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Blogging

Blogging is a worldwide social phenomenon that is constantly evolving. Although the word ‘blog’ is originally derived from the phrase ‘web log’, the majority of blogs these days are more just a type of website rather than an online journal or diary.

Blogs are used for all sorts of purposes, by individuals and by businesses as well. It is common practice for companies to use blogs to communicate and interact with their customers and other stakeholders. Similarly most of the online newspapers feature a range of blogs on their main website to offer new channels for their writers and to generate lively discussions and debates with their readers.

It is this interactivity, and encouraging a conversation that is one of the key features of the most successful blogs, and what makes them so distinct from other static types of websites.

Whether you are a business owner who wants to engage with new and existing customers or an individual who wants to share their expertise on or passion about a given subject and wants to interact with people who have a similar interest, creating a blog is a great way to start that conversation. Find out how to start a blog.

Once you've started the key to success from then on is to make sure that you update the blog regularly with new articles, in order to stimulate the conversation and keep it going.


Advantages of blogging

Some of the features that make blogs different from other websites include:

  • the content is updated regularly, often daily or at least weekly
  • the content is usually published in chronological order and archives of older articles are available
  • you can allow readers to leave comments and they are encouraged to do so (though comments may be moderated)
  • other bloggers can interact by linking to similar articles they have written on their own blogs, or adding links to similar appropriate materials elsewhere
  • users can subscribe to and receive updates via rss news feeds

In order to maximise interactivity and encourage people to participate in the conversation, blogs often make the most of a range of media such as audio, music, images and video.

Blogging enables you to share thoughts and ideas with an online community and engage other people in discussion and conversation. These could be potential new customers, or just people with similar interests who you can chat to online.

Many blog platforms support the use of audio and video files as well as written articles, which allows you to explore a variety of different media to get your message across and keep visitors to your blog interested.


Blogging sites make it easy to get started

You don’t even need to have any web designing skills to take part. There are a number of blogging platforms that offer free software or blogging templates for you to use. Sites such as blogger.com and wordpress.com allow you to create a free blog once you have registered for an account with them. You may then have access to a range of template designs that will enable you to customise your blog and add various features such as an archive, a tag cloud, or an RSS feed so that people can subscribe to receive updates when you add new articles.

If you then decide to give the site a more ‘professional’ identity, you can even map your free blog to your own domain name for a small annual fee. The advantage of using a free platform for your blog is that you don’t have to do any of the technical maintenance, or worry about hosting the site on your own servers. You can just get on with writing about the subjects that interest you and concentrate on producing engaging articles.

How to start a blog

Here are some useful sites to help you start writing your own blog:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/guides/how-to-get-a-blog

https://www.blogger.com/start

http://wordpress.com/


Blogging and social media

The increased popularity and widespread use of social media make blogging even easier and more effective than ever. Most free blogging platforms include widgets that make publicising your latest blog post via Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn as simple as clicking a button or putting a tick in a box. Within seconds, any Twitter followers, Facebook friends or LinkedIn contacts can see that you have published a new article, get reading and give you their feedback via comments. They may also choose to retweet or share your link, which will get your message to a wider audience without you having to lift a finger!

This personal information might also be of interest: Blogging

Business benefits of blogging

Raise the profile of you brand

Blogs serve a valuable purpose for businesses. They enable two-way communication on a scale that normal corporate websites cannot match. Reaching out to the blogging community and their readers can offer many opportunities for businesses to generate good will and good publicity. To achieve this, the tone of your blog must attract customers who keep returning because you are writing content that is interesting and engaging. You need to commit to updating the blog regularly, with articles that encourage interaction from your readers – otherwise the conversation will soon dry up.

Competitive intelligence

Blogs are a great way to see and hear what your competitors are doing, and can provide you with useful insights relevant to the industry you operate in. It is an opportunity to research the market, and provide clarity on how to differentiate from the competition.

Extend your reach

Anyone who has access to the internet has the ability to access your blog. By advertising your blog to your target audience, you and your customers will be able to communicate with each other directly, flagging relevant comments, news and insight. Registering your blog with Google, Technorati and other similar sites will increase your audience and maximise your impact.

Reduce your costs

Blogs are relatively cheap, if not free, to set up. Within a very short space of time, you can have an online presence communicating with your target audience with a minimal amount of maintenance.

Market Testing

Blogs enable you to communicate directly with your customers and test out new ideas before you develop them. As such, you are potentially reducing your research and development costs, and also increasing the success rate of your new product or service.

Blog Safety tips for business

Knowthenet outlines the following safety tips to consider when blogging for business:

Know the legalities

Be aware of libel laws and any legal requirements or confidentiality clauses that you are bound to in your employment contract (particularly if the blog relates to your work).

Business guidelines

Businesses using blogs should treat them in the same way they would their corporate website. Ensure you have a policy about what content is appropriate for posting to the blog, and make sure all employees likely to post articles to the blog are aware of those guidelines. Although your blog may have a more informal style than your website, you should not relax any of the security considerations you would put in place for the main website.

Protect your reputation

One of the main risks for business blogging is the risk of publicly damaging the company’s reputation if inappropriate material is published. If you see content that you would be embarrassed to have displayed on the home page of your company’s website, then it shouldn’t be published on your blog.

Know your audience

Think carefully about how public you want your blog to be. It’s your site, so you should be in control. The more personal or identifiable the information you wish to share, the fewer people you should share it with. If you want your blog to be public and you intend to advertise it on Google, Technorati etc, then only disclose information you would be happy for everyone on the internet to see.

Understand privacy settings

If you would rather not share information with everyone, keep your blog private by limiting access to your friends and family. Most blogging software available has privacy settings and many include the option to protect access to individual blog articles or your entire blog with a password.

Safeguard your contact details

Ensure your personal safety by not giving out identifiable information or locations for yourself or others. Don’t publish your address details, or any photos that could identify your location. Similarly it’s a good idea not to reveal information about your age, so don’t include your date of birth, year of graduation etc.

Use a nickname

You could think about using a nickname or pseudonym for blogging instead of your real name, and reflect that across the domain name, and any email addresses associated with the blog.

Ensure safety controls exist

Make sure that the blogging site you use has clear privacy and security policies, a simple way to report abuse and explains how the site will respond to reports of abuse. The site should also have tools to help protect your safety including ways to control who has permission to view your blog, a facility to allow you to turn comments on or off, and the ability to block anyone who harasses you in any way.

Further information

For more information on how to blog safely, go to: www.getsafeonline.org

Do’s and don’ts of blogging

Many companies find offering a blog to their customers is a good way of engaging, of keeping them in touch with whatever they are doing and hopefully building incremental business as they remain interested and focused. There are a few helpful guidelines which should make a blog deliver business benefits:

DO: Keep it fresh.  Nothing looks worse than an out of date or neglected blog which started with a flurry of activity and then failed to sustain the impetus. If you can only manage a blog entry once a fortnight then that’s what you should do. If your readers demand more then that’s fine, it’s better to grow than to shrink.

DON’T: Take a pop at the competition. There have been businesses in the past who have begun by stating how people are paying too much for goods or services when they start off. Two things can happen. Either the actual cost of goods and their manufacture catch up and the prices mysteriously have to increase, leaving the website laughing at you, or your customers think you look unprofessional. 

DO: Allow comments whenever you’re going to have enough time to engage with them. Remember your time is valuable so you will need to make sure you’re getting some sort of payback from your writing.

DON’T: Leave the blog in the hands of someone who isn’t trained, literate and able to handle it. A few years ago a well known furniture manufacturer realised that the microblogging site Twitter was attracting a lot of attention from people concerned about human rights abuses, so it joined in but kept trying to steer the conversation around to sofas. It was in appalling taste and the business was eventually forced to apologise – but the very junior person who was responsible shouldn’t actually have been asked to do the job without support.

DO: Measure results and find out how many people are visiting your blog. Preferably use web analytics to find out where they’re coming from and where they go afterwards so you can establish whether you’re actually attracting new people and whether they’re bringing in sales as well as just looking.

DON’T: Leave your comments unmoderated. If you have comments on your blog you may be spammed. Most blogging software will remove this but even then you could have competitors or antagonistic commenters doing damage – this needs weeding out, and preferably you need some sort of statement of your policy on comments so that people can’t complain if their comments are removed.

DO: Find industry commentators to guest blog. Many experts will write for nothing if you allow them a link to their site and you’ll add weight and give people a reason to come back again and again.

DON’T: Let any guest blogger advertise their service too overtly. It can be easy to become a little star struck when someone you admire is writing for you – they’re human, they’re promoting their business and it’s up to you to ensure they don’t take over completely. It’s still your blog.

DO: Put keywords, links and all those other good SEO things into your blog (see our SEO section). Tweet it and Facebook it so that you get incoming links from these messages, which will add brownie points as far as the search engines are concerned.

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