Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing
Living on the Edge: Blogging in the Real World
By Brian Oberkirch, CEO of Weblogs Work
Okay, we get it: blogs can be really good for business. Over the past 18 months, a lot of words have been laid down to get people to think about blogs as more than online journals, places for cat photos and outlets for political rants. Big companies like Sun, Microsoft, Boeing, GM and a number of others have embraced blogging as a critical way to have conversations with those who matter to their business. A new blog comes online every second, according to blog search service Technorati. Robert Scoble and Shel Israel have just published the definitive book on business blogging – Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.
Blogs are here to stay. So, how do we actually do this stuff?
As my friend Mike Manuel noted at the New Communications Forum a few weeks ago, it’s time to move the discussion out of theories about blogging and social media and into the raucous to and from that is actual conversation. Once you get the big idea (that as marketers our job is to enhance conversations, not try to control them), you need a new set of approaches for getting the job done. The bad news: there are no hard and fast rules. As customers produce their own messages (through blogs, videos, podcasts, photos) at the edges, our marketing has to be flexible, flowing, transparent. Honest.
Here’s a handful of real world thoughts to get you started on your own adventure with blogs and other social media:
Get Small Fast.
Social media is an embarrassment of niches. Blogs make small players look bigger and helps big players get small. If mass media wastes your message on those not interested, social media helps you offer sharp, targeted stuff that is high value to the right readers. So, you’re not just the floral expert. Maybe you’re the wedding flowers guru. Or you’re the one who’s going to show us the value in everyday flowers. Or you’re going to launch a flower-a-day blog to help us branch out a bit. Drill down. Slice your area in half. And again. Go niche and you’re on your way to better blogging.
Just Do It.
How do you learn to blog? By blogging. Badly at first, but improving with each push of the publish button. See, you’ll quickly learn what gets a response. People will comment, link to you, totally ignore posts that don’t matter to them. Don’t fret endlessly over what platform to use (choose one of the top ones and get cranking). Don’t overdo the fuss over your design (do something clean and sharp that lets people get to the info they want). Don’t over think it. Start writing a little bit, and see what the world has to say.
Link, link, link.
The most important thing to do in a blog post is provide good links. The second most important thing is to provide really good links. And so on.
Write a Little. Often.
Readership and improved search engine rankings happen through this magical formula: lots of frequent, short posts with links. Have a big idea? Chop it up into a series of posts. Make your blog look alive with routine posts.
Listen. Learn. Rinse. Repeat.
It’s a conversation, right? How can you learn anything if you’re always running your mouth? Pay attention to comments. Respond to them. Use Technorati and other blog search services to track what people are saying about your company, your service, your area of expertise. Respond on their blogs. Great blogging is really about reading, understanding and synthesizing. The writing is mostly flourish.
Spread the Words.
All blog software creates a feed that is automagically updated each time you post. (Sometimes you’ll see an inscrutable orange box that says XML or RSS. That’s what we mean.) Use these feeds to help you spread the word. You can re-flow (or syndicate) your blog content to other parts of your Web site. Make sure to prominently feature your blog feed on your page, on your home page, etc. Let readers get your blog posts via email if that’s what they want. Include your blog address in your email footer.
Search Me.
As Elisa Camahort so rightly pointed out the other day, the phrase ‘blogs are great for Google juice’ gets repeated as though it were a form of magic. Can blogging help you show up better on Google and other search engines? Absolutely. It’s a nice, organic byproduct of having real conversations with people. It doesn’t happen by accident, though. Think about what you want to be known for. (Again, go niche.) Then write about those things. Use those terms. And give it time. Blogging is a long-term play with no good shortcuts.
Think Beyond the Blog.
When I say ‘blogging’, I really mean all the new tools we can use to self-publish our ideas. Blogs, sure, but there is also flickr and other photosharing services; delicious, digg and other bookmarking communities; podcasting at iTunes, Odeo and other listing sites; YouTube, Google Video and other video sharing sites; forums, mailing lists and so much more. When you start looking around, the Edge suddenly feels endless. And very exciting.
Brian Oberkirch is CEO at Weblogs Work, and he encourages you to jump in to the new world of social media. Read his blog and check out a Blogging 101 at Weblogswork.com.
Posted on Monday, March 20th, 2006 at 11:37 am and is filed under Internet, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
