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.

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/

Indeed, one of the biggest hurdles when it comes to business blogging is time. Time is gold and it cannot be wasted on having to come up with blog posts when there is a business to run – or can it? There are various aspects to look when it comes to this point.

First, if big business CEOs can find time to blog, why can’t small business owners do so as well? Second, how much time does it really take to come up with a blog post? More so, how much time does it really take to maintain a decent business blog?

Let’s look at the first post. To be honest, I think that writing for a business blog is a simple thing – you either make time for it or you don’t. That is not to say that it is easy but the fact is that if a person really wants to make full use of what a business blog has to offer, he would find the time to work on it.

This brings me to the second point – coming up with a blog post does not have to take such a long time. This is dependent on what you write and how you write. Perhaps the misconception lies in the idea that you have to come up with profound written work for a business blog. I like how Chris Baggott phrases it:

The most common misconception that business bloggers have is that they think that blog posts have to be really thoughtful…like they are going to have to spend hours crafting some deep insisght into the state of the Automotive Industry all the time. This is just plain WRONG.

My point is that in Corporate Blogging the Best Practice is to just talk about your day. Talk about your business, your inventory, your customers, your likes and dislikes…..just don’t over-think it.

In other words, easy does it!

An additional point before I end – if you don’t have time to blog all the time, involve your employees! Ask them to contribute to your business blog and see how much time you can save.

This is perhaps the million dollar question when it comes to businesses and blogging. We have to admit, one of the biggest reasons companies enter the world of blogging is to find new customers. This can be done in various ways. A business can set up its own blog. Alternatively, a business can get other bloggers to write about their product or service. In both cases, the aim is the same – to get the word out about something that the business is selling. Yet are the results going to be the same for both approaches?

I got the inspiration for this post when I read Tim Parry’s post “Can a Blog Really Increase Leads?” He illustrates an example:

I think that this approach can indeed generate tons of leads. Yet as Parry said so himself, how many of the leads are going to be qualified? How many of them would actually be converted into sales? We really cannot tell. Yet I think that it could work. What about you?

Blogging has been around for quite some time and as with most things, change is inevitable. I am sure that we have all foreseen these changes, although we might not have seen specific things about it. I like what I read at Conversational Media Marketing and how they outlined the changes in the blogosphere. More importantly, though, they presented some of the more significant changes that are taking place this year and beyond. Here is an excerpt of the blog post:

1. WordPress is now considered a lightweight CMS platform, not just a blog platform. (Has been for a while.) It’s becoming more common to see entire Web sites being built using WP or some other blog-related CMS. For example, two real estate news Web sites, RIS Media and Inman News, have now completely coverted their sites to blog-based platforms.
2. WordPress is also morphing into a social media application, as is Movable Type, which now has a social network version. I can imagine other blog platforms will follow suit.
3. New blog platforms continue to be built.
4. The widgetization of the web is a trend that will contribute to the welfare of blogs, as widgets can be plugged into the sidebar, extending the functionality of blogs as more of a social networking platform.
5. Blog posts will be less anecdotal and more article-like in their format. More of what Brian Clark refers to as value blogging. That, to me, spells maturity. The less important, more transient content now ends up on Twitter, Facebook or Utterz. This leaves the blog as the repository for more thoughtfully prepared material.

Indeed, blogging is becoming more mature and we can find great content in a lot of blogs today. Being aware of these changes can help us keep up with them and allows us to continue to have a strong presence online.

Promoting your blog is one of the most important aspects of business blogging. You want people to be able to find your blog amidst the plethora of other blogs in existence. Different people would have different takes on how one should go about promoting any blog. I ran across some really sensible tips in Business Blog Templates that you may want to consider as you look for ways to promote your own blog.

Have a clear objective for each post.
You always must ask yourself, what the aim of your post is and how it is going to help your site be promoted in search engines. And of course, you should understand that SEO isn’t a one-time occupation. It requires time and permanent attention. Search engines use to change their algorithms, which means you’ll constantly have to think of new ways to satisfy these requirements.

Consider seeking professional help.
If you believe that your business blog can do well without professional help, you’ll have to be in the know of the latest SEO trends and become one of the regular visitors of SEO authority resources. Otherwise trust control over your business blog to your SEO specialist. Always try to consult people, familiar with SEO - professional advice will never be out of place.

Focus on originality.
Create original content, interesting to your readers. Never write for search engines. Always remember, that the content of your business blog must contain 95% of useful and interesting information and only 5% of SEO. All SEO specialists agree that content is the most powerful optimization tool. With it’s help you can attract not only new readers, but new external links, which is another important SEO criteria.

Of these three tips that I found most interesting, I think the last one bears a lot of weight. Let us look into this point sometime in the future.

Don’t expect momentum to last
I think what John Chow is talking about is personal momentum – the drive that keeps you going with regard to your blog. If I understood his message correctly, then I totally agree with him. In everything you do, you will most certainly be all excited and raring to go in the beginning – there is nothing to that. The challenge arises when you lose momentum somewhere down the road – this is inevitable too. However, it is up to you to keep going, to keep your productivity up and continue to achieve results. If you don’t expect momentum to last, you can anticipate loss of drive (albeit temporarily) and come up with a plan to deal with it.

Don’t overlook content in the quest for promotion
Promoting your blog is very important – we all know that. We want to be able to get the word out that a blog exists and then attract people from all over the world to take a look at it. However, promotion can only go so far. You may have the best promotion and marketing machine in the world but that will not do you much good if your content sucks. Promotion is the first step – getting people to visit your site. Yet if you have nothing to offer by way of content, these very same people will not go back to your blog nor will they tell others to do so.

And that, my friends, is what John Chow has to say about NOT making your blog a flop.

While we’re on the hot subject of John Chow (pretty soon this name just might be a buzzword), let’s take a look at his post on “10 Ways To Turn Your Website Into A Flop.” I assume that you would not want this to happen so I kind of put a positive spin into it. Please note, I am just taking some of points that I agree with. So here are the “mistakes” that you should avoid when it comes to your blog.

Don’t work on something that you are not passionate about.
Passion is everything – or is it, really? Maybe not everything, but it does play a major role in your writing success. You can always write about something that you do not really care about but in the long run, it is the passion that will keep you going. Indeed, as John Chow (or Alan Johnson, his guest blogger for this post) put it: “But do you actually think that you will be able to tap your true potential if you don’t even like what you’re doing?” I don’t think so.

Don’t expect results overnight.
I couldn’t agree more with this. I remember a project I was working on a couple of years ago. The concept was really good and unique. I won’t go into the details but it was something about travel warnings (not tips and sights to see and all that stuff). The project manager had something potentially successful in his hands. The problem was that he wanted to make it big as soon as the web site was launched. As a result, he suffered disappointment within several months. It takes work and patience, that much I know.

(to be continued)