If you were asked what makes a blog a lot different from the conventional web site, what would your answer be? Off the top of my head, I would probably say something about the opportunity for interaction between blog (business) owner and the reader. Indeed, comments make blogs a whole lot more interesting and real as compared to static web sites.

Keeping this idea in mind, ask yourself how you are making use of commenting to your advantage. Has this concept even crossed your mind? Or maybe you have not really paid that much attention to it. In this post and the next few ones, let us take a deeper look at how you can make the most out of comments in your blog.

The first step to consider would be how you allow commenting. Having readers be able to leave comments is a great thing but this does not mean that you have no control as to the who and what. As you might probably know, spamming is rife online – even when it comes to comments. As such, you might want to employ specific measures as to who can comment and the content of the comment as well.

Just a note, though, balance is the key here. On the one end, you can allow everyone and anyone to comment without moderation. On the other end, you can require readers to sign up and then log in every time they want to leave a comment. In my mind, these two extremes may not be the best solutions. It would be better to take a moderate stance and make it easy for real readers to leave comments but make sure that automated software cannot leave comments.

Another way that you can make it easier for your readers to read your blog is to make sure that your categories and tags are created and grouped properly. Categories and tags exist for a reason – so that people can find certain posts under specific topics easily. If your posts are mislabeled, then readers may not find what they are looking for. Oh, of course, if they are patient enough to go through the whole archives they will eventually find the appropriate post. However, I doubt that everyone will want to do this all the time. So, try taking a second – even a third – look at your categories and tags and make sure that they are properly organized.

Don’t make it hard for readers to leave their comments. It is understandable that you would want to set certain measures in place in order to weed out spam comments. However, in your efforts to do so, do not overlook the ease that readers are looking for. For example, requiring readers to sign in is a very effective way of avoiding spam comments. This, however, would turn off many readers to leave their comments. Look for alternatives such as plug-ins or word verification instead.

Make subscribing easy. You want readers to subscribe to your blog so that they can keep up with your updates easily. Place the subscribe link or button on all pages and in an obvious location.

In the previous post, we focused on two general – but major – aspects of blogging that you need to work on in order to optimize your blog for your readers. Indeed, layout and content work hand in hand and should be designed with your readers in mind.

There are, however, many other aspects of blogging which you can pay attention to in order to make your blog better with your readers in mind. They may fall under either of the topics mentioned in the last post.

Easy navigation is a must for any blog that aims to be successful. This has something to do with both content and layout. Blogging is all about presenting content from a more realistic point of view AND it is about finding all the relevant content with minimal effort. That is why you should design your blog with the idea that you will be making it easy for your reader to find relevant posts, links to your archives, and even external links to your sources.

Some practical ideas:

-make sure the HOME button or link is easy to find; the header would be a good location for this.
-your archives should be easy to find as well; upper right or left column would be ideal. The idea is for the readers NOT to have to scroll down to find these links.
-other relevant links such as the About page should also be in a conspicuous location.
-sources or supplementary information to your posts should have links within the posts themselves. This way, the reader just has to click on the anchor text.

I was browsing through one of my blog network forums the other day and I ran across an interesting thread entitled “Describe the reason you blog in one word.” The responses were quite varied but in the pattern that I noticed is that bloggers who wrote personal blogs tended to write for themselves while bloggers who wrote for business purposes tend to have the reader in mind.

When it comes to business blogs, the reader should be the foremost consideration. Have you asked yourself whether your business blog is optimized for your readers? Take a look at some of these considerations that could help you tweak your blog.

Content
I’ve written about this time and again but it wouldn’t hard to do it again (and again and again, if necessary). Your content should be geared towards meeting the needs and expectations of your readers. You want them to keep coming back for more and to patronize your business. Give them what they want.

Layout
Again, content may be king but the layout matters a great deal as well. Try putting yourself in your readers’ shoes. How would you like to keep on reading long blocks of longwinded text? How would you like to get lost in those long blocks? I bet you wouldn’t appreciate that – neither would your readers. Provide them with a pleasant experience – both in terms of content and layout. A great combination of these two factors would give you good results in terms of reader satisfaction.

There are certain benefits that you can measure easily and clearly. Then there are those which you cannot really quantify but you KNOW that they do exist. The same goes with blogging – there are those benefits which you can place figures to while there are those which just makes you know you are gaining somehow.

I came to this realization when I read Rachael Herrscher’s post on “Another Reason To Start Your Own Blog.” At the beginning, I was thinking – oh great, here is another post on why we all should blog. Do we really need another post like that?

I really appreciate how she put things in perspective, though:

But blogging for your business or blogging about your industry gives you opportunities and a level of credibility with others that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. It also gives you access to a whole new network of people whom you would have had no excuse to talk to before. And of course, for those of you searching for someone to talk about you and your business, blogs are a vast new outlet to receive online coverage of your business.

I’m a small fish in a big sea of bloggers, but my various blogs never cease to serve up great contacts for me. Even on a person-to-person level (the real-life stuff), I’m able to meet people because of my blog. We have blogger dinners in our community, local blog networks and, of course, the huge network of bloggers available on the World Wide Web.

So if you’ve been putting off starting your business blog or blogging about a niche in your industry you are passionate about–it’s time.

You hit the nail right on the head with that post, Rachael!

Remember the biggest excuse that business owners have when it comes to blogging? “I do not have time for it.” This is probably true for many business owners. With everything that they have to tend to at work and at home, they really might have no time to write and maintain their own business blog.

Yet there is a workaround to this problem. Why not create a team of bloggers which can handle the business blog? This can mean that you, the head of the company, can still be part of that team or it can be that you will totally leave the blog to your “team.” I prefer the former set up though.

I believe that if you really want your business blog to help your business, you, being the leader of the company, should be deeply involved in the activity as well. Having other people working with you on the blog means that you won’t have to spend as much time on it, though. It will be a good thing for everyone’s productivity because the work for the blog will be spread between 2 or 3 people. The number of people on your team depends on how often you want to post entries. If you want entries posted everyday, then you might want 2 or 3 people on the team. You might also want to assign a reviewer to ensure the quality and integrity of your posts.

Another benefit of having several people work on your blog is intellectual variety and stimulation. Having different points of view and ideas in the blog will certainly add more flavor to your blog.

Image source: http://thegoldguys.blogspot.com/

We’ve come to the end of this series about the Four Ps of Effective Business Blogging, as Tom Pick has explained. To recap the first three, they are Personality, Persistence, and Passion. The last of the bunch is something more measurable and quite practical – Promotion.

With every business venture, promotion is one of the most important activities. To realize how important promotion is, it is necessary to go back to the core goal of the business activity. For blogging, why are you in the blogging business? Or rather, why are you maintaining a blog for your business?

The answer is simple – you want to reach out to the countless people out there who could be potential readers. For business blogs, you want to extend your business’s reach and let the whole world know that you exist and inform them of what you have to offer. The main role of a blog is to achieve this goal and the main way by which you can do this with your business blog is to promote the blog.

There are many ways by which you can promote your blog – SEO practices, making use of social networking sites, exchanging links with other blogs and sites, and so on. All these do not happen by themselves, you need to exert some effort in order to make your blog known to the world.

Of the four Ps that Tom Pick presents in his blog, I think that I have a particularly affinity for the third one – passion. He writes:

To maintain the discipline necessary to be persistent in blog posting, it helps to pick a subject one is passionate about. For example, among political blogs, there are a number of strong blogs on the both the right and the left ends of the political spectrum, but very few in the middle; it’s hard to be passionate about moderation.

Indeed, passion and persistence are closely tied with each other. It is way easier to be persistent about maintaining a blog if you are passionate about it. I think that passion can be identified in two levels – one, passion for the act of blogging/writing itself, and two, passion for the subject of the blog.

For a businessman, the chances are that he would be quite passionate about the topic or subject of his blog. This is because I am assuming that the blog’s topic would be focused on the business and what it has to offer, whether in products or services. Of course, my assumption could be wrong but I believe that many successful businessmen are those who have a certain degree of passion when it comes to what they are doing – their business.

Passion about writing and the blog itself is another story, however. Not everyone is cut out for blogging or writing. For businessmen who want to get something out of blogging, however, I believe that he will get to build up his passion for the activity if he realizes clearly what blogging can do for him.

The second P of effective business blogging according to Tom Pick is Personality:

This is perhaps the most unquantifiable of the four Ps of business blogging – or even blogging in general. Tell me, how do you measure personality? I suppose you can describe the personality of the blogger as reflected by his blog yet there really is not clear measure of how good or bad it is.

I think the more important thing is that the blogger (or bloggers, for that matter) is able to transfer his or her intended personality to the blog he or she is maintaining. More so, there is this interesting thing that I have noticed. There are some bloggers who write so well that they create a whole different personality for their blog. You just may be surprised to find out that the blogger has a totally different personality!

My point is this: one doesn’t have to be all charm and extroverted in person to maintain a good business blog. What is needed is for you to determine what personality you want your blog to have and work on building this image up through your writing. It may not be easy in the beginning but it can be done and believe me, it is worth it.

People like ideas that are easy to remember. When it comes to blogging for business, there are countless ideas that could help one to improve on his activities. I like Tom Pick’s take on the concepts for effective business blogging. He used a pattern that makes it easier for all of us – the Four Ps of Effective Business Blogging. Let’s take a look at them ourselves and see if we can add our own input.

Persistence
According to Tom Pick:

I totally agree. I couldn’t find exact figures on how many dead blogs there are today but I am sure that there are tons of them. There are various reasons as to why dead blogs come about and I am sure that one of them is the lack of persistence. Many people jump into the blogging bandwagon with very high expectations and when these are not met within a month, they give up.

You see, blogging is not a short term activity. It takes time – certainly more than a month’s worth of work. The solution is quite simple – when you start a business blog, make sure you understand what it entails and stick to it till you get the results that you are aiming for.