More
and more small businesses are starting blogs on the Web, and it’s a
positive development, if done correctly.
One
of the benefits is the chance for business owners to hold a
conversation with potential clients, and with people who may be
interested the services, or goods that the company offers as well as
with people who may share similar interests. Another benefit is the
opportunity to attract search engine traffic and links to your site. A
third is the chance to build a positive reputation on the web.
Those reasons may sound good in theory, but do they work in practice?
One
of the first sites that I added a blog to was for a client in a very
small professional services organization. In the years that it has been
operating, the blog has had a very positive impact upon his business:
1. Having drawn repeated mentions in local
newspapers and magazines
2. Being profiled in national publications like
USA Today
3. Appearing as an example in a book on blogging
as a way of enhancing a professional reputation
4. Attracting business from local customers as
well as national and international clients
5. Providing rankings in search engines for a wide variety of keyword
phrases ahead of firms with more than 300 members
6. Engaging other practitioners in the same field
to discuss and enter into consultation on a variety of topics
7. Suggesting other services that he might provide
to his clients
Over
those years, we’ve had many conversations about different aspects of
blogging, and how to go about it. In the early days, we weren’t sure
exactly where to go with the blog, and what to say. But we agreed that
it should be a conversation with each reader who comes and visits, to
give them a glimpse of the workings of the organization, to share news
that we found interesting, to comment on the local community, and to
show the human side of what he does.
One of our first
conversations about blogging was to develop a set of topics to blog
about, and to write those down. In time, that became an idea clearing
house – a sort of blog behind the blog, where topics and ideas were
shared on things to blog about. We eventually turned to an internal
wiki where we could share with each other links to stories or blog
posts, or a sentence or paragraph on a subject that we thought readers
might find interesting. We noticed, as we went forward, that some of
our interests, and the topics of things that we blogged about changed
over time, and we welcomed those changes.
Another early
conversation was on topics that should be avoided. These included
internal company secrets, confidential materials, and information from
outside parties that have been disclosed during the course of business.
We agreed that if we were going to write about a specific topic that
was controversial, that we would try to present sides of the
controversy that we may personally disagree with, so that each reader
could form their own opinions. We also tried to find and provide more
than one source of information on subjects if possible, to show that we
were responsible with our research.
We decided when beginning
the blog that we would enable comments and try to be as responsive as
possible to people who might leave a remark on a post. The interactions
that developed lead in time to relationships with other bloggers in the
same and related industries, and to long term friendships with people
who were interested in the subject matter of the blog.
I’ve seen
many blogs from businesses that don’t include blogrolls, and I think
that may be a mistake. In the earliest incarnation of this business
blog, we included a list of reference resources that we thought would
appeal to the readers that we thought we could attract to the blog, and
a handful of blogs that we had been following that we found interesting
and helped us in the decision to start blogging in the beginning. When
we found other blogs that we thought were interesting and might
interest the readers of the blog, we took a number of steps. We read
through their archives, left some comments, and even blogged about
their posts. In other words, we courted them, to see if there might be
the possibility of a positive relationship. If we felt like we could
trust our visitors to their blogs, we added them to the blogroll.
An
early challenge that we faced was that many of the topics that we
wanted to discuss on the blog were often written about by others in
complex language and jargon particular to the industry. Sometimes those
words seemed to be the best ones to use because their meanings were
precise and easily understandable by practitioners. But the audience
that we wanted to reach included many people who would be unfamiliar
with what those words meant. I suggested that a good tone of voice to
use might be the one where a client was first introduced to what the
business provided, and explained in simple layman’s terms. A benefit of
this approach was that those words and phrases happened to be the ones
that those audience members would often use to search with when trying
to find a service like the one this business offered.
The
business grew larger over time, and other voices appeared on the blog.
The idea bank that we developed enabled us to share the responsibility
of deciding about who blogged on which topic, and to provide input on
prospective posts before they were made. We developed a competition, so
that people could take turns in blogging, and try to outdo each other
with what they posted. Our conversations about what topics to cover and
what topics to avoid took shape into a rough set of guidelines, so that
everyone was on the same wavelength when it came time to decide what to
post, and how to present topics.
Comments and emails from
customers were considered carefully in replying to people who took the
time to share their thoughts, and sometimes those turned into posts,
too. They also provided ideas for growth of the business.
As
I noted above, we found that some of the things that we originally were
interested in changed over time. Interestingly, some of the services
that the business offered changed over time with them. We found that by
following news and opinions in the industry closely with the blog, we
were educating ourselves on where the industry was headed, what
potential and present clients were concerned about, and what trends
were developing.
By
engaging people in a conversation through a blog and listening to them,
we were better able to meet their needs.
