Blogging is a great strategy for any business. There are a couple different types of bloggers. Some bloggers blog to create traffic to their site so they can sell advertising space. An entrepreneur or new business owner should blog to create awareness and mindshare with people via their site and social media.

The best strategy for a business to get started is to decide who you can communicate with online, and how to tell your story. Create a great home base or landing page (which can be done inexpensively). Share on your pages how people can do business with you, the products and services you offer. Then when you start blogging, you can create a conversation with people, and you are ready for them to visit your site to find out more.

With this start, there are other elements to begin to add into a strategy. We are happy to help when it’s time to move forward.

If you were approached by a new business owner, what would you tell them is the most important thing for them to start with for an effective online strategy?

For fun. You were bored?  Why are you blogging? I hope you are telling your story. I hope you are adding relevant and interesting information. What is your blogging schedule? Daily is great! I love blogs where I can find new information each and every day. We are working with a group of soon to be new bloggers this morning and I’d love to give them some helpful tips and information. What are your favorite blog topics, ideas, and success stories? Please share yours here!

One of my favorite bloggers is Seth Godin.

Blog posts should be short and to the point? We don’t want to land on a blog and spend three hours of reading content. One to two paragraphs are great, maybe a couple bullet points or a numbered list. Make it quick and easy to read, understand the message, and form an opinion. 

In a blog, you to tell your story. A blog is a great place for you to have an opinion. You can do product reviews; you can talk about different services. Talk about your friends, talk about business people that you network with. The key is to keep it short.  When people are surfing online, the attention span, the amount of time that you have once they reach your site and decide to stay on your site is very short. So make sure that you keep it interesting, keep it short, sweet and to the point, so that people can quickly and easily find what they need, be entertained, inspired, or educated, and then move on to what they would like to find next.

What is one of your favorite blog posts that you have come across?

*From Blogging Explained CD

If you are blogging and autofeeding to twitter you have a very short amount of time to get your point across. Make it count!

How do you decide how to create your interesting headline? What has gotten you the most attention?

In our social media classes, and in just about every one of our Organic Marketing classes, we ask if people are blogging. In a handful of cases we had a majority of our members raise their hands. Most people say they want to be blogging, the know they should be blogging, or they want to. Many are not ready, don’t know how to start, or don’t know what they should say.

I could list many reasons why a small business person, entrepreneur, or anyone else for that matter should be blogging. The first and most important is because marketing is telling your story, and blogging is a great way to be able to tell it, and have it do more for you than just exist on a blog site. Incorporating a blog into your website is a great way to provide fresh information, interesting copy, and gives people a reason to re-visit your site.

Let’s cover the basics:

What is a blog? Blog stands for web log.

What is blogging? Telling your story, sharing your opinions, tips, and expertise online.

Why blog?  We want to hear your story, find out what you know, be entertained, and enlightened. We also want to be able to subscribe to your story via RSS feed (really simple syndication) so we can read this when we want to in the method, and on the devices (laptop, mobile phone, Amazon Kindle) we prefer. We also want to be able to find out more about you online while searching.

Here’s our top ten list of tips for getting started with your blog:

1. Write at least five-10 articles that you can use to build your brand, your knowledge, and your track record. These articles should be interesting, informative, and serve as a reference for people. How long should they be?  500 words or so in a blog post is great. Some reference posts may require more. Use catchy, attention getting headlines. Keep them short and easy to read. Separate the information, don’t use long wordy paragraphs. Use numbered lists and bullets wherever possible. What should you write about? Visit Sarah at Sazbean for some ideas – 12 Ways to get Ideas for Business Blogging.

2. Decide how often you will blog, and stick to it. If you are going to blog daily, make sure you have one post a day (at least) that goes up. If you are going to blog weekly or monthly, maybe blogging is not the right avenue for you. There are tools available to time release your posts, so if you have time to write many posts and set the delivery times, use it. Otherwise, be prepared to spend some time on this every day. Pre-planning is great. Be prepared to add new timely information and organically grow your messages.

3. Choose your blogging platform. Will you incorporate a blog into your existing website? Will it be maintained separately? There are benefits to both worlds, depending on your situation. WordPress.com offers a free place to start. We recommend using wordpress because you can get started now, and make the decision to integrate the blog into your site later. You can use wordpress on their server, or you can add it to your own custom domain name. There are many available plug-ins to add extra functionality to your site.

4. Leave comments on other blogs. Read other blogs, especially those in your industry or in similar fields. Pay attention to what catches your attention. Chances are if it caught your eye, it may catch your readers as well. 

5. Link to other sites and blogs in your post.A trackback is a way to link from your site to another and vice-versa. It shows reference from one to another, and is a way to track a conversation between two sites. Other blogs can be a great source of ideas and inspiration. Reading someone else’s blog, linking to it, and then writing your review, comments or opinions about that post are a great way to add some diversity to your own posts. I recommend reading about strategy over at Sazbean.

6. Ask for feedback and comments on your blog. The easiest way to do this is to ask questions at the end of your post. If you end on a declarative statement, you don’t leave much of an opening for another opinion. If you ask a question, you are more likely to get a response. What do you think?

7. Automate it. Create the ability for your blog to automatically feed to your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts using sites like Ping, TwitterFeed and TweetLater.  Share your blog link with your friends, fans and customers. Get feedback and ideas that you can use in your posts.

8. Submit your blog to sites that will reference your blog site. You can create this link within your own site by listing the sites you like. Your contacts and online friends can do the same. List your blog address in every social media profile that you have. In addition, looking into blogtopsites and a blogcarnival are great as well. 

9. Be creative, be yourself, and be there. When you are not sure what to write about, take some inspiration from your day. What happened to you today, yesterday, or earlier this week? Did it make you think about something in a new way? Are you pondering a topic or question? Have your readers weigh in. Have I mentioned who is listening to you when you start blogging? Answer: no one. You are writing to yourself. Make yourself laugh, make it interesting, and eventually, over time, your audience will grow.

10. Repeat

What are you blogging about? Please list your site and summary. I’d love to visit, and I am sure our readers would as well.

(Photo by Louise Starbird of Photoworks Studios)

How connected are we?

Colin Thomas from MLIVE.com sent me a link a couple of weeks ago that caught his attention. There was a women in the audience of a keynote speech by Gary Vaynerchuck, that talked about how to promote a 100,000 hugs campaign going around the world. Besides the hugs being interesting, the keynote itself had some great information! The next thing I did was pick up the book Tribes by Seth Godin on the recommendation of a friend. I read that straight through, and wouldn’t you know it that Godin references Gary V. in the book. If that’s not enough coincidence for you, I somehow got to following the 100,000 hugs campaign, and Gail Lynne Goodwin sends a direct message via twitter wondering if I’ve heard of her campaign. Small world, getting smaller? I am realizing the power of the connection. How connected are you?

(photo by photo david @ flickr cc)

I have been blogging a bit about InSights through blogger and have a few posts up. We are transitioning our website main page to the blog format, and this is my first opportunity to post in the new blog. Talk about pressure! What do I say? What should I write? I’ve been busy this morning looking on the internet for what to write about. As the blog starts growing and I have days and days of posts, the pressure won’t feel so much like I have to be interesting and impactful with every post.

I’ve been working with local small business owners to set up their blogs, with awesome results. Many of the blogs being set up are interesting, relevant, and on target. I enjoy reading the posts, especially some health related information in Kathy’s Blog. So now, the teacher becomes the student, as I work on what to include in this blog. Interesting? Funny? Recap of the days events? Helpful and useful tips and tricks? Ideas and Opinions? Watch for all this and more (I hope) as you follow the InSights Group’s blog.

Thanks for taking a peek!