Archive for the 'How to' Category

Giving credit where credit is due, I found the following article from the Boston Globe in a post from one of my favourite bloggers – Jeremiah the Web Prophet. As the title of the article would suggest, the author suggests that being an effective blogger can lead to better career opportunities. I couldn’t agree more. Not only has this blog been great for business, but it has also been great for my personal development and peer recognition. The author identifies the following 8 reasons why blogging is good for your career.

1. Blogging creates a network. A blogger puts himself out in the world as someone who is interesting and engaging — just the type of person everyone wants to meet. ‘
2. Blogging can get you a job. Dervala Hanley writes a quirky literary blog that got her a job is at Stone Yamashita Partners, a consulting firm that ”tries to bring humanity to business.” Hanley says the firm was attracted to her ability to put her business experience into personal terms on the blog.
3. Blogging is great training. To really get attention for your blog, you’re going to have to have daily entries for a while. At least a few months to get rolling, and then three or four times a week after that. So you will really get to know your topic well.
4. Blogging helps you move up quickly. To escape the entry-level grind, you can either pay your dues, working up a ladder forever, or you can establish yourself as an expert in the world by launching a blog. High-level jobs are for people who specialize, and hiring managers look for specialists online.
5. Blogging makes self-employment easier. You can’t make it on your own unless you’re good at selling yourself. One of the most cost-effective and efficient ways of marketing yourself is with a blog. When someone searches for your product or service, make sure your blog comes up first.
6. Blogging provides more opportunities. Building brands, changing careers, launching a business — these endeavors are much easier once you’ve established yourself online.
7. Blogging could be your big break. Visually creative types can blog beyond just text.
8. Blogging makes the world a better place. Blogging is about sharing, contributing and collaborating. You’ll be getting loads of Karma in no time.

In addition to having a blog, I would also suggest developing a personal website that contains background information and a resume. You should then link between the website and blog. You can find mine here.

When I started blogging I just jumped in with both feet. It was great fun but I do have a few scars from mistakes I could have avoided. So before you start shooting from the hip like I did, I’d like to offer the following suggestion to ensure that you get started off on the right foot

Develop your blog strategy before you do anything else.

Launching a corporate blog is a lot like launching a new product or service, without a proper strategy in place it is doubtful that your blog will achieve much success. If your company has an up to date marketing plan then answering the questions below should be relatively easy. If you do not have a current marketing plan, then maybe this will be the impetus needed to develop one. Shadowbox Studios has developed a series of questions that, when answered, help you define the overall strategy and direction for your corporate blog.

A) Developing your blogging goals and objectives

Why is it that you are starting a blog and what are the results you expect to receive? Setting goals and objectives is critical for any business process and blogging is no different. Without realistic goals and objectives, your blog WILL NOT succeed. Please keep in mind that the goal is where we want to be. The objectives are the steps needed to get there. Successful goals and objectives are SMART: Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Relevant – Timely.

Sample Goals (not limited to 5)

1. Improve my company’s online visibility.
2. Acquire 10 clients after 6 months of blogging.
3. Position myself as an expert in conversational copywriting.
4. Network with other online copywriters.
5. Produce an example of how a blog can extend a company’s message.

Sample Objectives

1. Identify 5 competitor blogs.
2. Read every new post in the above mentioned competitor blogs.
3. Make at least three comments per week in the above mentioned competitor blogs.
4. Have 10 reciprocal blogroll links with similarly focused blogs.
5. Target ten keywords or phrases (we’ll discuss these on the next post) and get in the top 20 results.
6. Be able to identify key topics by reader comments and trackbacks.
7. Produce at least 3 blog posts per week.
8. Assess the effectiveness of blog effort by analyzing subscriber data (RSS and mailing lists)

B) Identifying your target audience and defining your blog focus

1. What is the vertical market or cross functional specialty on which your blog will be targeted.
2. Who is your intended target audience?
3. What are the topics of your blog going to be?
4. Please list 5-10 key words that are associated with your topic?

C) Identifying and understanding your competitors

The best way to find out you your competitors are that are blogging is to input the keywords that you listed above into a blog search engine. Although I recommend Technorati , there are other very good blog search engines such as Feedster, PubSub.com), IceRocket) and Google’s Blog Search). Technorati has a feature called “authority” that makes it easy to determine who your main competitors are. When you conduct a search on Technorati you can choose whether you would like to see only the results that have authority – Technorati calculates a blog’s authority by how many people link to it. We assume that the bloggers in your industry with the most “authority” are your main competitors. When conducting your search try different combinations of your key words. Try putting two or more key words in quotation marks (“corporate blogging”).

Once you have identified who are the main players in your industry, we strongly suggest that you start following these blogs. Reading what other corporate bloggers are writing can provide you with basic corporate blogging guidelines and spur ideas for future blogging topics. Lastly, another great way to find quality blogs is to check out the “blog rolls” of the competitor sites you have already identified.

1. Please name the URLs of the top 5 competitor blogs.
2. What are the blog categories of these 5 competitors?
3. How long have these blogs been in existence? You can determine this by looking in the archives section of these blogs.
4. On average, how many posts per week do these blogs publish?

Once you have completed this strategy exercise you will be on the right path to successful blogging.

The guys at Emerson Process Experts have created a must read RSS Starter Kit. RSS is a life changing technology people. Get on the bandwagon.

What is RSS?

RSS, short for Really Simple Syndication, lets you receive instant information updates. With RSS webfeeds you are in control — you decide what you want to read and when you want to read it. A simple news reader makes this possible.

Once you subscribe to a site’s RSS webfeed or even a search engine feed, your news reader goes out and grabs the updated information saving you the time it takes to visit each site. The latest information as soon as it is published comes to your news reader.

Major news sites, blogs, and a growing number of corporate websites publish their content as RSS webfeeds. Millions of sites such as BBC World News, The New York Times, and EasyDeltaV.com use RSS to deliver headlines and summaries.

Some browsers like Firefox automatically check for webfeeds when you visit a website, and display this icon when it finds one. This auto discovery will be in the next Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office releases.

Why use RSS?

Nick Carr recently posted seven rules for corporate blogging on his blog in response to Scoble having cracked (his opinion, not mine).¬? I think some of his rules certainly have merit, while others are just too over the top.¬? The following are his seven rules with my comments interspersed.

1) Don’t do it. If you have no compelling business reason to get involved in the blogosphere, then don’t. While there’s no evidence, beyond a few anecdotes, that corporate blogging leads to better business results, there are clearly risks. If you give bloggers too much freedom, they may “go native” and tarnish your reputation by writing something stupid. If you try to rein them in, you’ll be attacked for being a dinosaur. That’s a lose-lose situation – the kind companies should avoid if at all possible. And don’t buy that nonsense about needing to have “conversations” with the marketplace. That’s an ideology, not a strategy.

I agree wholeheartedly with Nick’s statement -¬? If you have no compelling business reason to get involved in the blogosphere, then don’t.¬?¬? I think that this also ties into another one of my beliefs on corporate blogging which is that not all businesses need to have a blog. The important thing to remember is that you should clearly define your blogging objectives and strategy before you start writing.

¬?I somewhat agree with Nick’s statement – If you give bloggers too much freedom, they may “go native” and tarnish your reputation by writing something stupid. This is easily preventable by setting corporate blogging guidelines at the outset. Hill and Knowlton, a PR/Advertising company, has some of the best guidelines that I have come across.

I completely disagree with Nick’s statement – And don’t buy that nonsense about needing to have “conversations” with the marketplace. That’s an ideology, not a strategy. I’m sorry Nick, but Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to satisfy customers and the only way you can effectively do this is by talking to people in your market(s) and a corporate blog is one of the corporate communications tools that facilitates conversations.

2) Use blogs to advance your business interests. OK, you’ve decided to ignore my first rule. Fine. But don’t get carried away. For companies, blogging should be treated as another channel for corporate communications, with its own strengths and weaknesses. You should use that channel to get your message out, not to give employees a sand pile for self-expression. Yes, corporate bloggers should write with honesty and personality, but they should never forget – nor let their readers forget – that they’re speaking on behalf of their employer. If a corporate blogger is embarrassed to be promoting his company’s interests in public, he shouldn’t be a corporate blogger.

I think rule 2 is rather sensible.¬? It also reinforces the need for well defined corporate blogging guidelines.

3) Stick to your goals. Maybe the goal of your blogging program is to help customers use your products more effectively. Maybe it’s to make your company more attractive to potential recruits. Maybe it’s to influence the public or lawmakers. The important thing is to be clear about your objectives, to stick to them and, as with any corporate program, to routinely evaluate how well you’re meeting them. If blogging isn’t working, then change what you’re doing (or who’s doing it). If it still isn’t working, then stop it.

I agree 100%.¬? This goes back to having clearly defined objectives and strategy before starting your blog.¬?

4) Choose your bloggers wisely. Blogging is a hot medium. The people who blog for your company should be ones who can keep their cool – and who aren’t likely to fall in love with their own words. Often, the people who most want to be allowed to blog are precisely the ones who shouldn’t be allowed to blog.

I also agree with this.¬? Blogging, as you will find out once you get rolling, requires thick skin and a level head.¬? As Scoble has shown, even the best of them lose it on occasion. A blogger on tilt can quickly negate all hard won goodwill that your blog may have garnered.

5) Assign blogging buddies. You need to trust your bloggers, not censor them. On the other hand, blogging makes publishing so simple that having some kind of circuit breaker can make a lot of sense. Think about requiring each of your corporate bloggers to have a blogging buddy – a colleague who reads each post before it’s published. All boggers have had the experience of hitting the “publish” button too soon – and then regretting it. A second set of eyes will solve most problems before they even happen. And your bloggers will thank you for that (after, perhaps, some initial whining).

I really like this suggestion!¬? We have all pushed the send button and then instantly regretted it.¬? Pushing the “publish” button on a blog can actually be worse as the number of subscribers can be significantly larger than the recipient list in your email.

6) Be wary of allowing comments. Most people who comment on other people’s blogs are smart and insightful. But “most” isn’t “all.” In addition to being a spam-magnet, blog comments can be nasty, obscene, and offensive. This can lead to another lose-lose situation: If you don’t censor comments, you’ll end up with stuff that can embarrass your company. If you do censor them, you’ll be accused of, well, censorship. In most cases, it’s best just to turn off the comment feature from the get-go. That may annoy the true believers, but they’re a tiny minority anyway.

I completely disagree with this rule. Blogging only becomes a two way communication medium when the comments and trackback features are turned on.¬? If you don?Äôt have them turned on then you are essentially giving your the people in your market(s) the middle finger – your voice is not important to me.¬? The whole point of blogging is to engage in conversations and you can?Äôt do that effectively with the comments and trackback features turned off. Lastly, if it is spam you are worried about then make sure your blog software supports the Akismet plug-in.

7) Call in the lawyers. I hate to say it, but if you’re allowing your employees to blog on your dime, you’re liable for what they write. Better safe than sued.

I disagree with this 100%.¬? As one person commented on Nick’s blog, “‘Calling in the lawyers’ would kill any chance of a blog getting off the ground. Set good blogging guidelines and leave the lawyers out of it.

Microsoft’s uber blogger, Robert Scoble, has six tips on how to properly get your blog on.¬? They are:
Tip #1: What’s in a name? Search engine results.
Tip #2: Read a bunch of blogs before you start.
Tip #3: Keep it simple. Keep it focused.
Tip #4: Demonstrate passion.
Tip #5: Show your authority.
Tip #6: Add comments.

Of course Scoble’s post fills in all of the details.¬? Good stuff and definitely worth a read.

Its been said here before that with blogs, its all about the conversations. The way conversations happen in the blogosphere is via comments and to a lesser extent, trackbacks. The problem is that when you start conversing in the blogosphere, keeping track of what you said and where you said it becomes cumbersome. That was until came along.

How do you know how well your blog is doing? One of the things you can do is to monitor the number of page views your blog is receiving with the idea that the number of page views should increase over time for successful blogs. There are two problems with that approach. The first being that the total number of page views and growth there of does not accurately correlate with the ?Äúsuccess?Äù of a blog. It is possible to have a very successful niche specific blog with a small target audience with not much growth over time. The second problem with this measurement is that it doesn?Äôt quantify the most important variable in blogging ?Äì conversations. If you don?Äôt have conversation in your blog then you don?Äôt have much. So what we need is a formula for measuring a blogs conversation coefficient.

That is precisely what Stowe Boyd did the other day in his blog. You can read the original post here with the follow up post here. The crux of his theory is that successful blogs — ones that were currently viable and vibrant, and those that were on a growth trajectory from their start — shared a common characteristic: The ratio between posts and comments+trackbacks. Thus the Conversational Index (CI)= (Comments+Trackbacks)/Posts. This means the CI gets larger as the conversation gets richer.

While this may not be a perfect algorithm to measure a blog?Äôs true success, I do think it does provide a good picture of a blog?Äôs general health.

If you?Äôre going to be blogging, you?Äôd better know what you?Äôre doing because a poorly run blog is worse than no blog at all. The Post-Gazette ran an article that was kind of a corporate blog primer for newbies. The best part of the article was the 5 blogging tips listed below:

Blogging is an informal medium, usually made up of informal phrases. If you blog, don’t use corporate-speak.

Don’t try to get one over on the audience. This might go without saying, but is worth saying anyway because it is particularly important in the blogosphere, which tends to penalize marketing spin.

It’s important to monitor blogs, even if you don’t participate in discussions. They’ll give you feedback about your product or service. You’ll also learn about your competitors and how their customers view them.

The kid in Australia with five readers could be just as important as the larger blogs, because the media scours blogs to learn about subjects when researching articles and broadcast pieces. I can vouch for that.

Even if you don’t publish a blog, have a blog policy. If you don’t blog officially, somebody in your organization probably will do it informally.

So I was reading an article on corporate blogging in the Hindustan Times?Ķ..uh, did I just say that? The Hindustan Times? That?Äôs the beauty of the times we live in. You can find great information from the most unlikely of sources and with the explosion of blogs, both personal and corporate, over the past year we have really been inundated with massive amounts of information. If you are an active blogger, you have to have asked yourself just how you effectively can get your message heard by the people you want to hear it. It really is a small miracle when someone from your target audience (client, industry experts, competitors, etc.) actually finds your blog.

The article from the Hindustan Times talks about the relationship between successful blogs and their ?Äúthought leader?Äù authors. The article identified the following traits of successful blogs:

1. Ability to connect

A corporate blog is a conversation the company has with its customers. A thought leader needs the ability to connect to its customers. Remember its a two way conversation and the better you connect with your customers, the better the influence.

2. Honesty

In an information world its easy to distinguish a pseudo from a genuine expert. Corporate blogging isn’t some cover-up exercise. It’s about an honest expression, something the readers would genuinely trust and believe.

3. Individual creative signature

Thought leadership through corporate blogging is your creative expression. Your individual creative expression that distinguishes you from others, your unique signature.

4. Sharing

Thought leadership is about sharing your thoughts to guide, lead and influence your audience.

DelawareOnline recently ran an interesting article about corporate blogging. Rather than posting the article in its entirety, I thought I would just post the highlights (as I see them) and comment where appropriate.

Technorati, a search engine for blogs, reports that 70,000 new blogs a day join the 23.7 million already in existence.

Corporations are joining the blogosphere to take part in the online debates that involve their brands, products and industries. David Sifry, chief executive at Technorati, says corporations are worried by the idea that a disgruntled customer can reach thousands or millions of people with a blog.

“In the world of the Internet, you don’t own your brand. Your customers and your users own your brand. You’re lucky if you get to shepherd it. That loss of control is very scary,” Sifry says.

I think that this is the seminal reason why companies need to be blogging. As they say in Cluetrain Manifesto, “markets are conversations,” and blogging is the best way for companies to join the conversation.

Wladawsky-Berger says that even when he writes about technology, what’s distinctive is his own perspective. Even if you’re writing about mainframes or you’re writing about XML, it’s your personal style that comes across. What you choose to write about is which of the contents of your head are you sharing with the world,” he says.

This is an important point ?Äì be honest, unique and give your blog a personal voice. The worst thing that you can do is to use your blog as the ?Äúcompany mouthpiece?Äù.

Creating a theme blog is smart because customers are more likely to enjoy reading about a topic important to them than an overt sales pitch, says marketing strategist Steve Rubel, a senior vice president at CooperKatz & Co. in New York and author of the Micro Persuasion blog.

“The secret to a good corporate blog is that it has to be high interest, and if your subject matter isn’t, you have to figure out a way to connect with subjects that are,” he says.

I think this goes hand in hand with giving your blog a personal voice. If your blog isn?Äôt interesting, no one?Äôs going to read it.