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The Foundations of Good Business Blogging

If you’re thinking of starting a business blog, you’re probably wondering, “Will it work?”

Are business blogs worth it?  Maybe you’ve heard success stories of businesses that used blogs to increase their sales and improve their brand.  Maybe you’ve heard how online business has become social, so you need to start a blog to join the conversation.

But still, you’re wondering, “Will it work for me?  Will it work for my business?”

In my experience and research, I’ve found five characteristics that successful business blogs share in common.  I believe if you have these five characteristics, your blog will have a great chance of succeeding.

1) Passion

Are you passionate about your industry?  In a social environment like the internet, passionate bloggers attract the biggest crowds.

If you love your industry, that will come through in your blogging.  Your passion will attract other people who love your industry.  These people will become your evangelists.  They will tell others about your blog and your blog will grow through word of mouth.

However, if you don’t have that passion, if you’re blogging strictly to increase sales instead of blogging to add value to your industry, people will sense your selfishness and lack of passion.  They’ll visit other blogs instead of yours.

2) Knowledge

You don’t have to be the world’s foremost expert in your industry.  But you do need to know more than the average person that’s interested in your industry.

Fortunately, you can take time to do research to increase your knowledge.

3) Focus on readers

Successful bloggers understand their readers.  Instead of blogging about topics they find interesting, these bloggers are always asking questions like:

What would my readers find interesting?
What would they find useful?
What topics would entertain them?
What are their most common questions?

You can be more focused on your readers by going to places where they hang out (like forums and other blogs) and observing their interactions.

4) Consistency

If you keep your blog regularly updated, you will have a steady stream of traffic.  Your readers will be like avid magazine readers.  They will visit your blog regularly in anticipation of your newest post.

5) Patience

Successful blogs don’t happen overnight.  There is definitely a sowing period for most business blogs where you won’t have much traffic or comments.  However, if you’re patient, you’ll reap great rewards.

Business blogging is like building a reputation in real life.   It takes time to build a reputation but every little bit of counts even in the early days.  As you continue to add value in your industry through your posts, you’ll soon have the stellar reputation that leads to much higher traffic and sales.

Why Participating on Web 2.0 Sites Should Not Replace Blogging

Web 2.0. Social media. New media. Join the conversation.

Whatever you want to call it, there is a big shift happening on the internet. Instead of just consuming information, more and more online users are become publishers.

Web 2.0 sites like forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube attract many amateur publishers. Also, these sites are taking away eyeballs from mainstream media sites like Yahoo, New York Times, and MSN.com.

In the rush to get the attention of these web 2.0 users, companies are posting in forums, commenting on blogs, creating Facebook pages, and producing YouTube videos.

There’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, companies that do participate on web 2.0 sites have an advantage over companies that don’t. However, many of these companies don’t have a blog. This leaves money on the table, because in the long-term, it’s more effective to send Web 2.0 users to a blog rather than to a business home page.

Web 2.0 users are usually not in a buying frame of mind, so sending them to a sales page will not give you a high conversion rate. However, if you send them to your blog, you’ll enjoy these benefits.

  1. You’ll start building a good reputation because your blog provides free, useful information on a consistent basis.
  2. Web 2.0 users will be impressed with your company since most business sites don’t have a blog. Having a blog shows them that you understand the importance of web 2.0.
  3. You will get useful feedback through blog comments.
  4. Over time, as visitors read your blog, many of them will trust you enough to subscribe to your RSS feed or your email list. This subscription lets you communicate and sell to them over and over again.

Why a Good About Page Can’t Replace a Blog

One of the reasons many online businesses are using blogs is because blogs make their businesses more personal.  However, you may be thinking, “My about page can show the personal side of my business.  I don’t need a blog.”

Here is the problem with only relying on an about page.  An about page tells visitors what your business is all about, but a blog builds trust that what you say in the about page is actually true.

Just saying something about yourself doesn’t mean people will believe you.

Let’s look at an example.  Pretend you have a business that offers home installation services.

On your about page, you say these things:

  • We have a quality service.
  • We’re better than our competitors.
  • We have experience.
  • We’re experts.
  • We have an awesome staff that’s friendly and competent.

Aren’t these the same type of things most businesses have on their about page?

But with a blog, you can provide evidence for your claims.

What if you had a blog with regularly updated content?  You could publish content in topics like these:

  • Testimonials
  • Pictures of installations you’ve done
  • 10 common installation mistakes
  • Home theater industry news
  • Reviews of different home theater products
  • DIRECTV vs cable

As you build your blog with valuable content, people will realize that the things you say on your about page are true.   This increase in trust will build your brand and increase sales.

The New Guy and New Plans

Hi.  My name is Dee Barizo and I’m the new blogger for this site.

You may have read some of my old posts back when I blogged at Smart SEO Blog, Net Business Blog, or Performancing.  Also, I’ve done internet marketing and SEO work for great companies such as Sea Waves Technology and Setfire Media.

My plans for this blog is write about the great fit that is small business and blogging.  I’ll be posting a couple times a week.  I’ll be talking about reasons why your business needs a blog.  For those who already have a blog, I’ll give tips and strategies for using your blog to drive traffic, improve branding, and ultimately, make more sales.

We’ll continue to have blog design and development services.  If you need a blog for your business, feel free to check us out.  We’ve got a great team of designers and developers.  Also, I’ll be working on creating a small business blogging training program that should be launched after six months.

Small Business Blogging Niche

I’m excited to write for the the small business blogging niche.  I think it’s an underserved niche that has a lot of potential.

There is a lot of information about becoming a “problogger”.  Also, many people have talked about using blogs in big corporate companies.  However, there is not much information about small business blogging. This is unfortunate because small businesses are positioned very well to take advantage of the benefits blogs offer.

While many aspiring probloggers struggle to earn money because of low CPMs and cheap AdSense clicks, small businesses have a great monetization strategy.  They sell products and services.

Blogs often work better in small businesses than big corporations because there is less red tape and communication flows much better in small businesses.  Also, blogs work well if they are personal.  Small businesses are usually more personal than big corporations.

If you have a small business or are thinking of starting one, feel free to bookmark this site and check back often.  Also, you can get our latest updates by subscribing to our RSS feed.

CSS3 Hitting The Big Time In A Slightly Unconventional Way

The iPhone 3G and iPhone OS 2.0 are causing quite a resurgence towards the iPhone platform — new users and previous iPhone users alike are both feeling like they have a brand new device in front of them. The App Store allows people to download desktop-class applications directly to their phone and it’s amazing.

However what gets me more excited is the splattering of advanced web technologies that are now in millions of people’s hands courtesy of the Apple and the iPhone. Technologies like CSS3 and sqlite that have only been implemented in the tiniest slice of browsers are now able to be taken advantage of on the iPhone.

Safari performance in iPhone OS 2.0 has been dramatically improved, and this is important because it will continue to allow developers to create great web applications instead of simply going the native Cocoa route. One of the beautiful things about creating applications for the iPhone is that you get to pick which technologies you want to use and implement them where they make the most sense. With the advanced layout rendering capabilities present in Safari, you can create some seriously powerful design logic just by using CSS3 selectors to manipulate your content.

Safari and Firefox have implemented many parts of the CSS3 specification, but the problem is if you’re releasing an application to the masses, you have to support the big ugly dog in the corner, Internet Explorer. All the cool things you can do with CSS3 don’t matter if you’re still supporting older browsers, but on the iPhone you’re only supporting one browser and it happens to have fantastic standards support.

So go ahead and bust out your shadows, rounded corners, and background images, Safari on the iPhone can take it.