being noticed – so, any way which helps us to stand out from our competitors has to be positive.

I don’t know about you, but when I see blogs which, for example, run Wordpress but just use the basic template – you know the one with the blue box at the top – my first reaction is that there can’t be anything of value there. In fact, I probably write it off as a “splog” (spam blog).

Irrational and quite possibly untrue. Nevertheless I just think that someone who cannot be bothered to spend a bit of effort (or a few pounds) to “spruce up” their blog probably hasn’t spent much time on the content either. Others have told me that I’m not alone in this respect. So spend a little time on the design of your blog and your posts, and help the information that you are carefully putting together get read.

Caveat: try not to get too carried away. Remember that any graphics you include should not be there to distract your readers but rather to help them focus on the information and ideally encourage them to comment.

Some Graphics Sites to try

So where can I find good images to support the information in my blog, I hear you ask! Well, at one end of the spectrum, there are the files that come free with programs such as PowerPoint which offer both clipart and some photos which can be used.

However, these can often be a little bit ‘samey’ or not in keeping with what you want to communicate with your blog. There are, however, a number of excellent sites where you can find quality images covering a whole range of topics. Most of the good stock photos sites charge a small fee now, but the images are well worth it if you choose carefully.

Some sites worth a look are:

A word of caution: as with all images that you use off the net, do make sure that you follow any copyright requirements – the last think you want is to have issues with companies claiming ownership of images which you have used legitimately.

Green Cross Code of Business Blogging

The Blog Coach — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 09:00:40 +0000

[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:

STOP – LOOK – LISTEN – THINK – BLOG

Blogging for Business

The Blog Coach — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 21:45:05 +0000

In a post at the end of last year, Des Walsh on his excellent new B5 Media blog, Business and Blogging, picked out a post by Ben Yoskovitz which focused on the argument that business blogging is not a sales pitch but rather a meaningful conversation.

You’ll get no argument from me on the “Sales pitch” front. There are lots of excellent direct marketing and sales tools available to businesses but a business blog is not one of them. You’re quite simply not playing to its strengths if you try to use it in that way.

However, a conversation (meaningful or otherwise) is only useful, from a business perspective, if it leads somewhere. The conversation shouldn’t try to lead straight to an attempted sale – in fact it mustn’t, you’re back to direct selling again there. Nevertheless, to be properly effective, it should have a direction and be taking you towards your desired outcome, whether that is developing the relationship, encouraging a news feed sign up, setting up a face to face meeting etc.

Ben also makes the point that:

“It’s not about telling people why you’re great and why they should do business with you.”

Agreed. But if you shift the emphasis slightly then you get a concept which is much more valid for blogs. For me:

“It’s about demonstrating to people why you’re great (or helping people find out why you’re great) and why they should do business with you.”

Don’t tell them, but do make it easy for them to find out through what you write and the way that you write it. For me this comes down to the distinction between selling to someone (an individual or a business) and helping them to decide that they want to buy from you.

Selling vs Helping to buy

Direct (Interruption) Marketing vs Educational Marketing

Successful business blogs sit very firmly in the second category.

If you do this well, then hopefully you’ll find that you don’t need to go and tell people why you are great because you’ll have others doing that on your behalf, either in their own blogs, on their sites or face to face. And that’s probably the clearest sign that you are running a valuable and well focused business blog.

Comments: encourage, accept and reply

The Blog Coach — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 07:56:19 +0000

In my opinion, one of the key characteristics of your Blog and one that you need to work with is the ability for people to comment on what you have posted. Some people take an even more rigid view and say that it is not really a blog without this!

This facility on your blog helps to open up and develop channels of communications between yourself and your readers and can be the perfect way of starting a business relationship. For some blogs, the comments (and what they can lead to) are the main reason they are written in the first place.

So, contrary to some views I hear in organisations thinking about using a blog, your decision should not be whether to allow comments or not, but rather how to elicit comments and how to best handle the ones you receive. Whether you moderate them or allow your visitors to comment freely (having filtered out the spam comments of course – Akismet is great for this), you should consider the fact that people want to comment and want to get involved to be a compliment to your post.

You should also look to encourage it. Ask an open question at the end of your post which is actively looking for responses – this will give people something to focus on in the responses. If you are talking to someone about a subject that you have written on, refer them to the post and ask them to join in and give their view as well.

You should also aim to respond to the comments that are made – after all, you are writing to pique people’s interest in your subject and looking to engage with your readers, so if they respond and ask a question then make sure that you reply to it.

Of course, there are going to be occasions where the comments will not be favourable – this is to be expected. You cannot please all the people all of the time. However, in all but the most extreme cases (I’m thinking primarily here about libellous comments), you really should allow the comments to appear and respond to their points by presenting your point of view. While tempting, it’s best not to ignore this type of comment: after all, you are there to put forward and argue your point of view and you will often gain greater respect by handling objections with grace and tact in this way.

So, comments, and the interaction they bring, are a key element of what make a Business Blog so effective. If you were ever considering not allowing comments then I would urge you to rethink because you would be slamming the door shut on some of the key relationship building opportunities you’ll get.

How do you encourage comments on your blog?

Starting to write your Business Blog

The Blog Coach — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 20:30:30 +0000

It is always an exciting (if slightly nerve racking) time when you actually start to write your Business Blog. It is also a very important time because in your first posts, you will be laying down the ground rules for what your readers can expect from you in the future.

However, there are certain things that you can do in this initial period which will make it easier to get your first posts in place and will give you a solid foundation from which you can then develop.

Set yourself realistic goals for posting

You should try to set yourself some goals as to how often you want to post to your blog. Don’t commit to once a day if you know that you won’t have the time – instead, make your goals realistic and then stick to them. Once you get going, you can be certain that it will not be a lack of subjects to write about that will hold you back, but rather how much time you can dedicate to it. You should also bear in mind that you will need to split that time between researching your posts AND writing them.

Hint: set up your RSS reader NOW and start to record your information sources in it. It will save you hours in research later on!

Plan ahead

You don’t want to feel under pressure to think of what to write about, particularly at the start. You want to be able to concentrate on the post itself. So, map out the topics that you want to cover during the first few days and weeks and try to make them ones that you feel particularly comfortable about. This will provide you with a framework to work with.

You don’t need to plan every post, in fact you shouldn’t. If you are intending to create a blog which will get people coming back on a regular basis then you will also be commenting on breaking news or on articles that are posted elsewhere. However, by getting clear in your own mind the initial topics that you want to cover, you will allow yourself to really focus on them which in turn will help your initial writing.

Set out your stall with your “Foundation” posts

Within this first set of posts, try to include at least 2 or 3 articles on key topics – these are ones that I call “Foundation” posts. They are posts which focus in on some of the principal areas and concepts that you are going to be dealing with in your blog as a whole. They can be simply instructive or could introduce a number of the ideas that you will build on (hence “Foundation”) and develop over the course of writing your blog.

Suggestion: if you are unsure about what to include, then have a look at the presentations that you have made to clients or partners and pick out the important themes that you highlight there.

Write a series of posts on a specific topic

Another good way of getting going is to write a series of posts on a topic which is important to your overall subject area. A series can help in a number of different ways, but in particular will allow you to go into detail on a single topic that you feel is particularly important and that you are comfortable writing about. Not only will this help to get you started and gain some momentum in your writing, it will also establish a strong focus area in your blog.

Comment on news in your industry

By commenting on events and announcements in your industry, you are showing yourself to be up to date with what is happening and that you are informed enough to have an opinion on them. It will also help you to position yourself as a key source of information for your readers who no longer have to trawl the web for the information (and view your competitors’ sites) because they know they will find it on yours! Essentially, this is a great way of adding content to your site which also helps build the level of trust and confidence in you and your knowledge.

Sitting there with a blank screen in front of you is always a difficult time, so use some of these methods to get you started. You can be certain that you’ll be up and running much more quickly than you expected.

Finding a Domain name for your Blog

The Blog Coach — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 07:43:25 +0000

If you have decided to set up a Business Blog which will be separate to your main company website, then part of your planning process will be to select and buy a domain name for it.

In some cases, this is a very simple process but if you are in any way unsure, then there are a number of different elements that you should consider. Having a suitable domain name is important when it comes to branding and developing both reputation and credibility, whether it is dealing with a company, sector, service, product or individual niche.

So, what elements should you bear in mind when picking a domain name?

Subject matter of the blog: to have a descriptive domain name for your blog will make it all the more memorable for those people reading it and also more memorable when they want to recommend it!
Branding elements for your business: you may wish to have a branding element incorporated into it as a special attribute of some sort.
SEO elements: from a Search Engine Optimisation point of view, the domain name is an important element and so will ideally contain the primary keyword or keywords for the blog
Supporting the title of your blog: where possible either make it the same or incorporate the title of your blog in the domain name which will help recognition;
Availability: it may sound obvious but do check that the domain name is available early in the process. There is no point agonising for days over the perfect domain name only to find that it isn’t available anyway!
Length of domain name: while it is good to have a descriptive name, you should avoid one which is too long and also ideally avoid one with words separated with lots of hyphens which now has “spammy” overtones – something you want to avoid for your business
Top Level Domain: whether it should be a .com, .co.uk, .net etc. As with a normal website, it may well be sensible to cover all bases and take the main ones that are available and so safeguard it from a branding perspective

You may or may not be able to get a suitable mix of these elements and generally you will need to find a compromise which combines the points which are most important to you. Try to base these on the aims of your blog and your target audience which are two of the key elements you should be looking at during the planning process before setting up a business blog.

When is a blog not a blog?

The Blog Coach — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:12:52 +0000

Last week, Legal Week ran a story about trainees writing a weekly blog at the law firm Watson Farley & Williams. Hurrah!

Ah, but wait a minute, isn’t that just a page with some pdf documents on it? That’s not really a blog then is it? Stuart Bruce and Justin Patten would tend to agree and have already expressed their thoughts very clearly on the matter.

I guess that it is a “log” and it is on the “web” so in that sense it qualifies … but it is at that point that the similarities end. So what are the special characteristics that blogs have which make them blogs and such a potentially valuable business tool. Well, the main ones are:

Readers can leave comments: your readers can respond to your posts so that you can get feedback, start conversations and develop relationships with potential clients, suppliers or partners. The perfect opener to creating a relationship and a network, though the more cautious among us may decide to moderate the comments first;
Automatically organised: Blog software (which it is sensible to use) will automatically display your most recent posts first, making them easy to find, as well as organise all your posts into ‘categories’ and ‘archives’. This gives great organisation and structure to a blog, perfect for visitors and Search Engines alike and allows you to concentrate on the content
Permalinks: every post and every category has its own individual address, forever! This means that you can refer to them in articles, emails, newsletters etc safe in the knowledge that they will always be found. Another great feature for the Search Engines.
Multiple Authors: not only can one person add content but you can allow access to any number of people so that you have several authors contributing to a topic or a series of topics. It also opens up the possibilities for blogs as tools ideally suited to internal communications within a company.
No technical knowledge required: you don’t need technical expertise to write a blog. You add pages or articles directly to the blog through a “Windows” type of interface with no need to rely on a web designer to update it for you;
Internal and External Links: blogs thrive by links and referring to other articles so that conversations and ideas can be taken up and developed. At its best, this allows a viral effect in terms of promotion and helps develop both relationships and networks.
Search Engine friendly: with regular posts, categorised content and search engine friendly links and addresses, business blogs become ideal places for Search Engines to find the type of content they love … and you can rank very highly! An added marketing bonus for your blogging!

I would also recommend any company looking to start its own blog to take the Green Cross Code of Blogging approach and make sure that they are aware of how other are using blogs and what they should be considering.

I do, however, see that Legal Week has just started its own series of blogs including an Editor’s Blog and a Daily Diary which look to be much more what we would expect. Good luck with those!

No related posts.

Feedburner: making RSS work for you

The Blog Coach — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:40:20 +0000

In my post about Technorati last week called Using Technorati to research your future Blog or your Market, I mentioned that there were two main blog site recommendations for anyone intending to use blogs. The second of these is Feedburner which provides some excellent easy to use tools that all bloggers can benefit from, right from the start.

Using your RSS feed is particularly important as the role and the profile of RSS is going to grow enormously over the coming few months particularly when Microsoft releases the version 7 of its Internet Explorer which will include an RSS reader and so will make it quick and simple for anyone to save and use RSS feeds to keep up to date with news and information.

Feedburner offers a number of paid services which you can progress on to as the need arises, but their free services are well worth taking the time to examine and incorporate in your Blog. There are ones which I particularly recommend because I feel that they help in utilising and developing your Blog’s RSS Feed in important ways.

The elements I would highlight are:

Subscriber information: by channeling your RSS Feed subscriptions through Feedburner, you can obtain additional information about those subscribing. Specifically, it allows you to identify the number of people that are actively subscribed to your feed, as well as providing information on the type of reader they are using and the articles that have been visited directly from the feed itself.

User friendly RSS feed: through Feedburner, you can make certain changes to the look and feel of your RSS feed which will help personalise them and use them more fully to market your business. These include giving you the opportunity to add your logo, which in itself reinforces the branding aspect, and changing the description of the feed. To do this directly to the feed yourself requires additional technical knowledge, but Feedburner makes it simple for everyone as is well worth doing.

Feed Reader Chicklets: the chicklets are the little RSS logos with “Newsgator”, “Bloglines”, “My Yahoo” etc which appear on many blogs. Feedburner provides the code and images required to create these quickly and, while not necessary to allow people to use your feed, any method such as this which increases the visibility of your feed on your Blog can only be beneficial to your promotional activities.

RSS Feed via email: for those people who don’t use RSS readers but still want to know when you have updated your blog, there is the option of an email subscription service. Feedburner provides you with the code to create a basic sign up form on your blog and then visitors can use to subscribe to receiving your blog updates automatically via email. A similar service is provided by Feedblitz.

Headline Animator: this is a small image using an animated gif file, which automatically displays the titles of the last 5 posts from your Blog and allows people to click through a sign up for the feed. It appears in the form of a box (2 formats available) which can be used either in emails or perhaps in online forums etc.

PingShot: this is an ideal companion to the concept of “Post and Ping”, where PingShot notifies a number of servers at once that you have published new content on your Blog . No real difference from the other services available at Pingomatic and Pingoat (indeed it works through Pingomatic) but a good extra service.

How do you do this? Well, just head along to the Feedburner site, sign up for an account and then “burn” a Feed using your current feed, follow the instructions and away you go! There are some useful services there and with RSS destined to become more widespread as the year progresses, set up in the best way you can in readiness.