Blogging For Your Business

On first look I wasn’t sure that this was the way to go, however, to fully understand what’s involved, I set one up for myself and learnt how to tweak the template, using www.blogger.com, registered it with blog search engines and explored blogging communities.

This didn’t happen overnight – it really took me months to get into it, but slowly I started to see what the benefits could be, if I put some time into it. I chose to write about things that had happened during the week in my own particular industry.

Today I own several blogs but only 3 are business related, the rest are personal interest blogs. All get traffic that is growing and I find that when someone visits one, they also visit the others too, and periodically leave comments when they find something that relates to them. I also get people emailing me saying “I didn’t know that…” – it’s given those who are interested, a window into my life, so to speak.

So, if you’ve been thinking about a blog for yourself, where should you start?

1. You need a topic of interest that you can contribute to on a regular basis – at least weekly. If it’s infrequent your audience will lose interest. There’s a whole community (actually several) out there who spend spare time surfing blogs – stats seem to indicate people also surf blogs whilst at their workplace. Of course, if your blog is business-related, that makes sense.

2. Next, have a look at the free blog services available to you – there are a choice of templates and their system is a simple to use, like a word-processor, so it’s easy to get started. I use both www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com and recently installed wordpress on my own server.

3. Choose a name for your blog – if you run a business you’ll want something that relates to your business name or industry. Mind you, if have a hobby you’re passionate about, you could set one up for that too.

4. Create your account and enter your first post. It only takes 5-10 minutes to set up and you’re on your way! Easy.

5. Take time to explore the system, make sure you switch on the search engine services so it gets listed quickly with Google and other search engines. The listings seem to show up much quicker than regular websites. Seek out other blog search engines to list with.

6. Make notes in your diary to post again on a regular basis, so it becomes a habit.

7. Place a link on your blog back to your business website and vice versa.

8. Spend time surfing other blogs (in Wordpress and Blogger you just have to click on ‘next blog’ in the navigation bar at the top right hand corner) and learn from others.

9. There was mention of an a-list being developed of the top Australian blogs and there is a very noticeable lack of women bloggers on that list – so far. See the article at http://duncanriley.com/2006/03/20/the-a-list-of-australian-bloggers.

Happy blogging!

About the Author
Kathie M. Thomas, AFAIOP, MVA, ASO is the founder of “A Clayton’s Secretary”, a Virtual Assistant Network with members in many countries. Dedicated to teaching others about operating business over the Internet, Kathie is a multiple award winner as both a Secretary and Virtual Business Operator, and has over 30 years’ experience in the secretarial/administrative field. She registered her business in March 1994 and is one of the senior VAs who launched the industry globally. http://www.vadirectory.net.