News Source: http://searchengineland.com
Published: Sep 28, 2007 - 03:35 am
Story Found By: billslawski 1704 Days ago
Category: Social Media
I’m curious though as to some of the things that you might tell people who express an interest about blogging for their business.
9 Comments
Comments
Great article Bill. Biggest obstacle I have faced is getting people to 1) create content consistently and 2) get at least minimal experience with platforms such as wordpress.
My problem with stories such as this is that they never give an example like "We started a blog, then someone used a term that offended a customer, and then a distorted version of the incident was posted on "AttentionMonger", and then the A-listers starting screaming about the scandal, our rivals got into the act, finally our reputation took a huge negative hit from that one little misstep. Sure, maybe in hindsight it was a poor choice of words, but we suffered immensely for what would otherwise have been a passing remark. It wasn’t worth it." It would be an ill wind indeed that blowed nobody good. But this doesn’t make going into the middle of a hurricane a good idea.
Thanks, Michael. Creating content on a regular basis can be an obstacle. That’s why brainstorming in the beginning about topics, and creating the idea bank that I suggested was helpful, but it does require some passion, and an understanding of how helpful a blog can be to keep it going. As for experience with blogging platforms, that can be an issue, too. In the early days, I did do a lot of reformatting of blog posts. :)Hi Seth,Yep. When you work with someone on a blog who is used to measuring their words carefully, doesn’t offend clients, wouldn’t know an "A-lister" from the garbage collector, makes rivals into friends, and hasn’t taken missteps like the one you describe, it isn’t much of a problem. Making your words public in a blog doesn’t need to mean that you are entering into the heart of a hurricane. Crisis planning is an area that we’ve also discussed. What to do in the case of negative comments or uncomplimentary posts pointing at the blog or the business. Monitoring and managing reputation isn’t a bad thing to do if you make your thoughts and conversations public. Having a plan for responding to that kind of criticism, whether in blogs, or the press, or other areas is an exercise worth having. It’s a good topic for a future "Small is Beautiful" article. Thanks for bringing that up.
That is one excellent post Bill. Thank you. I am going to be making good use of it since I am facing a couple of clients who are a bit scared of going along this path.
How would one create and use a company wiki in the blog creation/moderation process? I’m trying to do a similar thing for my company and I am lost when it comes to this.
ASpaventa, most commercial hosts have easy installs for wikis. But if you need to install it on your client’s server environment and there’s an IT Department involved I don’t envy your position. Those guys like to come up with excuses to stop projects.Google "collaborative work tools" and you’ll find some good stuff.
Hi Bill,I just started blogging for my employer, www.mightymerchant.com, about a month ago. We are posting regularly every two to four days, and I’m coming up with original content and not just scraping other sites for information. The problem is, we haven’t been able to get our clients to read the blog, much less subscribe to it or comment on it. I will definitely implement your idea to include a blogroll and sugested resources. That is something I had not considered. Thank you for the helpful addvice for someone who is just gettng started.
Thanks, Gotanraider. I hope that this post has given you enough of a plan to follow that they feel more comfortable starting to blog. ASpaventa, We tried both basecamp and jotspot, settling on jotspot as a simple enough tool to use, without making things more complicated than they needed to be. Even a collaborative tool like Google Docs, as GotanRaider suggests, may be enough to meet your needs.vsalvia, the first few months of blogging can be a little lonely. When we first started with the blog that I describe in the article, there weren’t too many other blogs in the same industry, and they didn’t have a very large audience either. So, we started blogging responses to their posts, or leaving them comments, or finding stories that some of them might be interested in. We also sought out other blogs that were just started out, and gave them some link love and encouragement. As we grew and they grew, so did our audiences. Thanks, Rubab. :)
Thanks for the encouragement, Bill. There is no shortage of ecommerce blogs so I know it will take some time and effort to find an audience. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying reading many other blogs and participating in discussions when I can. I learn a great deal from others and I know that when you’re starting out from zero things can only improve!