Blogs and the Fear of Going Naked in Front of Competitors

Why Revealing Content and Comments Shouldn’t Worry Business Bloggers

A popular reason companies put off the inevitable blogging is fear that competitors will read their material and customer comments. Of all the reasons not to launch a business blog, I think this is the weakest. Here’s my argument.

Your business skills won’t desert you when you start a business blog. Most business leaders I know fancy themselves as quite astute. Most of them are right. If your firm is putting out high quality sales collateral, public relations stories, and a strong website, those communication skills will carry over into social…

Teaching and Learning at JJL

Today you can find me at Joyful Jubilant Learning, where I posted on Learning to Teach, Teaching to Learn.

JJL is a group blog where we write about all things related to learning. JJL is personal, educational, sometimes amusing, often times quite serious. If you’ve never checked it out, please take a look.

9 Important Parts of a Business Blog

In terms of design and functionality, certain business blogs are so bare bones, they look like a ghost town. Others are so loaded up with bells and whistles they look like a carnival. Somewhere in between is where you want to be. Whatever else you do, include these 9 features on your business blog.

1. Subscribe to comments. If you want conversation, you have to make it easy for people to converse. Comment subscription allows readers to get email updates of new comments made on individual blog posts. Result? More repeat comments, real conversations, deeper conversations.

2. Full RSS feeds. Partial RSS feeds provide…

The 3 Business Blog Strategies

These days, lots of companies want to blog, but can’t figure out how to get started. I’m going to try to make it easy.

Business Blog Strategy 1 - The SEO Blog

Three business blogging activities take time - writing, traditional marketing, and social media engagement. Of the three, social media engagement often takes the most time of all. An SEO blog takes social media engagement out of the equation. The overriding purpose of an SEO blog is content optimization - lifting pages of the corporate website higher on Google.

An SEO blog may not allow comments. It’s aim is to provide useful information…

How to Prepare Yourself for Launching a Business Blog

Is a business blog right for me? Will I be able to achieve my blogging objectives?

If you’re asking yourself these questions, there’s a simple way to find out - a simple way to prepare yourself for becoming a blogger. Here it is -

Read blogs and leave comments.

This is so important, I’m almost to the point of requiring clients to do this before taking them on for a business blog assignment. Reading and commenting on blogs will enable you to -

• Learn how to find blogs in your areas of interest
• Learn how RSS and feed readers work
• Learn who the influential bloggers…

Guest Post on Confident Writing - Blogs that Nurture Community

Now that Joanna Young’s Confident Writing blog is up again, I want to let you know my guest post on nurturing community through blogging is live.

Thanks, Joanna, for the guest post opportunity.

The post is also my entry for Robert Hruzek’s May group project, What I Learned From Community. There’s still time to enter.

Off to SOBCon09

Heading into Chicago soon for SOBCon09, a blogging event/extravaganza I’ve been looking forward to for months. I hope I come back next week with lots and lots of ideas to share. Actually it’s going to be hard not to, considering the standout lineup of SOBCon presenters and all the fabulous bloggers who will be in attendance.

See you next week!

Thank You, Word Sell Commenters

Conversations have been lively here in recent weeks. Thanks to all of you have commented - and all of you who stopped by just to read.

Recent commenters …

Terry Heath Check out his new blog about blogging - it’s fabulous.

Lara Kulpa My WordPress developer, who created my new look!

Robyn McMaster Read Adversity and Me. I think you’ll love it.

Meryl K. Evans Meryl always has a unique take on writing topics.

Jan Geronimo A new Word Sell reader - welcome! Check out his excellent (and PG-rated) post about sex and blogging.

Karen Hanrahan aka, Mother Earth

Fred Schlegel For a taste of the Frog, try Cardboard Creativity.

Barbara Ling Barb, thank you…

Business Blog as Base of Operations for Online Marketing

Lately I’ve taken to describing business blogs as a company’s base of operations for online marketing activities.

All Roads Should Lead to Your Business Blog
Most companies - 99.9% - consider their basic website to be the base of operations for their web presence. All roads lead to the website’s Home page. The Home page URL is what’s plastered all over business cards, stationary, brochures, and promotional materials. Inbound links (which are usually in short supply) point to the Home page.

But is this strategy still correct? Not necessarily. Today, customers want to evaluate companies differently. They’re interested in personality, values, and authenticity.…

If You Have Lots to Say, Say It on a Business Blog

Few website visitors have the time, patience, or motivation to read a mountain of text. Even the most brilliantly worded and useful information put up for display on a traditional static website goes largely unread. Contrast this to a business blog. There, you can spoon feed your information to visitors in digestible bits. Plus, since a blog is subscribable, interested visitors can find your new information without ever leaving the comfort of their own email inbox.

Don’t stovepipe your blog.

Don’t let your business blog and your static website be strangers. Take product pages, for instance. Keep them relatively brief and…

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