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.

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.

For those of you who ventured into corporate blogging early on, you might have already read this book. It is not really new – it was published in 2006 – but still has retained much of the edge that it had when it first came out.

Written by Debbie Weil, the book’s full title is The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right. Indeed, this book not only provides you with the knowledge you need about corporate blogging but also gives you practical tips on how to do things the right way.

I like how Debbie opens the book with 20 questions that any corporate executive would probably have with regard to blogging. With this kind of opening, the book is perfect for the business man who has heard tons about blogging and yet does not really understand the whole concept. In this manner, Debbie provides quick knowledge and quickly eases the fear of the unknown at the same time.

It does not end there, however. The book provides in depth analysis of the issues that a business might face if it, indeed, decides to join the corporate blogging bandwagon. In addition to that, readers would find tools and ideas on how to go about the business of blogging for the corporate setting.

Just because something is not fresh off the press does not mean that it is old and outdated. The Corporate Blogging Book is a good place to start if you are still vacillating on whether or not blogging is the way to go for your business.

One of the foremost considerations of any blogger is to write blog entries that will catch other people’s attentions. Any blogger wants to retain his existing readers and attract new readers as well. One of the things one could do in order to achieve this important goal is to write engaging blog entries. For some people, this is equated to being controversial – writing about taboo topics.

If you were maintaining a personal blog or a topic-specific blog, then perhaps tackling these taboos would be a perfect way to get those readers to come flocking to your blog. Yet when it comes to a business blog, is it an acceptable practice to talk about taboo topics such as sex, religion, and politics?

A primary point here is the fact that what is taboo to one person may not be considered as taboo by another person. However, we have to realize that a business blog is a blog apart from other “less formal” blogs. Business blogs exist for many specific reasons but one primary reason is to promote a business or a company. Now, unless your company sells products and/or services relating to taboo topics, then it might not be the proper venue for such discussion.

I have to point out that the business blogs I have in mind here are the likes of marketing, finance, manufacturing, and the like. Also, this is merely my opinion. If you have experiences that prove otherwise, then I welcome you to share them with us!

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.