Archives and categories
Whenever I look around the web and browse blogs, I always appreciate it when I can easily find the content that is relevant to my needs and preferences. The archives section makes it very convenient to browse the contents of a blog with regard to the timeline. Though this is quite useful in many cases, I find that a categories section is even better. This is especially true when you are new to a blog. In this case, the archives might not be of much help. On the other hand, if you can browse through posts based on the topics, then it is much easier to find posts that you want to read. So, make it a point to include these two things in your sidebar.

Ongoing promotions
One of the best things about your business blog is that you can use it to promote new activities, products, and services. You can use your blog to let your customers know what’s new with you. I think that the sidebar should be utilized fully in this sense. You can always publish a post on an ongoing promo but if you place another banner in your sidebar, it would catch people’s attention more. You can even be creative about it and design something that is more than text.

These are only some of the things that you could include in your sidebars. Can you think of other ways?

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!

One way to have good PR – no, a killer PR, actually – is to build up that business blog of yours. You may be a small business entity as compared to Microsoft or Sony, but that does not mean that you cannot establish yourself as an authority in your own field. No matter what your business may be about, you can always find ways to bring yourself to the forefront of your niche – and blogging is one of the ways to do this.

Nowadays, journalists and researchers turn to the Web for a lot of material. When they create write ups, they would probably include a Google search in their prep work. Now, if you have a good online presence, then you would most likely be discovered by these people, who, in turn would probably quote you (from your blog) in their piece of work. Now isn’t that killer PR? You do not even have to solicit the local newspaper’s attention – they would find you on their own because of your business blog. Ask Rich Brooks, who has had ample enough experience in this respect.

So why should CEOs blog? Take Jim Estill, CEO of a Canadian company. His company was taken over by Synnex Canada Ltd several years ago. At that time, he felt (and rightly so) that he was merely a name to his new employees. They knew nothing about their new boss. So he took it upon himself to take steps to change that and he chose blogging as the medium. Beginning with that simple reason, Estill started blogging and is now, perhaps, one of the most popular CEO bloggers in the country. What started out as a means to reach out to his new employees is now something that reaches out beyond his company. His employees, customers, vendors, and people not even remotely linked to him are now his readers.

Jim Estill is not alone. There are many CEOs out there who are into blogging. And they all say that they are better CEOs for it. However, if this is really the case, why aren’t all CEOs blogging? I suppose there are many issues, one being legal concerns. Another thing is that it takes time – something which not many CEOs have. The bottom line – understand what blogging can do to make you a better CEO and better your company as well. Then decide if it is for you.

He focuses on two main points – changing content and link building. Let’s look at changing content. This is a very important aspect when it comes to search engines. Remember that they use spiders to crawl web pages and these spiders want fresh content. That is the main reason they will come back to a web page even if they have already visited it before. So if your page has fresh content all the time, that means that spiders will keep coming back. Now common sense will tell you that your blog would be more likely to have new content than a static web page. Posting on a regular basis is a simple thing to do, with lots of benefits in terms of search engine visibility.

Link building, on the other hand, is also a huge part of blogging. If you have been blogging for quite some time, you probably are into the habit of linking out to other blogs and relevant sites. Though your business blog may have one overall topic, you can still relate to other sub topics, giving you more links. Of course, by doing so, you also encourage other sites to link to your blog. This, once again, is a good thing for search engine visibility (as long as the links are real and relevant).

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?

Take for example what they did early last year – they focused their energies and creativity into strengthening their web presence. They may be a big business entity but they still gave huge importance to the strengthening of their online presence. It is true that they did not really focus on using a blog to do this, but the idea is similar – they restructured their already existing web site in order to increase sales.

What prompted them do work on this project? According to their figures, their online sales increased more than four times above their shop sales! Now this sort of increase cannot be ignored, no matter how big your business is. They, therefore decided to put more effort into online presence as it would translate into more sales for them.

How is this relevant to you? Whatever the size of your business may be, the guiding principles are the same. You want to increase your sales and hopefully one day become like Marks and Spencer. It is always good to look into what the big businesses are doing and learn from them.