Business blogging

Pro

According to the Technorati blog search engine, there are now more than 50 million blogs on the Web, and the number is doubling every six months. That’s 75,000 new blogs each day. Blogging has certainly captured the minds of millions across the globe. According to recent research, small businesses are aware of its potential, but are failing to take practical action to blog strategically.

With blogging showing no sign of being a short-lived fad, small businesses should approach it with care. Rushing into a blog could do your business more harm than good, so before you begin it’s crucial to make sure you understand why you’re doing it.

Conversational commerce

Increasingly, customers want to patronise businesses they can form a relationship with, rather than just simply buying from them and walking away. The closer the relationship, the more loyal a customer will become.

One of the main advantages of using blogs is that there is an open channel of communication. Businesses succeed by creating a product or service that customers require and feedback is critical. As blogs are seen as an informal medium, feedback is generally more honest and open than if it was through a customer survey. It can also help to personify a company – so that customers can more readily relate to its business.

Small businesses have traditionally been seen as more accessible than bigger ones; often, customers favour them even if the goods or services are more expensive. According to Microsoft’s Steve Clayton, blogs can put a human face to a business. “Blogging allows a business to have a conversation with a customer – a dialogue, not a sales pitch. We know people tend to buy from people they like and trust, and a blog can help to build and nurture that kind of relationship with new and existing customers.”

Customers are able to get insights into a company and its services through a blog, and to comment on this and their own experiences, so there is a lot of added value to the customer experience. If customers are happy, they are likely to recommend the blog and, by default, the company to their friends and colleagues.

Blogging toolkit

So how do you start a blog for your business? If you do a Google search for blogging applications, you’ll be faced with a massive choice of platforms. There are plenty of tools that anyone can use to start a blog in minutes, as very little technical knowledge is needed to set up the vast majority of them. But if you like the look of systems such as Moveable Type (see screen 1) or WordPress, you’ll need to know a thing or two about how your server is set up to get the best from these, as they require some server side manipulation, but the extra effort is worth it.

Many consumer-orientated blog applications are free and include a complete hosting package. However, these services are often limited in the options they provide to modify your blog’s layout and don’t have useful systems that can track comments. There may also be bandwidth limits. For a fee you can buy premium services that give you much more versatility and control over your blog. They are a good investment if you want to take your blogging seriously.

Blog systems for business effectively break down into two types. First are those you host on your own server, which require that you design the pages yourself, and then there are those that are hosted by other companies and can use template systems for the design. Of the first, the two best known are WordPress and Movable Type, while Typepad is one of the best hosted platforms for small business. It allows you to have your own URL and offers the ability to install your own corporate design as well. If you are a large corporation looking to use blogging internally there are a number of companies (including Blogtronix and iUpload) that offer multiple blog systems for large groups of employees.

You need to take the same factors into account with blogs as you would with standard web hosting, including connectivity and power backups. It’s also vital to ensure that you can use your company’s domain name – many of the free blog hosting services don’t allow that, while others may have compulsory adverts or other undesirable restrictions. Some companies now include free blogs with their business hosting services.

As with any business project, it’s wise to take some time to evaluate each of the blogging platforms available to you, rather than rushing in. Small and medium-sized businesses should choose something that gives them control and flexibility. It should also be able to grow and develop with them – as companies start to use a blog and discover just how useful they are, they start to see the additional uses over and above its original purpose.

Blogger (www.blogger.com), for example, is fine for personal use but it falls short as a business tool (see screen 2). The two platforms we would recommend are WordPress (www.wordpress.org) and Typepad (www.typepad.com), with our preference being WordPress because of its power and flexibility. And, of course, in a larger organisation, the choice of blogging software – especially if it’s to run on your own servers – may be dictated by the IT systems you already have.

The RSS connection

A particularly useful tool to look for in blog systems is RSS feeds. These provide a way for visitors to be automatically notified of updates to your blog, without the hassle of managing a mailing list. Good blogging systems will automatically create a feed, and you can provide an icon on the blog’s main page so users can add it to their RSS reader. When you have company news or new products appearing frequently, they can be a good way of spreading the word. Another useful way of using RSS is to help aggregate content, with some blogging software allowing you to include items from other RSS feeds on your own page. You could, for example, include the latest news headlines or items from key industry websites, if they’re available via RSS.

RSS feeds are also useful for keeping an eye on the blogs of your competitors or critics, enabling you to respond swiftly if the need arises. There are many RSS readers to choose from, including Newsgator (www.newsgator.com), Bloglines (www.newsgator.com), Feedreader (www.feedreader.com) and Pluck (www.pluck.com).

Trackbacks can be useful too, both for seeing how many people are linking to your blog and for following links from other sites where people may be discussing your company. If you’re serious about blogging, you should try to make sure there’s time set aside in your working day to keep on top of the comments and links to your blog, so that you can react appropriately.

Up and running

Clearly you need to be careful when you use a blog for your business, and bear in mind some of the points in our box on the next page to avoid any awkward legal problems. And remember that while the community of readers you build up can be a useful sales resource, your message must be relevant and the people you are speaking to have to be receptive. Appearing patronising or not seeming to listen to feedback left on your blog won’t help build a good relationship with the readers. On the other hand, if people feel like they’re receiving frank inside information, or that they are having constructive input into new products and services, they’re likely to become much more engaged with the blog, and potentially with your company.

Of course, blogs can also be used by dissatisfied customers to attack your business. One high-profile attack in recent months was mounted against the computer giant Dell. A customer who was unhappy with the laptop they had bought and the service they received posted their views on their own blog, which attracted hundreds of responses. Market researchers concluded that the blog had damaged Dell’s brand image.

It’s therefore vital that you understand how blogs work in your business and how they can be a great help in your marketing, while also being aware that they can open your business to direct attack. Pay attention to the other blogs, and try to keep abreast of developing trends. If you do see a blog making a direct attack on your business that is untrue, rebuff it via your own blog or by posting a comment on the blog where the original statement was made. Blogging has become a powerful marketing weapon for many businesses, but in order for it to be effective, you must understand how blogs fit into the wider marketing mix, and how they are being used by both your competitors and your customers.

It’s important, too, not to try to be too clever; companies and individuals alike have suffered when comments on blogs have been revealed to be made by people who are working for a company, rather than just innocent consumers. If you’re commenting on a competitor’s blog, for instance, it’s better to be honest and make clear who you are than to pretend to be a customer of theirs; also resist the temptation to encourage employees and friends to react strongly to any negative comments that are added to your blog.

Future blogging

What does the future hold for blogging in business? It would be easy for any business to fall victim to blogging hysteria. We can only hope that blogs are not seen as the main marketing tool for businesses. They should be used as a secondary support for campaigns. It seems the general public is becoming increasingly cynical of business blogs and the only way organisations can continue using blogs is if they offer more than just a corporate message.

The key to successfully implementing a blogging strategy for your business is to ensure that you view it not in isolation but treat it instead as a component of your company’s communications, customer service and marketing.

As a channel through which to connect with your customers, blogging is unparalleled, but as with any new business venture, remember to look before you leap. Spend time looking at other business blogs to get a feel for the possibilities and the type of ideas that work. You would never launch an ad campaign without researching it first and the same is true of blogs.

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