According to
HubSpot
research, companies that have taken up
business blogging
attract 55% more website visitors than non-blogging companies.
HubSpot has partnered with Jeff Ente of
Who’s Blogging What
to create a a
new 24 page ebook that provides business blogging
expertise from some of the best bloggers on the web. The ebook includes advice and commentary from blogging experts including
Tamar Weinberg
,
Mitch Joel
,
Joe Pulizzi
as well as others. As we prepare for 2011, it is important that business that are actively blogging or are planning to start a blog understand best practices as well as tips and tricks to save time and boost productivity.
Check out a sample section of the ebook contributed by Mitch Joel :
1. Blogging = Critical Thinking
If everything else went away (the readers, the comments, the community, the feedback), Blogging was (and still is) an amazing place to think about an issue or news item and work through it. I liken myself as a Media Hacker. A Blog is a great place for anyone to be a Hacker of whatever it is that they love. If you don't believe me, then just watch Seth Godin and Tom Peters in this video: Blogging Still Matters... Now More Than Ever.
2. Blogging = Ideation
In using your Blog as a platform for your critical thinking, you will quickly start uncovering new and interesting business models and ideas for how you can push your industry forward or how it can/should be thinking differently. Writing a Blog, reading the comments and feedbacking into them is the ultimate Petri dish for ideation and innovation.
3. Blogging = Tinkering
The ideas and critical thinking are not always one hundred percent final. Blogging allows you to tinker with ideas. To work at them (like a complex mathematical formula). Slowly, over time, you start realizing how wrong you were, how visionary you were and how much further you still have to go.
4. Blogging = Relationships
It's not about sitting in the dark recesses of your basement as you tinker away with words and thoughts. It's about using this platform to connect. It's about real interactions with real human beings. Some of my best friends are people that I would not have otherwise met were it not for Six Pixels of Separation (the Blog, not the concept). If you Blog, step out into the physical world. Meet other Bloggers. Share, learn and collaborate with them.
5. Blogging = Business
Make no mistake about it. My business blog started out as a means for my agency to tell the world how we think differently about Media, Marketing, Advertising and Communications. Over the years, this has attracted many world-class clients, speaking engagements, a book offer and many other amazing and interesting business opportunities. So, while it is not a place where we shills our wares, it is a place that is directly tied to our overall business objectives/strategy. It consistently delivers a very solid ROI to our bottom line (take that, you Social Media measurement naysayers!).
6. Blogging = Sharing
As each day passes, I like Charlene Li's latest book, Open Leadership, more and more (her first book, Groundswell rocks as well). Many people think that Social Media is all about the conversation and engaging in the conversation. I believe what makes any media "social" is the ability to share it. To help you to open up. Not only can you share the concepts by telling your peers and friend about a Blog, but everybody shares in the insights as well. It has changed/evolved our corporate culture. A Blog makes you think more about how you can share your content, your thoughts and why others may want to work/connect to you.
7. Blogging = Exhaust Valve
A great Blog is great because the Blogger actually cares and loves to create content. If it's forced, if it's your "job," then the passion rarely comes through. The biggest lesson I have learned in my seven years of Blogging is that my blog is my exhaust valve. After working a full day with clients and their many challenges, my Blog is my playground. It's the place where I can let off some textual steam. Make your Blog your exhaust valve. Caution: be careful that you're not Blogging simply to blow off angry steam. The steam and exhaust I am talking about is the pent up energy of passion that I have from doing what I love to do.
Inbound Marketing Blog Feed
Edwin Soler 2:31 PM on December 02, 2010
EXCELLENT POST! I am in the process of adding a business blog to my site and this just ups the burning desire to have it implemented sooner and start blogging away. I was just this year that I realized the importance and power of blogging although it's been around for some time now. It's also interesting to see just how many companies STILL do not use it. With the social media craze surrounding so many, it may still take some time for some people/companies to get it right. I also downloaded the e-book and was very pleased to see this post as part of the e-book.
Kenny 7:37 PM on December 02, 2010
This is all so true, I just redesigned my restaurants website with blog capabilities and love it. I can add fresh new content at any time and post specials and pictures. The blog lets me free write as if i was speaking to one of my customers, good article thanks Hubspot. Ya Six Pixels of Separation rocks.
Tahmina Sultan 12:37 PM on December 03, 2010
Awesome post! I am new in blogging. Could you please tell me how can I find out how many sites are linking in to our blog? When any one leaves a comment to our blog post, does it increase our link? What are the criteria of keeping a comment on the post? I know I am asking a lot, but you are an expert to give me the answers. Thanks.
Kipp Bodnar 3:10 PM on December 03, 2010
@Tahmina
Lots of good questions! I would suggest using Blog.Grader.com to evaluate your blog. It should help answer most of your questions.
Thank you!
Kipp
Tony Faustino 5:19 PM on December 03, 2010
Kipp: This is a great post, and I love the sample section here from Mitch Joel. Many of Mitch's points remind of Adam Singer's analogy that "blogging is like going to the gym for your brain." That's why I love blogging because of the critical thinking, creativity, and researching I do to create and develop my posts. It's one of the most rewarding and challenging activities I've ever undertaken. How I wish I would have discovered and started this labor of love sooner ...
Specialist Dental Group 6:13 AM on December 06, 2010
We Always learn from your blog posts. Thanks for sharing!
Question - we have noticed that there are increasingly more blog comments on our posts that look like genuine comments , seem too generic (can be used on any type of blog regardless of content) and a tell tale sign is usually that the name of the comment's author is something like "cheap mortgages" etc..
Do people normally delete/not approve these types of comments...? When people provide their website URLs, this results in your website/blog linking to their website... Which helps in their traffic and page ranking....
Or can you leave out their website if you do not want to provide links in this manner?
We are still trying to navigate best practices and would love to hear from you... And all The other readers
Thanks !!
Jeremy Chatfield 7:27 AM on December 06, 2010
@"Specialist Dental Group" - I personally spam generic comments that come from keyword laden posters. The intention is clearly to use blogs that forget to use a NOFOLLOW to send weight to the site. If the cpmmenter can't be bothered to provide something original, then I don't think they should even get a NOFOLLOWED link.
You contributed a considered question; if I could discern a name, I would rewrite your name instead of a keyword and include an editorial comment that the name is reworked, and include your business identification. I think it is rude to other readers to keyword load a comment signature. It's like introducing yourself at a party by the role you do, not your name ("Hi, I'm Used Car Salesman, and my wife here is Loss Insurance Adjuster"). I have asked a few authors of comments where I couldn't find a name, if I could have a name, and was met with a sufficient disinterest or abuse, that I don't ask permission any more: it's spam, or it gets a non-keyword name, or it is deleted as incourteous. This is spelled out in my comment policy - which recieves the most spam, for reasons that will become obvious in a second....
I am also affected by the search that users have done to find the blog. If it includes "blog" and "comment", then I assume they are hunting for a place to spam, and those, especially, get spam-dumped to Akismet. I have changed the default text on my blog, so that spammers mostly find the comment policy, to which blandly generic comments like "great article" are clearly spam, and clearly outwith the policy ;)
@Kipp - thanks for the blog and the thinking. Enjoyable. Adding you to my blogroll; already in my RSS Reader.
Portland SEO Company 3:17 PM on December 06, 2010
From a business perspective, blogging is a fantastic way to build customer loyalty.
Specialist Dental Group 10:00 PM on December 06, 2010
@jeremy, thanks for your comments.
This is Moon from Specialist Dental Group (which is actually our real business name and website, and not just a keyword laden signature :)
Could you explain what a "No Follow" link is ? We are currently using Wordpress (used to be on Blogspot)... not even sure what trackbacks and pings are but we have this and have noticed that there are truncated comments sometimes that may be a result of this...
for some of the industry comments that are somewhat relevant, we usually approve the comment (even with the link) as we figured that as long as people took the trouble to comment on something that was somewhat related/relevant, this would be of more value than irrelevant or generic comments.. but we are still finding our way around..
our biggest challenge is to generate content on a regular basis.. but we currently try to relate our posts to matters of current interest, things in the news, etc :)
Happy Blogging and keep the comments coming ....
Jeremy Chatfield 4:08 AM on December 07, 2010
@Moon - see Google's Matt Cutts for a *five year old* posting about using NOFOLLOW links to discourage spammers. It doesn't discourage them much, which is why CAPTCHA and Akismet are also important blogging tools for comments. WordPress automatically NOFOLLOWs UGC (User Generated Content == Comments)
Sign up your own blog for Akismet - it'll autoprune lots of spam.
If you want to see ruthless spam pruning in action, look at SearchEngineLand and at the way Danny Sullivan and crew mercilessly prune keyword laden comments; these guys professional lives are tied up in search engines and their behaviour, and they think there are good reasons to prune hard.
Dave Hale 3:43 PM on December 08, 2010
Kipp, thanks for the great info. I am putting a similar post together but with clients using LinkedIn. With over 100 responses to how they have used LI to obtain business and generate leads, a lot of outcomes are the same as yours. Thanks for the good read.