Posted by Doug Lacombe

Today at lunch I had the great pleasure of attending the inaugral “Calgary Business Bloggers” Meetup.

A small group of eight, we met at the offices of Bullet Proof InfoTech “home” of prominent Calgary IT blogger Stuart Crawford .

Stuart hosted the event in the absence of co-founder David West who was, understandably, off attending to a client in Vancouver.

The group was split almost evenly between accomplished bloggers and newbies. The dichotomy led to great discussion, questions, advice, brainstorming, and networking.

I promised the newbies I’d pop up a “business blogging for beginners” post to get them on the right path.

Here are some things to consider in launching a business blog:

• Think purpose: Before launching or even naming a blog, ask yourself, Why a blog? What’s the point of the blog? Who is the target audience? What’s the “editorial slant”? And most of all – what’s in it for the reader? In other words, what’s your strategy? A straight sales pitch will be a dead blog in no time flat … you must be generous in some way, sharing info, expertise, enlightening or amusing your audience and engaging in a dialog, not broadcasting like old-school advertising.
• Think branding: From the name of the blog to its layout, design, and editorial tone, decide what impression you’d like to leave on your audience. It may help to think in terms of a mission statement like “We know more about coffee than anyone” or “Our print services protect you from costly project failure”. In the case of a coffee service, your blog could be named “XYZcoffeeblog.com” or you could use a more accessible, audience-driven name, like “PercOnThis.com”.
• Think URL: Your Uniform Resource Locator, geekspeak for web address or “domain name”, is an important part of your blog identity. On the free platforms your blog name will “prepend” (attach to the front) of the platform’s URL like http://calgaryreads.wordpress.com. Some commercial services offer a similar URL service, like http://calgarybloggers.ca which is run by the aforementioned Stuart Crawford. If you want your own URL, like www.xyzblogs.com then you need to register your name, typically done through your blog host. For example I use mediatemple.net to run communicatto.com.
• Think platform: You have numerous blog platform choices but they can easily be grouped into two categories: free and paid. Free platforms like Wordpress.com and Blogger.com are fabulous for personal or non-profit blogs, but they have limitations that are easily overcome with a feature-rich commercial blog host.

So by now you’ve got a reason to publish, an audience in mind that you intend to cater to, a brand image and blog design (style template) that complements your offline image, a nice snappy URL, and a suitable platform upon which to publish. This is the point where, like all writers through time, you face the proverbial blank page.

• Think newsworthy: By that I mean, what will engage or stimulate the audience? Essentially walk a mile in the reader’s shoes before putting “pen to paper”. Inject human interest stories like “What would you do with 300 extra jackets?” or “Truck rolled over instead of Rover, freeing 45 skids of dog food” (both actual in-stock items at Allsold.ca).
• Think frequency: Once or twice a week keeps it fresh, some bloggers do shorter daily posts, it’s up to you. The main thing is, once you set a tempo, try not to deviate from it. You’ll lose audience if your blog goes quiet or stale.
• Think dialog: Try to write in such a way as to encourage questions and comments on your blog. The real fun begins in the Q&A.
• Think multimedia: A blog is not print – try to add sound, video, pictures, and animation where you can. It livens up the blog and enhances “shareability” as people are more likely to share a link to a fun or clever video or picture than an essay.
• Think promotion: Share links with others, comment on other blogs, add your blog address to your business cards, letterhead, e-mail signature, do a post-card or e-mail blast to your customer list (watch you aren’t spamming), tell people at every networking event, optimize your blog for search engines, consider online ad campaigns (Google ad words, etc.), post on Twitter and Facebook. Building an audience for your blog is a fair bit of work. You can turbo-charge that by using traditional public relations techniques, especially getting mentioned in mainstream media, but to do so you have to offer something of value to their audience which legitimizes you as a spokesperson.
• Think outsource: You run a business. You may not be especially comfortable with registering domain names or uploading templates to Wordpress, doing search engine optimization, etc. Pay for help where you need it and focus your efforts on what you are the subject matter expert on, coffee, distressed cargo sales, moving services, whatever. However if you do have the time and a computer/web inclination, it’s not a tough DIY project for even a novice.

This barely scratches the surface of what can be done. I’d love to hear your comments on how a small-medium business person might get started in business blogging. What are the benefits, the pitfalls? Any good tutorials to share?

Please comment below.