Business Blogging

Business blogging is about giving something of value to the reader. Discounts on your products or services do not count. The reader has given their time to your thoughts, reward them with something entertaining, enlightening or engaging. Read the rest of this entry »

The most important aspect of business blogging is keeping a positive "can do" spirit. When ever you feel your writing is going negative, take some time for yourself and find that happy spot. Read the rest of this entry »

The moral of my fishing experience with Bear is understand why the fish got away and you'll be better equipped to bring the next one into the boat. I also learned it is good to get away from the office from time to time and see my business from a different perspective. Read the rest of this entry »

Writing interesting articles is a learned art and requires practice. Start by writing things that interest you and find a friend or close confidant to act as your proof reader/sounding board. Don't talk about your article with your friend. Write it out and allow them to review your written product. Read the rest of this entry »

The last consideration for topically focused social marketing is making sure you keep your article focused. Write on one topic at a time. Don't try to introduce multiple topics in a single article because the over all relevancy rating will be significantly lower. Read the rest of this entry »

Business blogging, like all marketing activities, requires careful planning. Picking popular search topics, writing in human interest format, staying focused, and being audience specific will drive attention to your articles. The organization does not stop there. Your planning must also include a reason for the reader to click on the next link. No sales pitch is allow, so enticing a reader to learn more becomes very difficult hence the reason for all the up front planning. Read the rest of this entry »

To better understand the reasons for writing entertainment focused articles, we need to examine a few numbers. First, per the Internet World Stats website, there are over 238 million internet users in North America (www.internetworldstats.com). Per a Pew Internet Study from April 2003, 72% of all internet users agree that the "internet would help them find out things more easily." Last, and maybe the most important statistic from the same 2003 Pew research study is 50% of internet users "believe the internet is mostly a form of entertainment." Read the rest of this entry »

As a blog operator / business owner using blog technology, you are faced with the never ending question, "What should I write about?" Business Blogging is a consolidation of information that is beneficial to the communities you serve. In my case, I am a business blog consultant who teaches business owners how to use blog technology to advance company visibility on the internet. I write about how to capture attention from those surfing the web. A natural starting point is picking the "right" subjects to write about. Read the rest of this entry »

The goal is to increase market exposure for your and your business without taking too much time away from other marketing activities. In this time of tough economic times, the LAST thing you want to do is withdraw any of the marketing efforts. Using the major search engines, you can find social and business networking opportunities by the hundreds. Read the rest of this entry »

I started down the business blogging path almost four years ago and at that time the blogging technology appeared to be the greatest search engine optimization opportunity EVER!  Truth is, blogging is THE fastest way to gain search engine visibility, but it is a poor SEO tool–sort of.

Quick review.  Why does google, yahoo, msn and all the other search engine websites exist?  They are FOR profit operations designed to give the searcher what they are looking for in as few search attempts as possible.  It is in the search engine’s best interest to dig through your site and try to understand exactly what you do.  Gone are the days of being able to post some keywords and gain top spots, now the content of your site must back up your keyword assertions.

In social blogging, the search engines were able to quickly identify the thrust of an article because by the nature of blogging, each article is on a single topic.  As a result of the very high relevancy score given to a socially based blog article, blog postings were found higher up in the search results–which lead to an explosion in popularity.

The time based nature of blogging also helps with search engine visibility.  Where a normal website page starts at the bottom of the index (so to speak) and works its’ way to the top of the list, a blog article starts at the top of the index and falls down the index listing based in part to time.  Typical blog article first page life expectancy is about a week.

To be categorized as a news type blog site, your articles need to follow a few unpublished guidelines.  First your article needs to be single topic focused.  You can not introduce four business services in a single article, you will confuse the search engines and they will discount the value of your content.  Second, your article needs to be informative.   Educational, informational, or conversational no matter which approach the article needs to mean something to somebody.  The same advice speech coaches give applies in business blogging, know your audience.

Your audience speaks a certain way, they use different words, they have description methods that distinguish them from the rest of the world.  Since this article is about blogging 101, I’ll leave the argument over the above statement for another message.

People want to read what makes them comfortable.  Last thing any of us want to do is spend our leisure time reading something where the author seems to be talking down to us.  We’ve all heard about news papers writing for an 8th grade level reader, but what we haven’t heard is the effort that goes in to capturing the local dialect.  I mean to offense to anyone, but the people in Seattle talk different than the people in Austin or the people in Portland, Maine.

That said, someone who creates engine parts (for example) is going to use the same language no matter what part of the United States they live.  Same for Electrical Engineers and Bakers and Computer Programmers.  If your business offering is targeted across multiple demographics, pick one, do some research on their language and write a story just for them.

While there is cross over educational value for business articles in the educational sense, someone reading about a business development story who works for a mega corporation making engine parts is NOT going to be interested.  Write for the click.  We want people to READ your story, get a sense for you as a PERSON and become interested in what you do.

How do you find out more information about your target audience?  I wish I could say go to the abc.xyz website and look them up, but I can not.  One of my more effective ways of learning more about the way people talk is by visiting association websites and reading discussion forum articles.  Just about every profession has some association.  These associations hold annual events and gather their peeps together to sing kum by ya (or something of sorts).  Find the associations for your chosen demographic, read article writen by experts in that particular field for that particular audience and replicate the language in your article.

My assiciation bible is the Encyclopedia of Associations.  I means a monthly visit to the local library, but for me going to the public library in Portland, Oregon is a fun and educational thing to do.

Happy Business Blogging!

Ed Bejarana