Becky McCray points out that you can re-use previously written content for blog posts.

“I dug through my files of newsletters and articles I had written, workshops and handouts I had developed. There it was! Useful information I had shared with others once and then just filed away.”

It makes total sense. Don’t use the content verbatim, it probably won’t make sense in a blog post format anyway. Instead:

• Update the content. Now is a great time to update the content with fresher information, additional resources, etc.
• Re-work the content into blog post format. Make sure the style, length and format of the content is blog-appropriate. For example, an article for a business magazine may be a bit dry or long, whereas in your blog you want to add some personality and keep things shorter.
• Link to other posts / sites. You may have older posts you can link to (always a good idea) and other blogs you want to link to as well.

Blogging is a commitment, but you might be sitting on a treasure trove of valuable content to get started right away!

Tags: blogs, weblogs, blog writing, business blogging, business blogs, corporate blogs, corporate blogging, copywriting, writing blogs

But there’s more to it than that. You’ll need to market and promote your blog, and learn some of the technical details of how to do so.

The most important element to attracting readership is the blog post title.

Hendry Lee does a nice job of explaining the importance of blog post titles but doesn’t go into details on how to write a great blog post title.

It’s not easy. It takes practice and some learning. And experimentation. What might work well for one audience might not be as effective for another.

My key suggestion: Write blog post titles that sell the blog post.

Your content isn’t a sales pitch, but your blog post title has to be.

Brian Clark at copyblogger has two posts you should read and bookmark for future reference:

• 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work
• 7 More Sure-Fire Headline Templates That Work

First off, both of those headlines absolutely sell those posts. Secondly, the list of good headline samples will give you a great starting point.

There’s still more though. Although lots of bloggers use list and how-to formats for their blog posts, they remain the most popular types of posts online. Brian’s given you some great alternatives above, but lists and how-to posts still rule the day. Check out:

• How to Write a Killer �How To� Article That Gets Attention
• 7 Reasons Why List Posts Will Always Work

Aside from list and how-to posts and headlines, my personal favorites include:

• See How Easily You Can [desirable result]
• The Secret of [blank]
• Little Known Ways to [blank]
• Here�s a Quick Way to [solve a problem]

Great blog post titles will encourage people to:

• Click on them in search results
• Read the full post and pay closer attention
• Click into other posts on your blog
• Contact friends, family, associates about your blog post
• Subscribe to your blog

Blog post titles need to be like great salespeople and sell your blog posts.

Tags: blogs, weblogs, business blogs, business blogging, corporate blogs, corporate blogging, blog post titles, blog headlines, writing a blog, blog writing, copyblogger, brian clark

Blogs are ultimately conversations - conversations you’re having with everyone that’s invested in your business: customers, vendors, employees and potential customers.

Have you ever put someone to sleep at a dinner party conversation? What about a corporate presentation? Let’s hope not!

A successful business blog must infuse some amount of personality into it; some amount of personal brand and equity. Shel Israel puts it beautifully in his post, Braiding Humanity into your Business Blog. Braiding humanity…that’s a perfect way of putting it.

You shouldn’t be afraid of injecting your personality and the personality of your company into your business blog. In fact you should consciously make an effort to do so.

Now, there’s always a balancing act. The people you’re having a conversation with are most likely not interested in what you had for supper last night or the score of your kid’s soccer game. Take personality too far and you might end up with a personal journal, which is not going to be effective as a business blog.

1. Gauge your audience. What do they want to hear about?
2. Develop your voice and style. This takes time. It might be rough at the beginning but you’ll find your way.
3. Learn how to become a better writer. There are plenty of online resources, including one of my favorites - copyblogger - to help you with your writing.
4. Gather feedback. Ask people what they think of your blog over time. Don’t be shy to engage your audience to help out. Ask me - I’ll be happy to tell you what I think too.

Business blogging isn’t about preparing a slick brochure or selling people with ultra-smoothly crafted sales letters. It’s about engaging your audience, turning them into a community and keeping them coming back for more.

Tags: business blogs, corporate blogs, business blogging, corporate blogging, weblogs, marketing, copywriting, how to write a blog

Take a look at these great resources:

• BIG marketing for small business
• netbusinessblog
• Small Business Blogging Scout
• Converstations

Tags: marketing, online marketing, business blogging, blogs, weblogs, online promotion

But there’s more to business blogging than great content. You might have the best content in the world but if no one can find it you might be speaking into a blackhole. The same principle holds true for your business - you may have the best product or service, but if no one knows about it your competitors (with lesser quality products and services) might just win.

So you need to promote your business blog.

There are plenty of ways to do that, and a number of them are more technically-focused. One key to business blogging (and again, this holds true for running your business in general) is an attention to detail. Every little bit can help when it comes to promoting your blog, including the concept of pinging search engines and blog directories when you write new content.

Pinging? What’s that?

Simply put, it’s a way of telling the search engines, blog directories and blog search sites that you’ve written something new. It’s one of those nitty gritty little details that people may forget about.

John-Paul Micek from Advanced Business Blogging recently wrote a post titled, Blog Optimization: “Pinging Your Business Blog” and Ping Update List. It explains very easily, in WordPress, how you can set it up to ping a host of services to let them know you’ve updated your blog content.

He’s got a laundry list of services to ping, although some of them are duplicates in the list. So if you’ve got a business blog already, go check out his post on how to add these services to your ping list in WordPress.

One other tip — when you add all those services to your ping list it’s going to make publishing content slower. This doesn’t impact your audience, but it can be frustrating when you hit “Publish” and it takes 5 minutes to finish.

There’s an easy-to-install plugin that fixes the problem called No Ping Wait. Without getting into techno mumbo-jumbo, the plugin speeds up the process of pinging, so you won’t have to wait around after you try to publish new blog content.

Tags: john-paul micek, advanced business blogging, weblogs, blogging, corporate blogs, business blogs, no ping wait, wordpress, wordpress plugins, ping, ping list

In fact, more and more business blogs are more loosely tied with the core business from the perspective of services, offerings and certainly from sales pitches.

Business blogs can do so much more than be glorified sales pitches:

1. Highlight your brand, uniqueness and identity
2. Give consumers an inside look into what you’re about and what you care about
3. Provide information resources to earn trust and respect

iMedia Connection has a good review of two business blogs run by Wells Fargo. The first, The Studen LoanDown is all about college financing and financial aid. I’m sure Wells Fargo gives out student loans by the bucketload, but they don’t overly brand the side or emphasize their services.

They’ve picked a specific topic, one that smartly targets a younger audience (heavy into blog reading), and they’re developing a good information product. Yes, there are plenty of links back to Wells Fargo, but this isn’t Wells Fargo talking about Wells Fargo.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in the subject of financial aid and student loans go check out Chris Penn’s podcast The Financial Aid Podcast.

The second Wells Fargo blog is called Guided by History, which focuses on disaster relief. This is a far cry from any Wells Fargo-related services, but it helps to accomplish point #2 above — show customers and prospects what you care about, and why they should care about you.

A successful business blog can focus on any number of secondary topics or corollary subjects to your core business. It gives business owners the opportunity to spread their wings, expand their brand and get into the world without having to be hammering home a sales pitch every second of the day.

Tags: wells fargo, imedia connection, business blogging, corporate blogging, business blogs, corporate blogs, weblogs, sales, branding, business success

Brandon, the publisher, states the blog’s goal simply:

My goal is to make CEO BlogWatch the first official chronicle of corporate and CEO blogs.

A couple of great posts, include:

• GoDaddy’s CEO & His Censorship Woes
• The Weekly Whip - Corporate Blogs in Focus

CEO BlogWatch is a great way to get a handle on what others are doing in the blogging world. And while the bulk of the content and references are related to big business, there’s absolutely no reason smaller companies, solopreneurs and budding business folk can’t learn a ton from what the big boys are doing.

Tags: ceo blogwatch, corporate blogs, business blogs, blogging, weblog, ceos

If you don’t think the world is paying attention to blogs, you’re dead wrong. In fact, Steve Rubel points out in his summary of the report that 74% of Japanese read blogs. In the US, it’s 27%. And it would seem in Asia it’s influencers that read blogs, which means those blogs are having more impact on the mainstream.

Although I’m curious why they didn’t look at blogging in Canada (don’t worry, I’m not offended) the report is a great summary of blogging overall, and how it can play a huge role internationally. Tons of small businesses and entrepreneurs work internationally, so this report shouldn’t just be taken into consideration by big, multinational organizations.

Tags: business blogwire, business blogging, business blogs, weblogs, edelman, steve rubel

It was about having a conversation.

Business blogging is no different. Business blogging isn’t about pitching products. It’s not about telling people why you’re great and why they should do business with you.

It’s about engaging customers and prospects in meaningful conversations.

Mike Sansone at Converstations does a great job of explaining this in his recent post: Is Your Company Blog Simply Marketing Insurance?

What might scare some businesses off is talk about “conversation” and “engaging customers.” What does that mean? How does it work?

Truth be told it’s quite easy. Provide people with valuable information about your industry. Comment on what’s going on in your industry. Having an opinion is good. It might not seem that way when you’re trying to please everyone (so you can sell everyone something) but opinions can demonstrate some form of insight and relevance.

Ask for feedback. Scary for some, but obvious and necessary. Engage your customers by asking them for their thoughts on your products, company or industry. Find pain points and problems customers are facing. Collect information, answer questions and generally be available when a customer reaches out. They will once you start blogging and adding your thoughts to the collective information available.

Tags: business blogs, business blogging, corporate blogs, corporate blogging, marketing, advertising, sales, marketing blog, online marketing

Check out the sample searches he invites you to do on Google for hyper-local businesses and you’ll see obvious results. Google works for finding local businesses, and people use Google for that very purpose.

More than just reaching out via search engines, blogging can do other things too. What if you could start running contests on your blog instead of printing more expensive pamphlets and paper materials…get more attention online (that stays around, and doesn’t get thrown in the recycling) and set yourself up as unique versus your competition?

The big example used by detractors in the most recent debate is whether a pizza shop should blog. It’s a fair and good question. With some creativity (like online contests / coupons / etc.) I think you’d find some ways that make sense.

The debate is worth following. I don’t think every business will eventually blog, that’s just not realistic. But I think you’ll see more and more of them blogging and finding ways to leverage easy online publishing for their benefit.

Tags: business blogging, corporate blogging, mike sansone, converstations, small business blogging, business blogs, weblog, corporate blogs