The format of your business blog is something that you cannot take for granted. I think that this applies to all kinds of blogs, actually. I have been receiving a lot of feedback in my personal blog about the formatting of my blog. Most of the positive comments I get are about my content and most of the suggestions for improvement are about the template and layout. This suggests that many readers pay attention to the physical aspect of the blog as well.

One thing that some people overlook is the sidebar. Depending on the blog template that you are using, you can have one or two sidebars. I would not go as far as to dictate how many you should have – it really depends on your preference and what content you are going to place there. However, I think that you should put some thought into what content you are going to place in your sidebars and make sure that you make the most out of it.

I think that the most important thing that you should place in your sidebars is your profile. This includes a short description of yourself and your business. This gives readers an insight to what you and your business are all about. More than this, you should place contact details in your profile. One of the biggest turn offs for readers is wanting to get in touch with the blogger and not being able to find a way to do it!

Let’s look at more sidebar content in the next post.

One of the most time consuming activities that you have to engage in when it comes to business blogging is promoting your business blog. I suppose that it does not really differ much from the more conventional ways of marketing. You have to take certain steps to ensure that people will know that your business exists and you have to exert effort and set aside time for these things. The same goes with blogging.

Creating a blog is easy. Whether you want to use a free blog platform or you want to use your own domain, the idea is the same and the execution very simple. Coming up with content for your blog is relatively easy as well – perhaps writing might prove to be a task for some but it can be handled quickly.

Marketing your business blog, on the other hand, I find to be more tedious. With the millions of blogs on the Internet today, how will other people find yours? More so, how do you get people you are targeting to discover you online? That is where marketing comes in.

One effective way is to submit your blog or web site to search engines. I have been working on a blog of mine in the past month or so and I have only recently been reminded of the importance of submitting to search engines. Before I did this, I barely had traffic to my blog. After spending several days on focusing on blog search engines, I began to see my traffic going up in the next few weeks. It does not happen overnight, mind you, but you do get results.

We looked at three benefits that you can gain from using Google Analytics according to SEO White Hats in the previous post. Here are more benefits for you:

4)Google Analytics has a wonderful feature where you can also find out which site your website visitor had logged on before visiting your site.

9)If you own many websites, there is no need of logging in multiple times. With a single login, it is possible to keep a track on multiple websites.

I have been using Analytics for only a few months but let me tell you, it is very useful. For example, if you are working on getting more hits from SERPs, it is very easy to determine which keywords get you the most hits. Analytics shows you this in one glance. Another example is if you are looking to see which web sites refer the most traffic to your site. You can also find this out easily.

I am sure that there are more features to Analytics – I just haven’t discovered them yet. Have you?

I might be late on this one, but have you heard of Google Analytics? This is another product of Google which you can use to analyze your web site or your blog in terms of traffic. Google may have its quirks and flaws but I have to say that Google Analytics does give you a LOT of information about your web site.

In order to use this tool, you have to have a Google account – who doesn’t at this point? Just log in to the Analytics page and then you can set up your account. At first, you may be a bit overwhelmed by all those terms and charts and whatnot but Analytics is pretty easy to use. There are a lot of guides online which can help you learn the ins and outs of the tool.

What benefit can you get from using Google Analytics? I like how SEO White Hats outlines the benefits:

1)Unlike other expensive visitor tracking services, it is free. This helps put Google Analytics at the top of the list.

3)Google Analytics helps you find the pages and links in the website that visitors click on the most. With this information, you can improve the pages and position them and their links appropriately.

Let’s continue with the rest of the benefits in the next post.

You’ve probably heard about social networking. After all, it is all over the web, TV, and print. Still not sure as to what social networking is? Think Facebook. Think MySpace. Digg. Technorati. All these are example of social networking sites. Now you may be thinking – what does these things have to do with my business? These sites are not for business!

Well, think again. The truth is that these social networking sites can help you improve your online presence. How so?

Let’s take a look at Facebook. Becoming a member is free. All you need to do is sign up, fill out their registration form, follow the steps, and you are good to go. You need to build up your friends. You look for people whom you may know or people whom you may want to be friends with online. It is actually a great way to make new contacts, even new customers.

Better yet, you can place your web site’s URL or your blog’s URL in a prominent location on your page. People will then only have to click on the link to visit your blog. There are many ways by which you can promote your blog or web site on Facebook (as well as other social networking sites). You can comment on photos, links, profiles, etc. and place your link in your comment. This would not only create links to your site or blog, it would also make it easier for the people to click the link and visit your site or blog.

Of course, it is very important that you conduct yourself in a professional manner. Spamming other people’s accounts or shamelessly and tactlessly promoting your link will not do your business any good.

We talked about your commenting system in the previous post. Let us take a look at more ways to make the most out of comments.

Some bloggers take comments for granted. That is, they think that if their entry is good enough, comments will come naturally. This is true – but only to a certain degree. You should also do your part in encouraging your readers to comment. Aside from writing great content, try to encourage comments outright. At the end of the post, ask your readers what they think. End with an open ended question. More so, you can change your blogging template to reflect something like “Be the first one to comment!” instead of merely displaying “No comments.”

Another way to encourage comments would be to recognize those who leave their comments. Of course, their comments will be displayed on the individual posts. An additional incentive that I find particularly useful is to install a widget that shows the most recent comments. Seeing one’s name and ideas on the front page of a blog is something that can encourage readers to leave their mark.

Be open – do not ignore or block negative comments. This is the beauty of blogging, actually. People can voice out their thoughts, whether they are positive or negative. If you can post both the negative and positive on your blog, then why can’t readers share both the negative and positive as well? As such, resist the urge to delete negative comments. Instead, see if there is some value in their comments and act on them accordingly.

If you were asked what makes a blog a lot different from the conventional web site, what would your answer be? Off the top of my head, I would probably say something about the opportunity for interaction between blog (business) owner and the reader. Indeed, comments make blogs a whole lot more interesting and real as compared to static web sites.

Keeping this idea in mind, ask yourself how you are making use of commenting to your advantage. Has this concept even crossed your mind? Or maybe you have not really paid that much attention to it. In this post and the next few ones, let us take a deeper look at how you can make the most out of comments in your blog.

The first step to consider would be how you allow commenting. Having readers be able to leave comments is a great thing but this does not mean that you have no control as to the who and what. As you might probably know, spamming is rife online – even when it comes to comments. As such, you might want to employ specific measures as to who can comment and the content of the comment as well.

Just a note, though, balance is the key here. On the one end, you can allow everyone and anyone to comment without moderation. On the other end, you can require readers to sign up and then log in every time they want to leave a comment. In my mind, these two extremes may not be the best solutions. It would be better to take a moderate stance and make it easy for real readers to leave comments but make sure that automated software cannot leave comments.

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.

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/