I’ve been following blogging since some years ago, but it wasn’t until very recently that I decided to give it a serious try for myself. Until then my deepest approach to blogging was helping, in my first and last job as an employee, to put a blog for their business because they didn’t know how to do it but they knew it was a good business opportunity.

So I put my hands at work and I tried to identify some principles and practices that will give a good base for a corporate blog and here’s a recap of what I found:

Basics

1. Never start your business blog on some free provider of blogging platforms like Blogger. Maybe today Blogger is not seen as an horrible alternative for blogging hosting, but you can be sure it will end being like Geocities, and you don’t want to put your business website on Geocities right?
2. If you don’t have a domain then register yours now, and put your blog under something like blog.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com/blog. If you were thinking to put the blog on your homepage think it again: most part of the people don’t know about blogs so they won’t understand a frontpage with a blog. Just put it in another place.

Content

3. If you want to have a chance of building a recurrent readership, get sure to write about your industry, not just about your products and services. A marvelous thing about blogging is that it’s a trusted communication channel because until now it has been a people’s medium instead of a big corps one, so leverage that trust and put all your effort on giving value to your clients.
4. Don’t fear your clients voices by allowing comments. Sometimes people can be nasty about your content but that’s unusual. Besides, you can always erase stupid comments.
5. Answer your readers comments always. I know some blogger say that’s not necessary to have comments to be a blog, but if you are blogging for business then not answering your comments is like not answering your phone, and your business cannot afford that right?
6. Write only original content. Period.
7. When quoting an external information source add something of value that’s originally yours and it’s related to that quote. Don’t just copy and paste some Wikipedia article.

Layout

8. Don’t underestimate the importance of a nice looking interface. It makes the difference between being perceived as the online equivalent of a successful mall versus being the online equivalent of a garage sale.

PR

9. Don’t hesitate to recognize what your competitors are doing good. Showing that you can see good things in your competitors yards will improve your reputation.
10. Link back to your competitors websites or blogs. They will something valuable for your readers too. If you are afraid of losing customers first go back to improve your business offerings.
11. Don’t link to every webpage you like. Giving links to a webpage is like saying “I swear by my reputation that this webpage will be useful for you”, will you do that for every webpage you visit?
12. Did you make a mistake? Admit it and ask your readers and clients for excuses. Then get back to work.
13. In fact, do as Wired Mag said and get naked!

Promotion

14. Promote your services in your blog, don’t be shy. Put some banner for your products as if you were an advertiser, and talk about the benefits of your products without forgetting that blogging is about giving your visitors value, not SPAM.
15. Prefer email subscriptions over RSS based ones. Blogging aware people’s sect is still very small, and most part of your clients won’t even know what’s RSS.
16. If you still want to offer RSS subscriptions explain your clients what’s that, how to use it, and why it’s great.

Advertising

17. If your blog is focused on writing about your industry rather than just about your products, then you can monetize your traffic by accepting banners from businesses that are complementary to yours. That’s giving value to your clients ;).
18. Don’t put AdSene, Kontera or Affiliate programs in your business blog. In fact, avoid any form of advertisement under 3rd level as stated by Chad Randall in Advertise Space.
19. If your blog is focused on your products instead of your industry, then avoid ads like the plague. Your blog is about you, nobody else.
20. Learn what keywords are, choose yours wisely and use them obsessively.

Following these tips will surely help you to grow your brand new business blog, but if you want just one piece of advice to have a successful blog then follow what the bests have said many times: Write quality content.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 11:38 am and is filed under Blogging, Business opportunities, Online business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.