Business Blog Boost

I posed the question, “How personal should a business blog be?” in January 2007, in my travel blog. I’m not sure that there is a definitive answer to this question, as ever it is a matter for personal judgment and balancing priorities. My travel blog is quite personal but I’ve judged that to be appropriate as part of what makes my travel business different from other travel websites especially compared to large travel companies selling well known destinations mainly on price. My travel blog exists as a method of marketing my business and my personality is an integral part of my brand.

One way in which I attempt to add some variety to my travel blog is to have guest interviews and posts, so that readers don’t get sick fed up with my posts. I ensure that these guest posts tie in with the theme of my business - seeing more of Europe by getting off the beaten track. If these posts are reciprocal it gives you more backlinks and exposure to the readers of another blog, the readers of which are likely to be interested in your product/service.

You should bear in the mind the aim of your blog and use this to help you answer the question of how much of your personality is reflected in your blog You must always bear in the mind the perspective of your reader. They do not want to read the outpourings of a frustrated novelist nor do they want to read a totally flat impersonal corporate drone or a blatant selling pitch.

This blog Business Blog Boost is also a personal blog based on my experience in creating and maintaining my travel blog. The posts have to be interesting and informative to readers who want to boost their business with a blog. Therefore this blog is not an detailed chronological blow by blow account of the travel blog. My aim is to write posts on specific topics so that readers can pick the posts that are of most interest and relevance to them.

[tags]business blogs[/tags]

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Photos are an important part of my travel blog. The old saying that “a picture says a thousand words” is so true. Much better for readers of my travel blog to see a photo of a destination about which I write than an outpouring of flowery prose from me. I submitted most of my photos to Flickr.com for public view with a creative commons licence which allows anyone to use my photos as long as they credit me and don’t alter or transform the photos. You can also write a profile with some information about yourself and add a link back to your site.

Flikcr guidelines state that you should only use your photo stream for personal use so be careful not to violate this or your account may be terminated. I just add tags (category labels) e.g, country, county, town and specific location of photo. All the photos I upload have been taken my me.

So far I’ve only had a few visits to my site from the Flickr photos but I think that may increase as Yahoo have started to integrate Flickr photos in to their image search. It’s important that you give the photos appropriate tags, as many as are relevant, so that they will come up on image searches and not just Yahoo, my photos often come in Google image searches too.

This approach may not be appropriate for all businesses but it is important that you try to promote your business in as many different places as possible, especially those that are free of charge. This gives you the best opportunity of getting of increasing site visitors, brand awareness and sales.

[tags]flickr, business blogs[/tags]

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Reviewback.com is a servicee where you can arrange free reciprocal blog reviews. I’ve noticied other charging blog review services like Reviewme.com where you pay a fee for your blog to be reviewed (part of which is paid to the reviewer and part retained by Reviewme, or you are paid a fee(part of which is kept by Reviewme), if you review another blog.

I decided to give Reviewback a try and registered my travel blog with them. I received a trade request from a blog about Istanbul, Meeting Continents, which I accepted. I reviewed Meeting Continents and my Europe a la Carte blog was reviewed.

The review exchange benefits both our sites as it introduces our blog to the other blogs readers and gives both our blogs another backlink.

I will use Reviewback for this blog, Business Blog Boost, in the future but I don’t think it’s sensible to ask for a review until your blog has been running for some time, to give the reviewer more material to look at.

I think that Reviewback is a great free service which means that bloggers can browse through other blogs to decide if they would like to request a review. At present there are only 7 blogs on the travel section of the database but I am sure as the service is publicised and grows there will be more bloggers signing up to the service. I suppose that blogs with a high Google pagerank and Technorati rank will still be able to command fees through paid for services as these blogs may feel that they have little to gain by doing reciprocal reviews with low ranking blogs. However blogs starting out and established bloggers who are altruistic enough to want to give other bloggers a hand up the ladder will use Reviewback.

I would recommend that you consider using Reviewback as part of the marketing strategy for your blog.

[tags]Reviewback, blog reviews, business blogs[/tags]

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One of the ways to market you blog is to submit it to as many search engines as possible, so that you create links to your site, which improves your Google page rank and makes it more likely that internet surfers will find your blog.

I thought that I’d try out this free search engine submission form that claims it submits your site to 150 search engines. It is possible to do manual submissions to search engines but it is pretty repetitive and time consuming so it’s worth giving something like this a try.

Free Search Engine Submission thanks to: Create a Website

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My son installed Google Adsense for content to my travel blog and website in April 2007. I’d been thinking about having these contextual text ads on my blog and website for some but was concerned that they might make the pages look ugly and alienate some readers. I decided to go for less intrusive option of a horizontal block of 2 ads under the first 3 blog posts.

There was some initial contextual discrepancy with ads for Italian sinks and taps coming up. However after a week or so things settled down.

Google Adsense can provide some additional revenue for your business. You have to decide if they are appropriate for your blog. In my travel blog I reckoned that most potential customers were probably going to look at different accommodation options and/or shop around to get the best price, so giving them a relevant ad was on balance a good idea, so at least I could make a few pennies out of their desire to shop around.

In this blog I thought that Google Adsense could provide links that my readers could find useful in boosting their business with a blog, so again why not make a few pennies from this. I advocate that business bloggers should read from a variety of sources on how to maximise the benefits of having a business blog.

Overall I would recommend Google Adsense, other than the initial installation, it requires no effort. I don’t think that it has adversely affected the overall look, quality or feel of my travel blog.

[tags]Google Adsense, business blogs[/tags]

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I find that having the titles, date and the first line of my 3 most recent blog posts on the home page of my travel website is really good way to publicise my blog. It means that any visitors to my website notice that the site has a blog and they can click on a post title to read the full post. Feedburner.com offer BuzzBoost free on their site. I just needed to insert some html code into my home page.

[tags]Feedburner, Buzzboost, blog marketing, business blogs[/tags]

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I only recently discovered Feedburner.com for my travel blog. It’s a great way to make is easy for readers to subscribe to have your blog posts (feed) delivered to their computer. You just need to install the subscribe button on the side margin of your blog and then the reader can choose how the wish to subscribe to your feed.

Until the subscribe button was installed, readers of my travel blog could only subscribe by clicking on the subscribe text in all the other text at the botton of a post. I wasn’t exactly making it easy for readers to subscribe! It’s reasons like this that made me start this blog, so I can help other business bloggers boost their business more quickly by doing the right thing more quickly. Things like burning your feed and installing a subscribe button may only take a few minutes but deliver results.

You want to do everything that you can to encourage readers to subscribe to your feed so that become hooked on your blog and want to read it regularly.

[tags]Feedburner, blog subscription, blog feed, RSS[/tags]

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If you want to get the best tips and advice for your business blog try to refer to as many sources as possible. I’m not setting myself up as the know all of business blogging, just hopefully one useful resource amongst many. I don’t have much technical knowledge so can’t offer advice on that side of blogging.

I’ve compiled my top 3 blogs and top 3 books to help you boost your business with a blog. You can also read other successful blogs and converse with other bloggers.

Spend some time doing research for your blog, so can master the basics but then you just have to grasp the nettle and start blogging.

Try to keep your blog unique to you and your business. Yes you can learn a lot from other sources but for your blog to be maximise it’s potential it has to offer readers something a bit different and special to make them actively want to keep reading you blog as supposed to the other millions of blogs out there.

[tags]blogging resources, business blogs[/tags]

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Publish & Prosper: Blogging for your business aims to offer you a comprehensive practical book about business blogging. It is written in a “how to” approach with case studies of large and small companies. The book examines topics such as different types of business blogs, potential pitfalls, effective blog design and expanding your web presence.

Blogging for Business: Everything you should know and why you should care talks about why businesses that don’t utilise the competitive advantage offered by blogs are missing out. The book explains how to create and maintain effective blogs and how to tap into the power of business blogging. It looks into what differentiates blogs from other types of online media, how blogs can increase brand awareness and conversations with customers.

The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely everything you need to know to get it right is written in an informal, non technical style explaining why every business should have a blog that is engaging, smart and appealing to readers, with a word of caution that a boring or deceptive blog is worse than no blog. With the low cost and ease of use of blogs every business can participate in this marketing revolution. The books assesses areas such as how much time blogging will take, choosing a blog author(s) and is it too late to start to start a business blog.

If you know of any other useful books please post a comment on why you liked that book.

[tags]business blogging books[/tags]

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