Whether you have been blogging for five years or five weeks, if you’re a small business blogger you want to know the answer to this question. How is the blog impacting the bottom line for my business? It is a reasonable question but the answer is not always that simple.

Web Site Analytics are Absolutely Critical

Hopefully you will have some web site analytics setup on your entire site (including your blog). This is absolutely critical for every small business. If you don’t know that you have analytics installed then stop everything right now! Go and register for Google Analytics and install the tracking code on your site. If you are not measuring the visits to your site you will never be able to even guess whether your blog is generating revenue for your business.

Now, assuming you have some kind of analytics installed you can begin to study your online visitors. How many are coming to your blog first, as opposed to your main site. How long do they stay on your site? If you have a shopping cart, how many of them complete a sale? These are kinds of things you can learn by studying your analytics.

I will give you my own experience here as an example. I started blogging for Lightning Labels back in early 2006. Within a year I was getting around $500 in measurable new business a week from the blog. Now, the key word here is measurable. This doesn’t include all the people who came to our site, read the blog, decided they liked us and wanted to do business with us. It doesn’t include those people who found the blog and then called us to place an order. This amount only includes those people who found our company via the blog and then placed an online order. Based on customer conversations the actual dollar return was much higher than that – probably as much as five times higher. Within another year that number had doubled and now, over four years later it has increased further.

Looking Beyond the Hard Numbers

These numbers were satisfying to me but the hard numbers don’t tell the entire story. Because there is your existing customer base who will likely read your blog – what is the impact on them? Most likely regular readers of your blog who are also customers will be particularly loyal. Then there are those people who find your web site and then discover your blog. They might read a couple of articles before deciding to buy something but did your blog help them decide to buy? There is no way of knowing for sure but by looking at the analytics and talking with your customers you can get some idea.

So, as you can see the answer to the title of this post is not that simple. But if you keep your ear out as to how your new customers are finding you and also chat with your existing customers you can get a feel for how your blog is doing beyond just the numbers. And having said all that, if you enjoy writing your blog you should stick with it. There are really no negatives to having a blog and it really is great for your business brand if nothing else. But if you do it well, it is likely your blog is having a positive impact on your bottom line.

Photo courtesy of tobym

In my last post I gave you my top 10 list of must read blogs for small business owners. Now, if you have a blog or are thinking about launching a blog, there is one more to add to this list: ProBlogger. While it is targeted at professional bloggers (those people whose primary focus is making money from their blog), there is much to be learned for the small business blogger.

Take today’s post for example. Guest blogger Mark Hayward writes 9 Critical Tasks Before Launching Your Small Business Blog. This is great stuff, something that every prospective small business blogger should read. I would add just a couple of points.

1. Unless you really like writing and are very committed to blogging I would recommend you keep your blog under your business domain as he discusses in point 2. For most small businesses you will get the most bang for you buck by tying everything under your own website.

2. I would add one more point. Read successful blogs. You should research blogs in your own industry and subscribe to the best of them. Then read some of the most successful blogs in the world, such as those listed in my previous post.

You only get one chance to launch your blog. Be patient and do the background work and you can launch with a bang. A successful launch will help drive you to blogging success and be a key motivator as you move forward as a small business blogger.

As the owner of several small businesses over the years I have always known the importance of reading widely. It is still important to me to spend a part of my day (often over lunch) reading publications relevant to my business. These include industry-specific publications as well as business magazine like Inc. or Fast Company. In recent years I have added blogs into this mix, so now there are a handful of blogs I try to read on a regular basis.

Here are my top 10 blogs that I think every small business owner should read:

Seth’s blog – I believe that Seth Godin is one of the smartest marketing minds on the planet. If you read this blog and nothing else you will be way ahead of most of your competition. It is almost like having you own (free) marketing consultant.

Small Business Trends – One of the most popular blogs targeting small business owners. It focuses on the trends impacting small businesses and is full of practical advice that you can use in your business (full disclosure: I am a contributor to Small Business Trends).

Chris Brogan – His specialty is building community through social media. He writes in a very approachable and down to earth way and he has a unique ability to get to the crux of a problem and provide ideas for a solution.

Duct Tape Marketing – Provides actionable marketing advice for small business owners. This blog helps business owners navigate the many new marketing tools available today.

Business Hacks – This is really a technology blog for business people. It doesn’t assume a high level of technological expertise and it is all about using technology as a means to an end: increasing your productivity.

Online Marketing Blog – Every business owner today needs to know something about online marketing. This blog covers most online marketing topics such as search engine optimization, paid search, email marketing, local search and blogging.

Web Ink Now – This unusually named blog is about marketing and public relations and in particular how these two fields have been changed by the Web.

You’re The Boss – from the New York Times, this blog has a unique combination of contributors. Several entrepreneurs give their first hand account of the business challenges they are facing and there are also journalists providing insight into how current events are impacting small business.

Planning Startup Stories – the focus here is on business planning, and despite the name it is not just about startups. Reading this blog helps me be a better manager of my business.

BusinessWeek Online – as small business owners we can be impacted by current events, so it is important to keep up with the news affecting small businesses. BusinessWeek Online provides this and more.

There are literally thousands of blogs dedicated to small business owners. We live in an age where we have more useful (and free) information at our fingertips than ever before. While I subscribe to over 100 blogs, I consider these to be the my “must read” blogs. They really help me become a better small business owner. I know there are many other great blogs out there, feel free to leave your favorite ones in the comments.

I see it so often when people start using Twitter. They don’t bother to stop and learn how to utilize this new tool, they just treat it as another advertising medium. Bad idea.

Twitter is a community of people and if you barge in expecting everyone to pay attention to you because you have this great 15% off sale, then you will be sadly disappointed. Twitter is not a sales tool, but done well it can certainly be used to increase your sales.

Here are five essential steps that every small business should make to become successful on Twitter:

1. Follow what your customers are saying

Wouldn’t you like to find out what your customers are talking about? Of course you would. Twitter provides that and much more. You can follow the conversations of your customers and you can step in whenever the conversation turns to your field or your company. Spend an afternoon searching for your best customers on Twitter; if you don’t have time, have someone else do it. Follow all these people and then spend some time listening to what they are saying.

2. Create some custom searches relevant to your industry

Every time you do a search on Twitter you will see a link with an RSS button and “Feed for this query”. Click on that link and that search can be added to appear in your RSS reader. Now, every time someone tweets with the words in your search term you will be notified immediately and you can respond accordingly. The first thing you should do is create a search for your company name so you will know whenever anyone is talking about you.

3. Share useful content

This is where most small businesses make mistakes. They either just promote their blog posts or their business and they only share self-serving information. A better idea is to become a resource for your customers and prospects. Read what your customers are talking about and look for information links that they might find useful then tweet those links. I encourage my clients to spend just 10 minutes a day and go through their RSS readers looking for content that might be useful for their customers. Then share it on Twitter using a URL shortening service such as bit.ly or cli.gs. Once you have a habit of doing that it is fine to do the occasional self-promotion.

4. Use a Third Party Twitter Client

Once you have been using Twitter a while you will notice that most tweets don’t come from people logged in to Twitter.com. Power users of Twitter use one of the third party clients. I primarily use Tweetdeck but Seesmic and twhirl are also popular. All of these programs are free and many come with apps for your iPhone or Blackberry as well. They make managing the flood of tweets much easier.

5. Respond to any mention of you or your company

Once you have been using Twitter for a while and if you are following these guidelines people will begin to mention you. Unless you become very popular you should try and respond to all of these mentions. People may retweet you, ask you a question, or just mention you in passing. By responding to these people they will know you are listening and they will be more inclined to continue to mention your company. This is how you develop relationships on Twitter.

More Resources

There is so much more to being successful on Twitter but that will give you a solid starting point. If you want to know more there are plenty of resources for you. Below are some of my favorites.

Using Twitter for Business – great mini e-book (PDF) for people starting out from Duct Tape Marketing.

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business – quick read from one of the leading social media experts, Chris Brogan.

How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business – some good practical examples and case studies of businesses using Twitter successfully, from Copyblogger.

Business Twitter 101 – a guide from the Twitter people themselves.

Photo above courtesy of mikebaird

I have several clients right now who are in the process of overhauling their web sites. At the time they are looking to start a blog. It is an excellent time to start a small business blog when you are in the process of redoing your web site.

Done well, a blog should seamlessly integrate into the look and feel of your main site. Ideally, one of your tabs on your site should say “Blog” and clicking there will lead visitors to your blog, but visually it will appear that they are still on your main site. All the header information and links should be there just like they are on all your other web site pages.

If you have followed my getting started tips then you should have Wordpress loaded into a folder called Blog on your main site. Say, your main site is www.abcwidgets.com then your blog should have an address of www.abcwidgets.com/blog. This way you will be getting the SEO benefits to your entire site for all the content you create on your blog.

So how do you get your blog integrated so tightly into your main site? First, you need to work with a web designer who understands Wordpress and how to customize it. Wordpress is becoming so popular now that most designers know it and can work with it easily. If you are starting from scratch and don’t have a designer, I recommend looking for freelance designers on elance.com. Post a project on there and you will get dozens of web designers from all around the world eager to create a great looking site for you. The header for this blog was created by someone I found on Elance.

Even if you are not in the process of overhauling your web site, you can still easily integrate your blog. There are so many great designers now who also understand web programming, that there is no excuse to have a blog that looks different to your main site. Online looks are important. Your visitors are just a click away from leaving your site. Keeping a consistent look and feel throughout your entire site will give your visitors every reason to stick around and explore.

Illustration courtesy of dusan.writer

A quick one today. This has nothing directly to do with blogging, but I have a new guest post up on Small Business Trends today. I believe everyone who owns a small business should think about positioning their business for sale even if they don’t have any intention of selling it.

I was having lunch with a friend of mine today who is thinking about starting a blog. She wants to get her feet wet but she is not sure whether blogging is really going to be a good fit for her. She doesn’t have a business, but she likes to write. She wanted to know where to start.

Now, I have written before about how to choose a blogging platform to get started in blogging. The points I made were really focused on someone starting a blog for their small business. However, for someone who just wants to get their feet wet with blogging then I think a different approach is in order. In this case, simple is best. I would go with one of the hosted platforms such as Wordpress.com.

You can get started in less than a minute and you don’t have to worry about finding the perfect name. Create any username you like (as long as it is not taken) and you will have your very own blog. Say the username you chose was redwoodtrees then Wordpress will create a blog for you at redwoodtrees.wordpress.com.

You can play around with blogging, get used to writing in this way and then decide whether blogging really is for you. At that point if you are serious about blogging then you can move to a non-hosted platform and your own domain name. More on that in a future post.

Photo courtesy of phxpma

When I read my Sunday newspaper (yes I still get the actual paper delivered…at least for now) I always turn first to read a couple of my favorite features. I like the Travel feature and the Wall Street Journal Sunday business section. These are regular features that are in the paper every Sunday.

In a similar vein you can have regular features on your blog. The advantage of having these regular blog features is that it gives your blog some structure. It also helps with content creation, you are not left with a just a blank page staring at you — you have some idea what you are going to write about. Here are some examples of regular blog features that can apply to just about any small business blog:

1. Customer Focus – do an interview with one of your customers and describe how they use your product or service. My experience has been that this is usually one of the most popular blog features.
2. Answer Questions – you can have an Ask Peter (or whomever the author is) feature where you answer some recent questions that customers are asking.
3. Future Trends – the world is changing rapidly and many people are curious as to what the future might hold. You can use your expertise to make some projections about different aspects of your industry.
4. Interviews – you can interview someone prominent in your industry in a simple Q&A format.
5. Jargon Central – every industry has its jargon and alphabet soup of acronyms. These are terms that all experienced industry observers know, but new people may get easily lost. Explaining your industry jargon will be very popular with newcomers.

By having a handful of regular features like these on your blog you can make your blog more engaging with your readers and at the same time make your writing easier. Then you will have an editorial calendar interspersed with regular features that your readers will likely grow to appreciate.

This week has been dubbed Make a Referral Week by John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing. The idea is for people to provide referrals to the small businesses they like. It is very much focused on the giving of referrals, not the receiving.

So, here are two completely different businesses that I want to refer for Make a Referral Week:

1. Combs Consulting – Michael Combs helped in a major web site redesign at my old company, Lightning Labels. He created some excellent work and came in on time and on budget.

2. Vert Kitchen – a local Denver sandwich shop. They have the best sandwiches I have ever tasted – try the l’entrecote (steak sandwich).

Blog comments are the core of what makes blogging different from other media. Newspapers and magazines are static media. They can be valuable and they have their place but once the author or journalist has written his piece that is the end of it. There is usually no more conversation about the article, unless you happen to read a response to it in the letters section days or weeks later.

Blogging is different. An author can write a blog post and it can be the beginning of a conversation. There was a perfect example of this today on Chris Brogan’s blog. Chris wrote a great post giving marketing advice to an upscale barber shop in Columbia. The post itself was excellent but what struck me were the comments. As of this writing there were 39 comments to this post written earlier today, most of them adding to the great ideas that Chris made. Taken as a whole the comments actually provide far more marketing ideas than the post itself. There-in lies the power of the blog comment.

What Blog Commenting Can Do for You

So you may be asking this: I can see that blog comments are great to read, but why should I bother adding my voice to the mix? There are several things that commenting on other blogs can provide you:

1. More traffic – some blogs have a huge readership and if you place an insightful comment on those blogs you will get traffic from people clicking on your link. Don’t expect to be inundated but some traffic will come to you, particularly if you comment just after a post has been published.
2. Reputation building – if blog readers start seeing your name in the comments section you can become known in the blogosphere.  It is a kind of online networking that can build your personal brand which will inevitably lead to enhancement of your business brand. You can also grab the attention of the blogger which could have some huge traffic benefits if he links to your blog in a future post.
3. An incoming link – while most blogs are no-follow which means their link will not improve your page rank, every incoming link to your blog does have some SEO value.

Some Tips for Creating a Commenting Strategy

1. Choose a niche – don’t just comment on a random collection of blogs. Choose blogs that are relevant to your niche. Comment on blogs in your industry where you can provide the most insightful comments. I also like to throw in a couple of the higher profile blogs as well to try and generate some traffic.
2. Link to your blog – every comments section has a place where you can include your URL. This should always be your blog URL. In effect you are passively promoting your blog every time you leave a comment.
3. Have something to say – don’t bother saying “great post” or “I agree”. Make sure you add to the conversation.
4. Allocate time every week – you no doubt have a list of blogs on your reading list. You should be spending some time not only reading these blogs but also commenting. I would start at just one or two comments a week and over time you can build on that.
5. Use your name – There is some debate over whether you should use your company name or personal name when leaving comments. It is always best to be careful here because you don’t want to appear spammy, so I mostly use my personal name.
6. Don’t outsource – there are many “blog commenting services” out there. These will put supposedly relevant content on a blog. But this is a way to get bad name for yourself quickly. The last thing you want is to be labeled a spammer.

Blog commenting is not just a useful practice, it can have some real benefits for your business. It can help enhance your reputation as an expert in your field and you get the bonus of some extra traffic to your blog.

Photo courtesy of premasagar