Weblog Bucks

Blogging started off as a fun way to share about yourself and showcase your personal passions. Now it is becoming more common to use blogs as tool in business to further your marketing or public relations strategy. There are ways to do this well and there are certainly pitfalls to avoid when using Blogs.

This article will show you how to do that so you can make sure your Blog is one of the Good ones, not one of the ‘Ugly’ or downright commercially dangerous ones.

Principle 1: Blog Responsibly

The first thing ensure is that you blog responsibility in that you do not reveal sensitive commercial information about your company via your blog. The last thing that you want is for your competitors to know about your latest marketing strategy before even the public knows about it. This means you need to brief all your staff on the correct and incorrect use of your company’s blog.

Principle 2: Know thyself and thy blogging

To keep up with the ever changing world of blogging, it is important you notice new trends. Traditionally, blogs were just comments, stories, questions and notations. Nowadays some of the most successful blogs are multimedia works of art with significant audio and video elements. To make your blog stand out, get creative with multimedia!

(General Motors’ blog is a great example: http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/).

Principle 3: Know thy enemy blogger

Knowing your own abilities, limitations and the available technology is good, but not good enough. You need to also know who you’re competing with. You should therefore follow the advice of Cory Miller when he suggests that we “study the great blogs and learn what makes them great.” By studying successful competitor blogs, we learn why they are successful, how we can adopt their strategy and how to improve upon it, thus drawing more attention to ourselves. It’s dog eats dog out there, or rather, blog eat blog.

Principle 4: Blog effectively

One of the important things with blogs is to think consistently about what will be the best strategy for your company. For example, Thomas Nelson Publishing recommends that you have your employees host blogs separately to your company so as to distance personal opinions from company policy. However, a smaller company might do the opposite of that strategy and have all employees post their blogs on the company website to create more of a ‘community feel’.

Principle 5: Blog with Vision

Take what you’ve already learned about blogging; put it into new perspectives, and attempt to predict directions in your particular niche, from the implementation of new strategies and technologies, to possible blogging avenues as yet unexplored.

Principle 6: Blog with Depth

The 6th principle is to blog with depth. This means to blog with your marketing strategy and purpose firmly in mind. Remember, a blog is there to serve your marketing and overall business strategy and is only a tool to do that- it is not an end in itself. When you look at it from this perspective you will know what to do, what not do, and what to definitely avoid.

Principle 7: Keep note of blogging details

The more attention you pay to what is happening on your blog, the more effective it will be. It’s just like a pot plant - the more energy and attention you give it, the better it will grow.

Principle 8: Avoid blog overuse

Don’t’ blog just for the sake of it. Make sure you are blogging with purpose and in conjunction with other effective marketing strategies. Remember, there are a host of other internet marketing strategies that are equally effective and can be used in conjunction with blogging. Explore them all and create a multi faceted strategy that clearly makes your company the preeminent force in your field.

So the good, the BLOG, and the ugly, is about knowing how a good thing is to be used and how to avoid negative consequences. Following the above principles of blogging strategy will help to ensure that your blog-venture is an effective one.

It is important that you law down rules for your employees to follow if they are blogging under the company banner. Otherwise, you could be open to the torts of slander, libel and defamation. Or you could just be downright embarrassed by what gets put on it. Remember, once it’s published on your blog it’s there for the whole world to see.

A lot of bloggers use free blogging services such as www.blogger.com. I advise you to get your blog going with Wordpress or Moveable Type on your own domain as these will give you a lot more control over your blog.

http://www.wordpress.org http://www.movabletype.org/

Both these services provide an abundance of help and support materials. You’ll be a successful blogger before you know it!