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5 Ways to BE Successful with a Business Blog

business blogging successAnyone can start a business blog, but not everyone can be successful as a business blogger.  That’s because writing for a business blog is different from any form of traditional marketing or business development.  Instead of self-promoting and selling on your business blog, you need to focus on dialogue and relationships in order to find success.

Following are 5 fundamental requirements you need to follow to BE successful with your business blogging efforts:

1. Be human.

No one will want to spend time with you online (or offline) if you sound like you’re reading from a corporate brochure or PowerPoint presentation.  Your blog posts must demonstrate your personality and be written in a conversational style and tone befitting of your target audience.  They have to be interesting and engaging, and they must be completely devoid of any corporate rhetoric. [Read more…] about 5 Ways to BE Successful with a Business Blog

Harness the Power of Business Blogging for Brand Building

"business blog"One of the biggest opportunities for businesses when it comes to leveraging the reach of the online conversation happening on the social Web is related to brand building.  By participating in online discussions, you can create brand awareness, recognition, recall, loyalty and advocacy that lead to an extremely powerful brand overall.

First, what is a brand?

A brand is a promise to consumers that creates customer expectations for every experience they have with that brand.  As you continually meet those customer expectations for your brand, consumers develop loyalty to it, seeking it out over other brands, and advocating it (or defending it) to other consumers.

Next, how do you build a brand?

There are three main steps to building a brand that apply regardless of the industry your business is in or the tools you use to communicate your brand messages and develop your brand image.  Those three steps are: [Read more…] about Harness the Power of Business Blogging for Brand Building

Business Blog or Die – The GPS of Blogging for Business Revealed

Business Blog“Why does my business need a blog?  It can’t help me.”

I hear that question all the time and I always respond in the same way.  There are three primary reasons why every business can benefit from publishing a business blog, which I refer to as the GPS Effect:

1. The Google Effect

Business blogs create entry points.  How do people find businesses, brands, products and services these days?  Not the Yellow Pages.  Nope, they visit Google.com and type in keywords to find the information they need.  Your business needs to be listed in those results.  Certainly, search engine optimization (SEO) is important, and entry points are an important part of SEO.

For example, imagine that your business Web site has 10 pages.  That’s 10 ways Google can find your site.  Now, imagine that you write a blog connected to your business Web site and publish a new post everyday for a year.  Now, you have 365 more entry points for Google to find your site.  And what if the content you write on your blog is amazing and shareworthy?  People will link to it, talk about it, tweet it, blog about it, and so on across the social Web opening up even more entry points for Google to find your site and include it in search results for keywords related to your business.  A business would be crazy not to jump at the opportunity that the Compounding Effect of Blogging offers. [Read more…] about Business Blog or Die – The GPS of Blogging for Business Revealed

Susan Gunelius Talks Business Blogging

Susan GuneliusBusiness Logs, Splashpress Media’s blog for businesses trying to learn how to leverage blogging and social media to grow their brands, businesses and bottom-lines, has a new author!  Today, Susan Gunelius joins the Splashpress Media team as the voice of Business Logs.

From Susan Gunelius:

I’m very excited to be a part of Splashpress Media, and I’m even more excited to help businesses learn how to create successful blogs and social media presences.  I am a firm believer that the social Web presents the single largest opportunity for businesses to market and grow throughout the coming decade, and my objective in writing for Business Logs is to share my knowledge and build an active online community where business people can learn not just the value of blogging and social media marketing but also the fundamental marketing and business theories that drive strategic decision-making related to those online activities and more. [Read more…] about Susan Gunelius Talks Business Blogging

How to Address Complaints Posted on Blogs and Social Media

Lemons!When you run a business, image has a big role in whether you succeed or not. You spend money for building goodwill among your existing clients. You spend money for marketing in the aim of getting new customers. But sometimes, one wrong move might prove to be disastrous, especially if word about certain failures spread virally online. These may be in the form of bad product reviews, bad customer service experience or even rants pointed toward your direction.

The litigious route

We live in a litigious society after all, and oftentimes businesses resort to the law when they feel they have been bad-mouthed. I’ve experienced this one time or another in the course of my involvement with several blogs and new media networks. There was one time when I received a demand to take down some content on a blog that was allegedly libelous to the complainant’s company. Thing is, the blog in question wasn’t even mine. It had been submitted to a blog directory that the company I work for owned. In some cases, the content in question is not even a blog post, but sometimes a comment posted by a third party.

Sometimes these legal cases do prosper. But most of the time, they not. This would only go to show that the business entity involved may not necessarily be well-versed in social media. Being quick to do damage control through the courts would give the impression that you are a bully, and that you are using lawsuits as a tactic to scare off anyone who dares talk or write about you in a bad light. [Read more…] about How to Address Complaints Posted on Blogs and Social Media