2/08/2008
The care and feeding of your blog
| In a recent blog entry, I talked about the all-too-common trend of setting up a blog and then not doing anything with it. Here are some basic but key tips for keeping the care and feeding of your blog: Investigate. Become a journalist whose beat is your industry. What are your competitors writing about? What trend or news items are the associations, trade publications and periodicals of your industry discussing? (And what are they not writing about?) Don't go TMI on us. One of the attractions of blogs and blogging is the casual, conversational tone you can adopt. But don't take the reduction in formality to mean that you can let it all hang out. Your business blog is not a place to discuss your child's potty-training, or your search for Mr. (or Ms. Right or your personal habits) UNLESS there is a very definite and specific business-related and sales-related reason to do so! (And by all means if you want to get down to the brass tacks of your personal life, create a personal blog on the side and go for it.) 80/20 rule applies here too. I believe in an info to sales ratio of 80/20. Teach, inform, comment and show yourself and your business to be the leader of the pack. Establish your expertise and sprinkle in some related services or products you’re selling. Go for the hard sell and you're sure to lose out, no matter how often you're blogging. Labels: blog, blogging, unattended blog syndrome |
