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)

Assumption is the mother of all mess ups, so they say. I’ll go out on a limb here and assume that you have an idea who John Chow is. After all, he has been making huge waves in the blogosphere in the past few months. Now, just to make sure I don’t make wrong assumptions here, let me tell you a little bit about John Chow. He established The Tech Zone, which provides information on hardware news and reviews. He also established TTZ Media Network, which offers shopping and price comparison services for web publishers focused on technology. His site, John Chow dot com, gets an astronomical number of views each day as he offers a myriad of advice on how to make money online. Get the picture?

Just the other day, he posted an entry on his blog business structure. Though it is specific to his case (he lives in Canada), it could very well be useful for other bloggers who need advise on the matter of income through blogs and taxes. His main point is this: if you earn money through your blog, then you have to pay taxes on it. There is no doubt about that. He goes on to point out that in the eyes of the law, the person behind the blog is separate from the blog as a corporation itself. This, according to him, is the key to making some savings on taxes.

His entry does make a lot of sense and bloggers all over the world are realizing this. Though not everyone is a John Chow fan, you might be able to make use of the points he is presenting.

Correct me if I am wrong but when you start a business blog, your objective is for the blog to make it. You want your business blog to add that plus factor to your business, right? If you think like many successful people do, you do not even consider failure. However, the truth is that business blogs can fail, in fact, many blogs of this nature fail.

I ran across a post on Blog Herald talking about the reasons behind a business blog’s failure. It outlined the top five reasons business blogs fail – straight from the horse’s mouth, business owners themselves.

1. Not enough comments were left by visitors
2. Not enough subscribers
3. No increase in traffic to their main website
4. Difficult to come up with fresh new content for the blog every week
5. Couldn’t work out how to promote products and services via the blog

Andy of The Blog Herald gives his opinion on this matter – he says that blogging is not for everyone. I totally agree with this. I mean, blogging can give your business that edge when it comes to web presence and all that. I have posted a lot of entries on how business blogging can help you with this. However, no matter how much you know about the benefits of business blogging, if you do not know much about the inner workings of blogging, then you might be setting yourself up for failure. You would probably end up seeing one or more of the items in the list above. The solution? Know what blogging is all about or just stick to the traditional way of doing things.

I never really thought that I would be thinking of business models when it comes to blogging. As such, I found this particular post detailing the different blog business models quite interesting – even thought provoking. Bryan, on OneMansGoal outlines three different types of business models which can help you make money through your blog (or blogs for that matter).

The Superblogger
He calls this group “super” because the people behind these kinds of blogs run a big operation. They may focus on only one or two blogs but their idea is to operate in the long run and haul in income while they are at it. The majority of their time is spent on constantly improving their blogs, marketing them, and establishing brand awareness.

The Niche Blogger
This blogger type is a bit different from the previous one in that the focus is on more blogs. As such, the effort and activity are not centered on one or two main blogs but more spread out on a network of blogs. The main concept behind niche blogging is to set up the blogs in such a way that they can attract a lot of readers and then not spend too much time in maintaining them.

The Blog Broker
The blog broker works behind the scenes – he sets up blogs or even purchases them. He then develops them in such a way that they can earn money. Here’s the money making point – he then sells the blogs for more than what he paid for them or more than what he spent on them.

So which business model do you fall under?

Some people involved in business or corporate blogging have long wanted some sort of standardization or organization when it came to this particular activity. Reasons vary, of course, depending on the individual or group. Earlier this month, there was some activity regarding an organization for corporate blogging. Reactions have been mixed – some welcomed it although some just didn’t seem to care.

For your information, here is some information on the newly formed Blog Council. It is up to you what to do about it. I have pasted the press release from their own site:

The Blog Council, a professional community of top global brands dedicated to promoting best practices in corporate blogging, officially launched today. Founding members include the leading companies from a diverse range of business sectors: AccuQuote, Cisco Systems, The Coca-Cola Company, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, and Wells Fargo.

The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs.

“Major corporations use blogs differently while abiding by the same rules and etiquette,” said Blog Council CEO Andy Sernovitz. “Individual and small-business bloggers don’t face the same issues. For example, we still need to deliver a responsible and effective corporate message, but we need to do it in the complicated environment of the blogosphere. We have to speak for a corporation, but never sound ‘corporate.’ And we have to learn to do it live, and in real-time.”
Representing thought leaders from corporate departments as diverse as corporate communications, global communities, marketing and customer service, the Blog Council’s advocacy role functions as a collective voice in support of responsible, ethics-based corporate blogs. Other issues the Council will address include:

• How do global brands manage blogs in more than one language?
• What do you do when 2000 employees have personal blogs?
• What is the role of the corporate brand in a media landscape increasingly geared toward consumer-generated media?
• What is the correct way to engage and respond to bloggers who write about your company?

“Every major corporation is struggling with the question of how to use blogs and engage the blogosphere the right way,” said Sean O’Driscoll, General Manager, Community Support Services for Microsoft. “The Blog Council brings together precisely the people who need to explore these issues together, in a productive and private networking environment. We can work together to develop model policies that set the standard for corporate blogging excellence.”

In the last post, we talked about how important it is to befriend other bloggers. We talked about the importance of building your own social network of bloggers. For this post, let’s look at some details on how you can achieve this.

Communication
This is important in most any undertaking, but most especially when it comes to building your own social network. Bloggers always welcome comments. When you do get comments, however, do not just sit there and enjoy them. Make sure that you reply to these comments. You can do this in two ways – either e-mail or reply to the comment through the blog. You can even go one step further by writing a post on the comment. The important thing is that you make your readers know that you appreciate and value their comments.

Link, link, link
I am sure you browse other blogs a lot. If you stumble upon a blog that catches your interest and is, at the same, relevant to your own business blog, link! This will encourage to link to your blog as well.

List ‘em down
Actively look for blogs that are relevant to your own business blog. Do this on purpose – aimlessly surfing the Net is not the way to do it. Search for specific topics and then list down the blogs that you want to link up with. Make sure you visit them regularly and be active as well. Post comments, interact with the bloggers, and build relationships.

Who do you think your main readers are? If you answer is your customers, you just might be right. After all, that is your target, is it not? You want to reach out to your customers – both potential and existing – in order for them to know more about your company, your services or your products.

Yet have you thought about reaching out to a specific group – not in terms of whether or not they are customers or not? I am talking about the countless other bloggers – business, corporate, or otherwise.

The fact is that bloggers are one of the biggest groups that patronize other blogs. They know how it is like to maintain and promote a blog. They know what blogs contain and what their general goals are. As such, you should not isolate yourself from other bloggers.

In fact, it would be to the benefit of your blog – and thus your company – to establish relationships with other bloggers out there. This is what is called networking. You may call it what you like but the fact remains that your aim is to connect with other people who have other connections and so on.

This is what blogging is all about – getting the word out on your blog and getting the juice on other people’s blogs as well. If you do not communicate with them, then the chances are that your blog will die out – either slowly or quickly, but the end result is the same.

How do you make – and keep – other bloggers interested? Let’s look at these things 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.