Though you may find blogging for your business fun and exciting, you would have to admit that you started out blogging because of certain goals. You had something in mind at the beginning, something that you want to achieve through your business blog. So when can you say that you business blog is a success?

Quite obviously, this would depend on your goal – or goals for that matter. Here are some specific points that you can contemplate on when you think of your business blog’s success. Take note, they are in no particular order.

Attention from the media
This would depend on whether you are a small business or a large corporation. For small businesses, of course, do not despair if CNN Money does not feature your blog – it would take some time. However, your local online newspapers and magazines would definitely take notice of your blog once it takes off. This can be a measure of success.

Speaking engagements
Another measure of success would be the fact that you get invited to speak at conferences, seminars, or workshops. It is a given that the topic you would be speaking about would be your field of expertise as you have established in your blog. Of course, you would have to explicitly state in your blog that you are open to and welcome speaking engagements.

These are only a couple of ideas on how to measure a business blog’s success – let’s look into a few more in the next post.

If there is anything that business and corporate bloggers should know, it is that we should learn from those who are doing it and doing well. Ever heard of Nuts About Southwest? It is the corporate blog of the renowned Southwest Airlines. Their description:

Nuts about Southwest is all about our Employees, Customers, airplanes, and airports. We really are Nuts about Southwest and we hope that our Readers will share that passion by posting their own comments.

That in itself is quite encouraging and stimulating for their readers, isn’t it? You should make your About Page substantial and relevant with your readers – you can start with something like this.

More importantly, though, the blogging policy of Southwest Airlines includes the reviewing of each and every entry before it is posted. How does it work? So they have different bloggers coming up with their own posts. Before these are uploaded and published, one of their two top people in PR and communications takes a look at the written work.

It is nothing new, really. Most successful corporate blogs follow this in practice. It helps keep the blog in focus and avoids potential problems with regard to content (and the reaction it may elicit) in the future. More so, it goes to show that there is indeed protocol and there are processes that are being followed in the world of corporate blogging. You just don’t do it by slapping and dashing posts as you like.

How about you, do you review your business blog entries before they go live? I should hope so.

What do you normally do when writing entries for your business blog? How do you go about it? For example, you have a specific topic. Do you just go ahead and write as you think or do you sit down and think about it for a while and then write?

I believe that either way would work just fine. It really depends on your writing style and method – we all have our own preferences and we cannot really say that one is better than the other. What I am concerned about, though, is the tendency of some people to merely fire from the hip without checking up on their facts thoroughly.

You may be thinking, hey I am writing for my blog, not for a newspaper – I am not a journalist! Maybe not in the professional sense of the word but if you want to establish yourself as someone credible – or rather, you want to establish the credibility of your company through your blog – then you have to have cold hard facts. These facts are what should be in your blog.

Think about it this way. Why are you maintaining a business blog again? You want to reach out to existing and potential customers, right? An excellent way to achieve this goal is to be able to present new ideas and opinions on different matters relating to your field of expertise. Now, when it comes to business matters, you are likely to present statistics and other facts. My suggestion: make sure you got your facts (numbers and otherwise) correctly before publishing your blog entry.

I came across this article on The Daily Herald today which caught my interest as its title was “Blogging is good business – if you have something to say.” Indeed, I was thinking to myself, this is so true. There are so many blogs out there – business and otherwise – that do not really seem to have something to say. There is no central theme or idea to the whole blog and this somehow takes away from the essence of the blog. This topic is somehow related to the last post – being focused when it comes to the theme of your business blog.

The columnist, Jim Kendall points out that the blogging fervor has somewhat died down these days. I would beg to disagree as it seems that more and more people are getting into blogging. However, it might be more accurate to state that the focus seems to have gotten lost somewhere along the way.

Business blogs are more specific in their nature and objectives than personal blogs. That is why it is important that you, as a business blogger, determine what you want to convey to your readers; readers who might be existing customers or potential customers. The obvious point here is that if you run a business, your blog will be about your products or services.

However, there are probably countless other business blogs out there who are dealing with the same topic. So why should readers choose your blog over their blogs? Here is where your innovativeness comes in. You should be able to offer more – in different aspects. Your products and services should be cutting edge. More than this, you have to share your own insights – this is what will truly set you apart from other similar business blogs. In the end, if you have something to say, there will always be people who will want to read it.

Here are more practical tips to help you maintain focus within your business blog.

Write with passion.
This comes easily if you are truly passionate about your business and its products or services. I would assume that you are in this business because you are indeed passionate about it. Not everyone is talented when it comes to writing but real passion can be read and felt. More than the passion, however, you should write about something that will be of interest to your targeted audience. That is why you don’t just write down random posts in your business blog. You think about the ideas and then work on the posts.

Don’t be afraid to link and reference to other sources of information.
Some people think that they should not do this as it promotes their possible competitors. It’s hogwash, really. You cannot expect people to take you as the authority in your field just like that. You need to be able to establish your authority first. You have to be able to demonstrate that you are giving relevant and accurate information. By providing links and references, you are showing that you are confident of your information. More so, link to your own work as well. This will give the readers a view of everything else that you have to offer and further establish your credibility as well.

Promotion and marketing are a must!
Promotion and marketing of your blog, that is. For existing readers, you do not really need to do this but for those people who are not aware of your blog yet – and there should be a lot of them – you should help them find your blog.

Blogging for business is unique from other blogs in a sense that you are targeting a specific audience – rather, you should be targeting a specific audience. This could be one of the biggest mistakes that business blogs commit. Some business bloggers would try hard to be on the A-list of blogs. This would entail trying to reach out to all sectors out there – which is possible, but not really effective in the business blogging sense.

How so? If you try to cover all your bases with regard to readership, you just might end up being too broad and generic. This, in turn, would negate the main purpose of a business blog, which is to attract a specific market sector.

So what are you supposed to do? It is simple – be as focused as you can be. Determine who you want to get as your customers and deliver information that they will find relevant. Here are some practical tips to help you maintain that focus.

Be an expert in your subject matter.
You probably are already – that’s how you got started in this business. What you need to do now is to maintain that focus and present your subject in every way possible.

Continuously add to your knowledge.
Do this by keeping updated on recent developments in your field. Learning is a lifelong process and the same thing applies to your field. But don’t stop here – share that new knowledge with your readers through your blog. In this manner, they will see that you not only know the basics but that you keep yourself updated on everything new.

(to be continued)

Before answering this question, perhaps it would be better to ask first, “Do you need a regular posting schedule?” This is easier to answer – yes, you need to have a regular posting schedule for your business blog in the sense that you always have updates for your readers.

The tougher question is then, “How often should you be posting?” More so, “Do you need to post on the same days of the week every time?”

These questions aren’t new, really. Even bloggers who maintain blogs other than for business purposes have the same questions. Yet for the purposes of a business blog, how important is having a rigid posting schedule?

I believe that to a certain extent, you need to update your blog often – say, at least twice, even thrice, a week. However, I would place more importance in the relevance of the blog post. The same goes for how recent the posts are. What I mean to say is that those two factors are more important than having to adhere to a strict posting schedule.

For example, a strict posting schedule would be posting only every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This is good in a way, because you are disciplined and people know that on these days, you are going to post entries. Yet if your content is not up to par, what good is your posting schedule?

The bottom line is having updated posts – no matter which day of the week – and posting great content that your readers will look forward to.

Small or home-based businesses face the seemingly insurmountable problem of getting the word out there. Though they may offer a good product or service, if no one knows about them, their business is not going to grow the way they want to. Are you facing this kind of issue in your small or home-based business?

I know that you have probably heard that one of the best ways to advertise is to build a web site. These days, having an online presence is a must if you want to get ahead in the game. Having a site wherein people can find out more about you and your products from the comforts of their homes or offices is on of the most effective ways of advertising.

Yet have you ever thought that you could actually use your business blog as your web site? If you don’t have a web site for your business yet, you could start a blog for the business and generate traffic and potential customers as well.

Blogging is a cost effective way of communicating to the world what your business has to offer. Think about these advantages:

-You can start with a free blog hosting platform.
-You don’t have to know HTML and those things with most blogging platforms.
-Blogs are (generally) search engine friendly.
-Readers cum customers will find your business blog more informative and interactive with comments and responses from you.

You don’t have to start big and spend money on a hi-tech web site. Start simple and reap huge rewards with a business blog as your web site.

Have you ever heard of the buzz word “thought leader”? Wikipedia defines this as:

a buzzword or article of jargon used to describe a futurist or person who is recognized among their peer mentors for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights.

Extending this definition to apply to your business as a whole, your business can become a thought leader in your field if you become recognized as an entity that comes up with innovative ideas and promotes these ideas to the rest of the industry.

Now who wouldn’t want to be recognized as a thought leader in their field? I sure would want my company to be recognized as such!

Have you ever thought about the fact that your business blog can help you gain thought leadership?

This is actually similar to becoming an authority in your field. By showing people – existing customers and potential ones – that you know what you are doing and that you are coming up with new ideas all the time through your blog, you can establish your company as a thought leader.

More than being a small or medium sized company with a human touch, being a thought leader will give people the impression of stability as well as a potential for growth, which is the edge that big companies have over smaller companies.

Establish your blog and establish it well. Show – not merely tell – what your company is capable of and your customer base will grow as you become a thought leader.

If you are new to blogging, then you may be wondering what this post is all about. If you aren’t, then I am sure you have a pretty good idea about what I am going to talk about. For the benefit of those who are not familiar with the term, a blogroll is merely a list of other blogs which you post on your on blog.

So if you are browsing through a specific blog and you see a long list of links to other blogs on one side, you are actually looking at the blogroll. This is one way of letting your readers know that you are recommending the blogs on your blogroll to them. In the same way, if the link to your blog appears in other blogs, you have a form of free advertisement.

With that said, you should pretty much get what I am saying at – blogrolling is good. At the risk of being repetitive, using blogrolls means that you are promoting someone else’s blog and at the same time, your blog is being promoted by others. Seeing it from a business point of view, being in other blogs’ blogroll will enhance your presence on the web.

Imagine if your readers like your blog that much and they link to your business blog in their own sites and blogs? That means higher incoming links and that in turns translates to being in good terms with search engines. In addition to the human factor – people actually seeing your link in other sites – being in the first few pages of a search result is what you are looking for.

So if I were you, I’d get into blogrolling now.