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| 8 Simple Steps to Better Blogging
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Location: Blogs Word of Mouse BlogMouse Tracks |
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| Posted by: Shane Murphy |
12/19/2007 |
If you're toying with the thought of starting some sort of 'social' arm of your Internet marketing practices, it's a good idea to take some time to really plan it out. It's not uncommon to see a small business jump head first into the world of blogging without considering the implications of the idea.
Most notably, the realization that time demands do become a factor in the blogosphere. It's not like the "old days" where you could throw up your little Internet shingle and just leave it be. No longer do readers (your customers) tolerate stale information. Yes, it's logical to have an "old time" website with contact information, basics of the business, and all of that neccessary information.
With that in mind, I point you to a very simple -- and very apropos -- list of planning "musts" for starting your small business blog. I've supplemented the list with my own comments.
Credit to Better Business Blogging for the awesome list.
1. Don't skimp on time planning your blog
Just like anything in business, the plan is 90% of the battle. If you just haphazardly throw something together, you're going to see yourself spending most of your time just trying to un-do what you should have never done in the first place. Planning is a must!
2. Keep navigation easy
You'll find that in blogging software, the software itself does the housecleaning. But the critical link here is setting up categories. Think of it like when you designed your corporate website. That list of links, which section your web presence off logically, was the most important thing that you (hopefully) did before you even started. The same applies with blogging.
Your categories should make sense to all readers. For example, with our blog here, we've got categories for "Mouse Tracks" (our 'business of blogging' information, which also goes out as a newsletter), as well as "Upcoming Events," and a few others that are not being used - yet. But the point is that we planned it out well in advance.
3. Make key posts easy to find
This one goes to the navigation part. Plan it out, and you'll rarely have issues. Have a working search capability, and pull out really important posts and make them easy to get to from a seperate area.
4. Make your profile and contact details easy to find
And keep them updated! You'll notice on our website, our contact information is always in the left menu, regardless of where you are on the site. Readers of blogs almost certainly want to get into the discussion, but sometimes just want to get in touch with the author as well.
5. Create your own look and feel
Look aroung the blogosphere... tons of blogs are out there, and most of them have the same look. Make your blog yours. That's why the Word of Mouse blog is internal to our public site - it looks like us, and it doesn't look like 99% of the other blogs out there.
6. Avoid free hosting blogging systems for a business blog
For the same reasons as #5. This one also goes to planning. Get blog software installed on your corporate servers. If you're a small business that allows somebody else to host your site, talk to them about installing a respected blog software -- Wordpress, Typepad, something... Make it your own -- not somebody elses.
7. Set up friendly permalinks (and trackbacks)
It's important that your customers are able to easily link to you, and even more important that they're able to comment your blog. Something that drives me crazy is how many 'blogs' are out there that don't allow commenting. Trackbacks are my favorite thing of all -- they just make sense! I write an entry about something that I saw (like the Better Business Blogging entry), and not only do I link out to them... I also send a trackback, which makes my entry become a comment on their entry. It's the community thing... use it!
8. Add clear RSS feed details
Ahh... my favorite part! The RSS feed. Syndicating your content so that your customers can actually 'subscribe' to it. Seems like a small thing, doesn't it? Hardly!
Imagine if your customers were so impressed with your content that they felt the need to subscribe and make sure that they saw new stuff as soon as it went live! That's what an RSS-type feed will do for you. Subscribers to our Mouse Tracks feed were alerted of this posting the moment I pressed submit. What that means to us is that our client base is able to keep up on the latest in business blogging without having to search for it.
If you've not messed with syndicated feeds yet, the recent introduction of Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7 took huge steps to simplifying adding a feed. My advice to you... get a feed reader (Sharp Reader, Bloglines) and see how easy it is. You'll wonder how you kept current without an RSS reader. |
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