Who Says A Business Blog Has To Be Boring?

Let's face the truth. There are a lot of boring business blogs out there. I get bored reading many of them, even when I'm generally interested in the content. It's just hard to inject excitement and pizazz in a cut-and-dry business blog.

I say, don't let your business blog be so cut-and-dry! One of the easiest ways to not only make your business blog more engaging but to also make it more fun for you to write is by creating a unique voice for your blog.

Try mixing in some personal chat, using humor, encouraging your readers to comment, taking a stand, or whatever you think will engage your readers and make your blog more fun all around. Heck, you can even decorate it for Halloween!

A mixture of good, solid content and an endearing personality is a no-fail way to create a successful business blog. And it can be fun, too.

For more tips on starting a business blog and making it a success, read:

• Ten very strong reasons to blog – even if nobody reads it!
• Reduce the Pain of Starting a Business Blog - An eMarketing Insight

Ten very strong reasons to blog – even if nobody reads it!

Building an engaged community through a business blog can be extremely difficult — sometimes impossible. Look at companies like General Electric who do an amazing job with their blog and yet have almost no “community” or comments at all. There must be some good business reason they do it, right? 

There better be. Every corporate marketing activity must somehow be tied to creating shareholder value and blogging is no different. Let’s look at ten legitimate business reasons why your company should be blogging — even if you can’t seem to build a community of active readers. 

1) Search engine benefits — This may be the most obvious business benefit of blogging. Search engines give preference to websites that have fresh, relevant content. Hubspot research shows that sites with blogs get 55% more traffic than sites without blogs — even if there are no readers! 

2) Marketing differentiation – Finding a way to stand-out may be the most difficult chore a business faces. Do your competitors have a blog? If not, this might be an opportunity to establish the voice of authority in your industry and enhance your brand image with customers. 

3) Infinite search life — A few weeks ago I received a call from a potential new customer in the Middle East looking to me as a possible marketing consultant.I had to wonder how in the world they found me! Turns out they were looking for somebody who could help explain where the future of social media was going and when they entered this into Google, a blog post I wrote a year ago popped up!  Your content keeps working for you month after month! 

4) A cost-effective sales call — You might not be able to visit your customer every week or every month but a blog is an excellent way to provide a constant drip-drip-drip of communication to remind them of your products, services, and why you’re special.  If they don’t read your blog, re-purpose the content in customer newsletters and sales materials. 

5) Your content engine — Your investment in a consistent stream of quality content can be leveraged in many ways to support a content marketing strategy. I use links from blog posts to answer customer questions, as the basis for speeches, newsletter content, and as reading assignments for workshops. 

6) Direct sales — Sure, you can sell through your blog!  SAP does a great job advertising training services in a sidebar on its blog. This is valuable real estate! Why not use it?  Wegman’s grocery store employees blog about seasonal recipes and show how to use their food products in new ways. 

7) Indirect sales — Featuring blog-only promotions and offers or opt-in content can expose new sales leads. 

8) PR – Blog posts have the opportunity for massive reach. When one of my posts gets picked up by an aggregation service like ragan.com, my message has a chance to be heard by hundreds of thousands of people. That opportunity would not occur with a press release or status update. 

9) New product development — Many companies use blogs as a way to engage customers to solve problems and create new ideas. Caterpllar has blogs dedicated to each major product line. Starbucks blogs about customer ideas as a way to crowd-source new product innovation. 

10) Crisis management — A blog is an essential channel to explain the facts amid chaos. In less than an hour after the earthquake hit Haiti, The Red Cross blog had news of their activities and information on how to donate.  Company responses through blogs are often quoted by mainstream news sources. 

So when your company has seemingly unrealistic expectations about building an online blog community, pull this blog post out as a reminder that there are many solid business reasons to have a blog, even if the crickets are chirping in the comment section!   Is a commenting community important to you and your company or do some of these benefits make sense?

5 Techniques to Make Your Next Post Unforgettable

Reading a blog post should be like sinking your teeth into an ice cream cone in the middle of August.

Or the moment just before you plummet 2,000 feet in a roller coaster.

Let’s face it: blogs posts always have been, and always will be, a diversion from the mundaneness of life. No matter what your blog’s subject.

Since that’s true, let’s give people what they want.

Here are five techniques you can use to make your posts give your readers a great experience—not just dry information, but a truly unforgettable post.

1. Be a contrarian.

“If you try to write for everyone you write for no one.” ~Brian Clark

It’s okay to be controversial. After all, if everyone agrees on the same things, it’s boring.

While I don’t recommend you disagree just to get attention, there are bound to be times where your interpretation of certain concepts differs from that of many other bloggers. When this happens, don’t hesitate to share your opinion.

When readers come across your blog and read a different take from the usual, it’s refreshing. Allow readers to enjoy that experience by having the courage to be controversial.

Read More...

Three Wrong Beliefs on Starting a New Blog - An eMarketing Insight

I have met many working professionals who regularly complain about the pain of starting a blog! And more about the maintaining that blog. It certainly seems to a tough job, but in reality its just that; "we think a lot about it..."

Three wrong beliefs on starting a new Blog:

1. People think that, we need to have thousands of ideas in an organised fashion before we start blogging. They have a belief that, "because it's my first interactive interface to the public as a writer, it has to perfect!" The zest for achieving perfection before they start doing it, makes it impossible to do it in the first place.

If you have a similar concern, then here is the panacea: "Stop thinking---and Start Writing!" Think of one idea at a time and follow your inner voice...paint the picture around that idea...give supporting examples, links, beliefs, facts and remember: "IT SHOULD BE EXPLAINED, AS EASY AS POSSIBLE!" I don't remember the name of the movie, but there was a famous dialog in it, which would further clarify the point: "Explain it to me, like you are explaining to a six-year old".

2. We need to write something which is accepted by everybody! 

Not at all!!! Remember the lessons from marketing? "DEFINE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE!" It's that simple...You need to visualize the picture of people to whom your writing is being targeted. And make it that way...don't be too wavy, otherwise people would soon realize that, you have no idea on what you are writing...

3. And last but most important: Can I write a Blog? I think any person in this world with a reasonable conscience and writing abilities can write. There are people who are famous with their blogs on "CATS!". 

One more key point here is that; "Don't focus on things like: How many people are reading, or am I popularizing my blog enough!", Initially, focus on developing quality content and nothing else. After you deliver 10-15 good posts on your blog, to which people could relate their conscience, then it's like a plane on an autopilot mode.

Post writing by Anshul Gupta. Follow his on twitter.

More previous posts:

• SOCIAL MEDIA SCREW UPS - A HISTORY
• 5 DEADLY SINS OF CORPORATE SOCI

Reduce the Pain of Starting a Business Blog - An eMarketing Insight

Do we always need to consider that "who is going to be the target?" The answer depends upon the purpose with which you are creating your blog.   

  

If the purpose is to target your customer (in B2B or in B2C kinda businesses), then your posts should focus on issues, concerns or interests that your customers have.  

  

But if, your objective is to enhance the brand value of the company then, you should write about things which generate that brand value; it may be your corporate ethics, or your new social initiative or may be the employee engagement you fostered in your organization or it may be the quality focus you have in your organization. But, generally it is mix of the two. 

The Continued Rise of Blogging

More than half of web users will read blogs this year!

Social networks and microblogs have in recent years nudged blogging off the social media pedestal. For some consumers, who have more communication tools at their fingertips than they did a few years ago, Facebook and Twitter have supplanted blogging as life-streaming outlets.

But blogs continue to be important. eMarketer estimates that this year more than half of internet users will read blogs at least monthly. By 2014, readership will rise to more than 150 million Americans, or 60% of the internet population in the US. One reason for the rise in readership is that blogs have become an accepted part of the online media landscape. Read More...