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.

Search engine optimization – we hear that phrase quite a lot these days. Maybe too much, actually. I have encountered countless business bloggers who believe that the primary reason they set up their blog is to increase their ranking when it comes to search engines. Their rationale is that a business blog (in addition to their web site) will increase their search engine ranking.

This is true – there is not doubt about it. Yet if you focus solely on SEO as your purpose for your business blog, you are surely missing out on so much more!

A business blog is meant for more than increasing your own web site’s search engine rankings. Do not overlook this fact or you are merely wasting your resources.

I have written many posts on the benefits of blogging for your business – all of them apart from SEO. Let me see, we have communicating with your readers, who by the way, are probably your customers as well. Then we have the idea of thought leadership – establishing yourself and your company as an authority in your field. Being able to gain this status is definitely a plus for your company. What else? You can carry out market research through your blog, getting information from your customers – both existing and potential.

I can think of so much more that business blogging has to offer. The point is, do not let yourself be sidetracked by merely one aspect of business blogging. You have the tool, you have the means – make the most out of it!

Small or home-based businesses face the seemingly insurmountable problem of getting the word out there. Though they may offer a good product or service, if no one knows about them, their business is not going to grow the way they want to. Are you facing this kind of issue in your small or home-based business?

I know that you have probably heard that one of the best ways to advertise is to build a web site. These days, having an online presence is a must if you want to get ahead in the game. Having a site wherein people can find out more about you and your products from the comforts of their homes or offices is on of the most effective ways of advertising.

Yet have you ever thought that you could actually use your business blog as your web site? If you don’t have a web site for your business yet, you could start a blog for the business and generate traffic and potential customers as well.

Blogging is a cost effective way of communicating to the world what your business has to offer. Think about these advantages:

-You can start with a free blog hosting platform.
-You don’t have to know HTML and those things with most blogging platforms.
-Blogs are (generally) search engine friendly.
-Readers cum customers will find your business blog more informative and interactive with comments and responses from you.

You don’t have to start big and spend money on a hi-tech web site. Start simple and reap huge rewards with a business blog as your web site.

Have you ever heard of the buzz word “thought leader”? Wikipedia defines this as:

a buzzword or article of jargon used to describe a futurist or person who is recognized among their peer mentors for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights.

Extending this definition to apply to your business as a whole, your business can become a thought leader in your field if you become recognized as an entity that comes up with innovative ideas and promotes these ideas to the rest of the industry.

Now who wouldn’t want to be recognized as a thought leader in their field? I sure would want my company to be recognized as such!

Have you ever thought about the fact that your business blog can help you gain thought leadership?

This is actually similar to becoming an authority in your field. By showing people – existing customers and potential ones – that you know what you are doing and that you are coming up with new ideas all the time through your blog, you can establish your company as a thought leader.

More than being a small or medium sized company with a human touch, being a thought leader will give people the impression of stability as well as a potential for growth, which is the edge that big companies have over smaller companies.

Establish your blog and establish it well. Show – not merely tell – what your company is capable of and your customer base will grow as you become a thought leader.

If you are new to blogging, then you may be wondering what this post is all about. If you aren’t, then I am sure you have a pretty good idea about what I am going to talk about. For the benefit of those who are not familiar with the term, a blogroll is merely a list of other blogs which you post on your on blog.

So if you are browsing through a specific blog and you see a long list of links to other blogs on one side, you are actually looking at the blogroll. This is one way of letting your readers know that you are recommending the blogs on your blogroll to them. In the same way, if the link to your blog appears in other blogs, you have a form of free advertisement.

With that said, you should pretty much get what I am saying at – blogrolling is good. At the risk of being repetitive, using blogrolls means that you are promoting someone else’s blog and at the same time, your blog is being promoted by others. Seeing it from a business point of view, being in other blogs’ blogroll will enhance your presence on the web.

Imagine if your readers like your blog that much and they link to your business blog in their own sites and blogs? That means higher incoming links and that in turns translates to being in good terms with search engines. In addition to the human factor – people actually seeing your link in other sites – being in the first few pages of a search result is what you are looking for.

So if I were you, I’d get into blogrolling now.

Another aspect to Google’s blogging protocol is that the blogs of each product team is focused solely on Press Relations. That means that comments are turned off for the blog posts. This in turn means that readers cannot voice their opinion and bloggers cannot respond. In short – conversation is not possible.

How can this be beneficial?

I have always stuck to the belief that one of the strongest aspects of a blog is the fact that you can encourage readers to comment and share their own ideas. Gathering information from readers in this way is quite efficient and effective – both in terms of time and money. So how does Google do it without allowing people to comment on their posts?

Perhaps Google already has an advantage of, well, merely being Google. Despite the fact that they do not allow comments in their blogs, their posts serve a purpose similar to that of a pebble being thrown into a placid pond. A tiny pebble thrown into calm waters gives off ripples that have a far reaching effect. Same thing with Google posts – they incite such active discussion in the blogosphere such that their ultimate aim of making their presence even more felt online is achieved.

How can your business benefit from this strategy?

I think that you can adopt a similar policy of using your blog as a venue for press releases. Though you may not feel comfortable letting go of the traditional press release as of yet, you may want to ease into this pattern little by little and see how it can benefit your own business.

Image from: Drawn

What is knowledge management? It is the control and dissemination of information relevant to an entity with regard to the people within the entity. So if you are running a business – no matter how big or small – knowledge management is making sure that the right people have the right information at the right time.

How important is this? Imagine a scenario wherein your customer service representatives have different information from the current SOP of the company. What is going to happen if a customer asks them for help? It is bound to be a disaster.

There are different ways by which a business entity can manage knowledge and information within the ranks. One easy and cost effective way is through blogging. Now I am talking about internal company blogs as opposed to the business blogs that we normally talk about, which are open to the public.

Take for example, a situation wherein a new query from a customer arises. No one has handled such a query before. The representative who takes care of the situation can resolve it and document the process in the blog, making it easily retrievable by other employees who may need the information in the future.

More so, internal blog posts can serve as an interactive tool for employees. They can exchange thoughts and ideas regarding various issues and concerns. It opens up a venue for problem solving wherein limitless ideas can be exchanged.

Of course, you would have to instill some sort of control regarding posts as things might get out of hand. Still, this is easily implemented and the advantages far outweigh the potential risk.

Image from: MITRE

Who isn’t interested in knowing something about the future? That is why we have fortune tellers and all sorts of schemes to give us a peek into what tomorrow holds for us. Why not let this tiny aspect of human nature do your work for you and your business?

Give your customers a peek into what you have in store for them in the near future by posting entries in your blog.

Remember when Sony was still working on the PlayStation 3 and all they had were little snippets of information? How about Steve Jobs and Apple with the iPhone? These two giants in the tech industry know how to build up the anticipation for their products. They know how to give just enough information to their customers and heighten their excitement for what is to come.

You can do exactly the same thing with your business blog.

Make a big deal about a product or service that you are about to release in the near future. Give your customers an idea of what it is about but keep some details hidden – for now. You can even throw in a teaser or two to keep them guessing. Of course, you have to be accurate and honest – you don’t want to be accused of false advertising.

You may not have as big a customer base as Sony and Apple but it doesn’t matter. With such a strategy employed, your blog readers will certainly get the word around. It will only be a matter of time till you get more of the exposure that you are aiming for.

Small businesses can learn a lot from the big players in the business world. If you need more proof of how a business blog can help your own enterprise, read on to find out how Cisco Systems did it – and is doing it – blog-wise.

Let’s go back to when it all started, in 2006, when Cisco was caught in the middle of a PR disaster. They were being accused of messing around with their routers in order to pacify the Chinese government. Instead of using the traditional means of getting out information, they turned to the blogosphere to get their side of the story out. It all started there and now, Cisco’s blog network has expanded to way beyond the original plan.

So what can we learn from Cisco’s experience?

Think long term.
In life, short cuts do not always work. Success in blogging takes time. You cannot expect changes to occur overnight. Neither can you expect the results you are looking for in a short amount of time. You have to be prepared to spend time and effort on building up your blog.

Get your people involved.
Do not severely limit your people from participating in your blog. In Cisco, most anyone can blog. They merely have to apply to write for the blog. There is a blog team which then looks through the applications. Having more than one person blogging provides more input and also prevents a single employee from burning out. Cisco bloggers also need to follow a policy set by the company regarding blogging.

Make the blog part of company communication.
Remember Cisco suing Apple? They discussed the issue strongly and actively in their blogs. By doing so, they were able to get their side of the story out in the mainstream. In fact, using the key phrase “Cisco sues Apple,” their blog came out as the second search result in Google during that time.

Image from: Tech Shout

Listening is one skill that is of very high importance – no matter what context you may be in. Think about your latest meeting – how did you glean vital facts about your competitor? How were you able to deduce that critical insight? Probably by listening very acutely to what was going on.

Now translate this skill – listening – to cyberspace, more specifically to business blogs. We have been talking on and on about how business blogs can help you – there is no doubt about it. If your business has its blog, there are a thousand and one benefits that you can reap – merely from having your own blog.

Yet do not let the fact that your business has a blog limit you. It does not mean that you have done all you can to improve the business! Think beyond the box, so to speak. Look beyond your own business blog and visit other blogs.

Why? Because by doing that, you are listening. And listening gives you more information – information that can be very useful tools in your path to success.

Listening is actually being done in your own blog – by reading readers’ comments, you have hearing out their concerns. That is one way to gather information that you can use. Yet beyond that, try visiting other sites and blogs and see what your “non-customers” and competitors are thinking and doing. This kind of information just might give you the edge that you need to get ahead of the rest of the pack.