We have taken a look at several things that you have to avoid when working on your business blog. Always remember, the idea is to think about your readers and how you can entice them to continue reading your blog. Here is the last installment for this mini-series.

Stay away from the pop-ups.
I honestly do not understand why people would want to use pop-ups for their blogs. Pop-ups are things that the average person does not appreciate. There is nothing more to it – pop-ups are a nuisance. Why would you want to use pop-ups for you site when they would probably just turn your readers off? If you want to get their attention, find some other means to do so but stay within your page and avoid having other windows jump into their faces.

Find a good balance between being personal and businesslike.
If you are having a hard time with this matter, try to go back to the basics. Why are you blogging for your business? The chances are that you are trying to reach out to your customers, both potential and existing. If this is the case, you want to maintain a professional front while at the same time, presenting a more personal face/personality. Just make sure that you do not lean too much towards one side. Be too professional and aloof and you risk turning away customers. Be too personal and overshare and you risk losing professional credibility. At the end of the day, you know what is best.

Photo courtesy of nedward.org

In the previous post, we took a look at some blogging practices that you may want to avoid. The rationale behind avoiding such practices is to be able to maintain your readership and even more, widen it. Let us take a look at a few more practices that you might want to avoid.

Busy bee look
I have to admit, many bloggers that I know are busy bees. They never like to find themselves without work to do. Now this is a generalization and I realize that it does not apply to everyone but if there is one thing I know, I do not appreciate blogs which have the busy bee look. The effect that these kinds of blogs have on me is that I am left confused and unsure as to what the blog could offer me. Correct me if I am wrong but this is one of the last things that you would want your customers to think about you, your blog, and company. So if I were you, I would create a blog that is neat, easy to navigate, and orderly.

Intrusive ads
Ads are a part of our lives, there is no denying that. We all know that they serve a purpose and they benefit everyone involved. The thing is, we also know that most people do not appreciate having to deal with intrusive ads. They want to read your blog and what you have to say. They do not want to be taken to another site to see an ad. They do not want to see pop ups all over the place each time they click on something in your blog.

Boo-boo is a word that you don’t normally use in the business setting but for the lack of a better word, why don’t we take a look at some blogging boo-boos that we should all avoid? Whether you are writing for a business blog or a personal blog, these things should – as much as possible – not be present.

Hard to read fonts
This could be in the form of size 8 or 9 fonts. Imagine your readers having to squint when reading your blog posts! If you were the reader, you’d probably leave before you give yourself a migraine from trying to read those small letters. Another form could be light fonts on dark backgrounds. Now this one could be a matter of preference. To be honest, I like dark backgrounds – that’s what I use in my personal blog. However, I have gotten a lot of feedback about how hard it can be to read with such a color scheme. Maybe it’s time to re-examine this?

Making it hard for readers to leave their comments
I understand the need to avoid spam comments. After all, we all hate them! Then again, would you rather put off your readers by making it difficult to leave comments? Perhaps you can use a word verification process instead. Or use plug ins that would filter out the spam.

More on comments – don’t be the spammer!
Most blogs leave the option to subscribe to comments to the reader. Do not be tempted by the idea of automatically subscribing them to your comments. Though it would theoretically give your blog more exposure, you wouldn’t want readers to become irritated at receiving unwanted e-mails.

We have had two posts on how to get ideas for your business blog posts. So far, we have talked about using the problems you have encountered, announcements, and social responsibility. Let us look at a couple more sources of ideas for a good business blog post.

Look at the bigger picture – your industry.
Writing posts for your business blog need not be about your company only. You do not have to limit yourself to your products and your activities. Remember that you are part of a bigger picture, that is, your industry. As such, you should follow the trends and goings on in the industry that you are part of. Say you sell health supplements. Though it would be good to highlight your products and perhaps your research activities in your business blog, you should also write about what is happening in the world of health, health care, and health products. You can write about new research and highlight its findings. You can write about news items relevant to the health care sector. This would certainly expand your reach with regard to your readers and their interests.

Dig up those old photos.
If you remember, one of the most important advantages that business blogging brings to your company is the fact that it humanizes a business entity. Instead of merely seeing your company as a faceless, money-making entity, your customers can see its human side through your blog posts. And what better way to present a “face” than to post company pictures? For sure you have lots of company pictures lying around. Choose a visually stimulating one, one that is relevant and write your post around that picture.

In the last post, we took a look at turning problems that you may face to your advantage. Let us continue to look at other ways you can get ideas for your business blog posts.

How about announcements?
For sure, you will have new things coming up with regard to your business every now and then. This could be a new product or a new service. It could even be a new promotion that your company is running. It does not really matter what the announcement is. If there is something new going on in the company, then you can use that as content for your business blog. The good thing about this is that you do not need to spend extra on making the announcement – your business blog is there for the taking! More so, you can personalize your announcement in your blog, which is always a plus for you in the eyes of your clients.

Social responsibility.
Social responsibility has been a big term in the business world for quite some time now. More than making money and building business empires, it is also important for companies to give back to their community. If you are involved in any activities that relate to social responsibility, why not write about these activities in your blog? Aside from actually sharing what you have been up to (other than your core business activities), you can show your customers that you care about more than doing business.

One of the main concerns of small business owners is that they might not have enough time to come up with regular posts. This is very much understandable. For one, they are already running a business, how can they be expected to sit down and spend much time on thinking of what to post in a blog?

Still, it should not be that hard to find ideas for blog posts. Aside from the products and services that the company specializes in, there are other sources of ideas for blog posts. Let us look at some easy ones – you might be surprised that you have not thought of them before!

Think of some problems that you have encountered in the past.
It does not even have to be in the past – maybe you are dealing with a business related problem right now. It would be a good idea for a post. You can tell your readers about the nature of the problem. If you have already solved the problem, then you can tell about what you did to solve it. If you are still in the midst of solving the problem, you can ask your readers to help you out. This would in fact be a good way to engage your readers and solicit comments from them. Of course, you have the discretion not to disclose certain specific information that may be detrimental to your company.

This is just one idea. Let us look for more in the following posts.

In the last post, we talked about two things that you may want to consider with regard to corporate blogging. Just to recap, they are:

-Bloggers should be trained in their task and they should know their limitations
-Fake blogs are not always the right way to go and there are risks associated with them.

Let us look at some more considerations when it comes to corporate blogging.

Consider tracking blogs
This means tracking other blogs – not your own corporate blog – that may be following your own blog. This would mean that someone in your company – it could be you or someone else – should spend some time in finding out the buzz going around online about your company. Why is this important? Because you can find out relevant information from the actions of others online.

Case in point: Big Blue is testing advanced technology called Web Fountain, which analyzes billions of postings to see if they predict spikes in consumer behavior. Last year, Web Fountain plumbed the blog world for buzz on books and then compared it to sales data from Amazon.com. In about half the cases, researchers could predict the sales growth that would follow the buzz.

This was an example provided by Business Week. If you can use your blog to predict sales growth to a certain degree, why not take advantage of that possibility? More so, you can find out what your customers and clients think about you and your services. Read other blogs which may have mentioned your company or your service or product and see if there is information that is relevant to you.

Photo courtesy of sgis

Blogging is one of the ways to exploit the way that information is being spread all across the world today. Corporations and big businesses who pay large amounts of money to people who do their public relations work can actually save considerable amounts just by engaging in blogging. Here are some thoughts on corporate blogging that can make the whole process easier and more streamlined.

Bloggers should know what they are doing
Just as PR people are trained for their jobs, people who blog for the corporate business blog should know the ins and outs of this task. It does not mean that they have to go to blogging school (if there is even such a thing), it just means that each blogger should know what the limits are. Corporate blogging is a bit more sensitive than personal blogging as the former is basically representing what the company is all about. One misstep can cause the company a lot of damage.

The idea is for your company to have a clear set of rules and guidelines when it comes to blogging. In this way, you can prevent any mishap from happening. You can even use your PR department for this.

Fake blogs may not be the best option
What exactly is a fake blog? They are still blogs, make no mistake about it, but what happens is that this kind of blog is basically set up by the PR or marketing department solely in order to promote a specific product or service. The person behind the blog is not real. This happened a year or so ago when Sony created a fake blog under the pretense of a teenager who wanted a PSP for Christmas. The results? People were outraged. Blogging is based on the principle of authentic information. Engaging in fake blogs is very risky and just might ruin your foray into the blogosphere.

(to be continued)

In the previous post we highlighted the importance of placing your profile and contact details in the sidebar of your blog. Here are a few more important pieces of information that you should put in the sidebar.

Aside from placing information about you, the blogger, in the form of text, it would be good to add a photo. One effect of this would be to humanize yourself and your business. This is taking the idea to personalization to the next level.

Another piece of information that you can place in the sidebar is the purpose of your blog. If you are focusing on your business, it would be good to write about the specific purpose of your blog. It would be much like giving new readers what your blog is all about in a nutshell.

In order to provide your readers with the most updated information that is contained within your blog, you can also place some of the most recent posts in the sidebar. It is really up to you as to how many you can place in there. I would suggest about 5, though. More than the recent posts, you can also highlight the most popular posts. That is, the posts that got the most visits or comments. This will help encourage your readers to check out the best that you have to offer. In this way, you can entice them to keep coming back for more of the same.

(to be continued)

The format of your business blog is something that you cannot take for granted. I think that this applies to all kinds of blogs, actually. I have been receiving a lot of feedback in my personal blog about the formatting of my blog. Most of the positive comments I get are about my content and most of the suggestions for improvement are about the template and layout. This suggests that many readers pay attention to the physical aspect of the blog as well.

One thing that some people overlook is the sidebar. Depending on the blog template that you are using, you can have one or two sidebars. I would not go as far as to dictate how many you should have – it really depends on your preference and what content you are going to place there. However, I think that you should put some thought into what content you are going to place in your sidebars and make sure that you make the most out of it.

I think that the most important thing that you should place in your sidebars is your profile. This includes a short description of yourself and your business. This gives readers an insight to what you and your business are all about. More than this, you should place contact details in your profile. One of the biggest turn offs for readers is wanting to get in touch with the blogger and not being able to find a way to do it!

Let’s look at more sidebar content in the next post.