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.

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/

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.

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.

Make friends
You may not be an extrovert in real life but what is stopping you from being sociable online? After all, all you need to do is participate in forums and make comments in other blogs. Of course, make sure that what you post is sensible and reliable. This is particularly important when it comes to blogs that are related to your business. The people who maintain and read these blogs are the very same people that you want to get to look at your blog. As such, reading other blogs and making comments regularly will help you catch their attention and direct traffic to your site.

Link train posts
This used to be a popular way of increasing page rankings and thus increasing traffic to one’s blog. However, Google has taken some action in this regard so I am not quite optimistic about this point. If you are a firm believer in this idea, however, don’t let me stop. Just my two cents’ worth.

Submit articles
There are many article submission directories online. These web sites offer articles for free to the general public. The articles that you have to submit should be related to your business or your area of expertise. When people read these articles, they will see something about you (the author) and a link to your blog, thus increasing the chances of having new visitors.

These are only some of the ways by which you can increase the popularity of your blog. Do you have any other ways in mind? Why not let the rest of us in on your secret?

In the previous post, we focused on the physical looks and SEO in order to make your blog more popular. Here are more tips to help you get the audience that you want.

Feeds are your friends
I am not talking about the things that you give to livestock for nourishment. In the blogging world, feeds are a mechanism by which you can publish your blog entries automatically. If you use feeds, it will be easier for your readers to keep themselves updated on what’s new in your blog. They do not have to do things manually, thus saving them time and effort. If you keep readers happy that way, then you just might become more popular. Many blogging platforms support feeds already but you may want to make use of other sites, especially if you have your own domain.

Make the most out of social bookmarking
Bookmarks make it much easier for your readers to remember your blog. They eliminate the need for readers to memorize your URL. Social bookmarking takes things one step further by making your blog available to anyone part of that social bookmarking web site. Just be sure not to overwhelm your readers with too many social bookmarking sites as they will just clutter up your blog. Some really reliable sites that you may want to include are Technorati, Sociable, and addThis.

In the next post, let us look at some other ways that you can improve the popularity of your blog.

When talking about how blogs can improve your business’s online presence, one important question that always comes up is the frequency of posting entries on your blog. Indeed, how often should you post? I have already tackled this question in an old post. You can read more about it here.

Another related question I would like to talk about now is this: Is it necessary to post an entry in your business blog every single day? Would it really make a difference if you posted less than that?

The answer is not a simple yes or no, to be honest. It depends on several factors. For example, if you are talking about posting once a week as opposed to daily posting, then definitely, yes, it will make a difference. Try to thinking as if you were a customer. You would visit a company’s blog because you want to find out what’s new, right? If you were given new content every day, then it would encourage you to visit more often. On the other hand, content posted once a week is a bit too long to wait. You just might get tired and forget about it.

Then again, you also have to consider what you have to post. Merely posting everyday is not a solution. In fact, even if you do post everyday, if your content is stale and repetitive, then the customer would not be encouraged to visit your blog anyway. The idea is to balance your focus on frequency and the freshness of your content. Do not post everyday just for the sake of posting!

Media is good, right? Well, not all the time – and it actually depends on how you use it. Pictures in blogs are always good – no matter what kind of blog you have. Even business blogs benefit from them aesthetically. However, if you make a practice of simply putting in a picture just because you feel like it or you feel that you have to have a picture for the sake of having one, then it does not really make sense.

Pictures should be used to complement your content. That’s it. Another thing about pictures is that you should avoid – as much as possible – linking to pictures from other web sites. This is not good practice at all. Some even liken it to stealing bandwidth if you do so. The solution? Upload your own pictures.

Another common mistake that business bloggers commit is to ignore tags altogether. Tagless posts are not totally useless, of course, but they are almost there. In fact, one could say that tagging posts – appropriately, I must say – is one of the most important aspects of blogging. You need to tag your entries so that they could be found by other people who may not otherwise know about you. You can get countless hits from sites which make use of tags - Del.icio.us, Digg, or Technorati.

If you’re still not convinced about tagging, think about it this way. Why did you start a business blog in the first place? I would bet that you wanted to establish your online presence and get the attention of as much people as you can, right? Tagging is one of the ways to do this.