The world of business blogging exploits the full global-reach marketability of your company. Savvy blogging draws new and existing customers into a conversation that will increase site-traffic, generate exposure, and potentially increase your customer-base and  future sales.

But get it wrong, and your business blog can turn from an asset to a liability.

Mistake #1 – Irregular Blogging

Blogging compliments your business, and like any part of your business, it needs to be current and regularly maintained. Irregular blogging can lower your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) content, dropping your business page rank, and effectively minimizing potential customers. Consistent, interesting and relevant posting will build your reader-base, and show commitment to your business and your customers.

Mistake #2 – Inconsistent Voice

Unless your business blog is specifically designed to individualize your bloggers, … Read More »

Business blogging is more than just a way to get content about your company “out there.” A good business blog should become a hub for conversation; it’s not only a great marketing tool, but its a portal for your customers to be heard. The more you hear from your customers, the more you will know what they need and want from your business. If you struggle with writing content that will compel readers to respond, here are a few great blogging tips to start opening up your blog for more conversation.

1. Write as a person, not as a business.
In Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, authors Scoble and Israel write that if you aren’t maintaining a blog and having “naked conversations,” you can’t learn from your customers, and “they won’t come to see you … Read More »

Every time I read about a content management system, I inevitably see the value proposition of creating an unlimited number of blogs. On the surface that seems great right?  However, in terms of business blogs – is it?

Let me ask you this – who wants to create an unlimited number of blogs? Most of us can’t even get one business blog to work effectively. Instead of creating a lot of blogs that don’t work, focus on creating one blog that does work. Here are a few things your blogging software should do for you:

Make the content strategy clear to all writers
Suggest topics of interest
Permit many writers while maintaining control
Enable real Search Engine Optimization (on the keywords YOU are trying to own)
Take care of the heavy lifting in terms of cross … Read More »

“I want you to take the leadership position, Kent!” That was the buzzword laden phrase uttered by one of the worst managers ever. We’ll call him Pete. In this situation, Pete wanted Kent to sign up for more work with no additional pay. Kent was about 65 years old and was disgusted by the request. Kent wanted to spend time with his grandchildren, not taking the “leadership position” whatever that meant.

Pete was trying to do the right thing but he was going about it the wrong way. Pete had additional work that needed to get done and he went after the person with the most experience, Kent. Kent, however, did not want to sign up for more hours. He wasn’t climbing the corporate ladder; he was buying time until retirement. Kent just … Read More »

I was recently asked to lecture on Content Marketing and Business Blogging at Sinclair College in Dayton Ohio. What I love about presenting at conferences and colleges is it always makes me take a big step back and look at the information through fresh eyes.

This time I added a new classification to content channels. I had always talked about the “home base” (websites and blogs) and social “outposts” (facebook, twitter, linkedin…) but I never had a good description for channels that you control but that don’t really “live” on a Home base or an outpost. Channels such as Webinars, Email Marketing, Podcasts, Whitepapers…etc.

You’ll have to check out my presentation on slideshare below to find out what new bucket I created for these media channels! I know it’s always hard to view a presentation without the verbal commentary so if you … Read More »

Collaborative blogging has it’s origins in Higher Education. Colleges were the first ones to really understand the power of involving multiple contributors (ie students) into a single collaborative blog.  They were also the first ones to experience the pain of managing all these contributors manually!

Fast forward a few years and companies are now starting to catch up and look seriously at implementing collaborative blogs which involve not just the marketing guy, but many people throughout their organization. Enabling this transition to collaborative blogging are the higher-end business blogging platforms, such as our own InnoBlogs platform.

One of our favorite partners is Mike Brown, CEO at Brainzooming – a innovative business consulting firm. In fact we have two InnoBlogs implementations in process right now – both of which are in conjunction with … Read More »

I traded emails with a woman recently who runs one of the best (manual) collaborative blogs I have seen.  They have 6-7 content authors and their blogs are timely and relevant. That is no small undertaking when you are using a free blog product and the vast majority of businesses can’t sustain that long term.

The main problem I saw with their blog was that it was not set up to convert readers to customers. It was just pushing info. When I reached out to her, she said that they were in the middle of fixing their website as it was not converting either, and to follow up in about a year as they could not justify spending any money on the blog while fixing the website.

Although I certainly sympathize with cashflow, I see another problem here – how the … Read More »

I remember a guy in high school, we’ll call him “B” for simplicity (and anonymity).

B had two passions: basketball and academics – and he was excellent at both. There was, however, something about him that really bothered me. When B was with his basketball buddies he talked “street” and sounded very much like a rapper.  He would then turn around and immediately speak to one of his other friends in perfect non-accent English as if he just stepped through the doors of Firestone Library at Princeton University.

Now I don’t really care what you sound like – whether you have an accent, lisp, impediment… whatever – as long as I know who I’m talking to.  With B, I never really quite knew who he was – and I think he lost credibility with everyone by trying to hard to “fit in”.

What’s … Read More »

It’s official.  InnoGage is powering up the big boys with our business blogging software, InnoBlogs.

In conjunction with our good friends at Crown Partners, InnoGage launched ST-Ericsson’s Technology Blog at the Mobile World Congress to help drive ST-Ericsson’s corporate strategy of increased communication and engagement with the mobile technology world.

ST-Ericsson, a joint venture between STMicroelectronics and Ericsson is a $3.6B company that produces cutting edge technologies focused heavily on the mobile computing industry.  Most people don’t know that some of the most critical components inside their mobile phone or Android device come from ST-Ericsson.  If the phone is the chassis, ST-Ericsson is the v-8 engine.

ST-Ericsson’s Technology blog was created to produce real high tech content that is focused on the mobile tech community.  Most recently, … Read More »

If you follow the business blogging scene at all, you may have seen advertisements popping up for the Blogging Success Summit being hosted by Social Media Examiner and BlogWorld.

Note that we are not affiliate partners with the conference and are not generating any money from this blog or the links in this post.  That said, I would still encourage you to attend.  This is a fully digital conference that runs Feb 1 – Feb 22 and includes talks from 14 Industry leaders. They have an early bird special (50%) off if you register by end of day, Thursday, January 20th.

Below is a quick summary of the speakers and their content.  You can register for the digital conference here.

EVENT KEYNOTE: The State of the Blogosphere: What Businesses Need to Know

INSTRUCTOR: Read More »