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THIS WEEK
Writing for Blogs
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
Many businesses contact Heart Harmony because they have heard blogs are a great way to build their brand, escalate their search engine results and communicate with people. Yes, blogs are fantastic for all of these things – but before you go all gung-ho and set up a blog here's a few tips to think about.
1. Why do you want to blog?
This is biggie. You need to work out where blogging fits into your overall marketing strategy. You need to know why exactly you want to blog and what specific outcome are you trying to achieve. You need to work out what sort of readers you want to attract and what you want them to take away from your blog before you put your first keystroke on the page.
2. Do you have the resources to blog?
Blogging is a significant time commitment. The reason blogs work for search engines are they are usually full of regularly updated fresh content. The internet is littered with blogs that have lots of posts in the first week, a few the next, one the following and then nothing for 12 months. You need time and resources to blog effectively.
The best bloggers have a regular writing schedule so people begin to expect to see posts from that company and look forward to reading them. The regularity depends on you. Some top bloggers write one long post a week and two smaller posts. Others write daily quick posts. Still others write just one post a week. Work out what your posting schedule is going to be and stick to it.
If you want to share ideas on an irregular basis you may be better off setting up an article site rather than a blog. That way you are still sharing ideas, but you are not stuck into a set routine.
You also need to allocate physical resources to writing the posts. This can either be one person in the company writing the blog posts or you can outsource the writing of your blog posts to companies such as ours. The important thing is that you post regularly.
You can use technology to make the most out of your time, so you are not manually uploading posts each day you want your blog to appear. Blog platforms such as Wordpress allow you to upload posts and to schedule their release to certain days and times. It pays to load a pile of posts at once and then let them run.
And if you want maximum readership – some studies have shown that releasing your post at about 11am will give you the best results.
 3. What are you going to talk about?
Each blog needs a tightly focussed theme. The most effective blogs have a theme that is broad enough to encompass the range of topics your business is involved with, but narrow enough to make it clear to readers what you are "on" about.
In terms of post length – the length depends on what you want to say. Some bloggers focus on quick updates – less than 500 words to share their information. If you want to position yourself as an expert then a long article style post full of rich information may be a better option.
4. What is your blog "voice"?
Each good blogger has a distinct writing "voice". Each of their styles is as unique as a fingerprint. It pays to work out what your writing voice is going to be. Are you chatty or formal? Do you use colloquialisms or jargon? Are you warm and friendly or more reserved? Whatever your voice you need to communicate this to the people writing your posts for you.
5. Get the SEO bits right
If you are going to do a blog, you may as well sort out the SEO side of things for maximum search engine results. This means having your keywords in your blog title, in your post titles, in your categories and blog tags, scattered throughout your content and ideally the last part of every post. Get a clear list of the keywords you are targeting and ensure your blog writers know how about them.
6. Determine your interaction strategy
Not all bloggers encourage interaction. A number of the world's top bloggers turn off their comments section. They just want a platform to share their ideas. If you are in business you need to work out how you want to encourage discussion and interaction.
I recommend moderating every single comment to start with – the reason being blog spam is more prevalent than email spam. All it takes is one comment full of links to Viagra sites and you could affect your search engine results. If you have comments allowed, you must also install Akismet to help filter out the spam comments otherwise you will spend hours each day manually deleting all the spam comments.
You also need to work out what your approach is going to be if you get negative blog comments. There's a lot written on the net about this – Yaro Starak's recent post is a good example of a useful strategy.
Yaro is one of the truly good guys on the internet and is a pro-blogger. He has a great report and coaching program to teach you blogging. You can download his Blogging Blueprint for free here.
7. Get your legals in place
If you have a blog, you need some rules to govern behaviour, posting and your moderation of posts. Laurel Papworth has some great rules to start with and has a great blog to keep you up to date with everything social media.
I also recommend checking with an IT lawyer to help determine your company blog rules and the best way to let people know of your rules. Kay Lam-Beattie from IdeaLaw is the best IT lawyer I know and is one of the few with qualifications in both law and IT – so she "gets" the whole geek side of things.
So, blogging is certainly a great business communication strategy. But like all strategies a little bit of planning will take you a long way to achieving success.
If you are looking to outsource your blogging - call Heart Harmony 07 3351 8844.
| HR Tip of the Week - Short, Sharp Motivation |
 If you are in business and employee people you are always looking for ways to motivate them. The good news is that it doesn't have to take a lot of time and money as often the little tiny things are the things that make the most difference. Here's a few quick tips:
- Say good morning to each of your team in your building every morning. This sounds silly - but the act of popping around and saying good morning to people reinforces that you feel they are important, you recognise that they are there and gives them a few quick moments to catch up with you.
- Say thank you out loud. How often do you verbally take the time to say thank you to an individual for what they do for your company. Saying thank you involves the words, focussing on the person and not being distracted, being specific as to what you are thanking them for and allowing them a moment to let it sink in (dropping a thanks in passing just doesn't cut it!).
- Put your thanks in writing - leave a handwritten post-it note or other note of thanks on someone's desk, send an email of thanks (not a great option - but a start) or send a card of thanks.
- Escalate the thanks - if the person has done something particularly brilliant, have the Managing Director or Board Member also contact the person and say thanks. The person will realise you have told others about their great work and the feeling of thanks will be magnified.
Notice any patterns with these tips? The biggest motivator is being recognised both as a human being and for what you do for the company.
| Businesses of the Week- Spick & Span, Kharma Consulting, Travel Associates, Banksia Healing |
 A few updates from a few businesses we work with.
Spick & Span Commercial Cleaning
First up -congratulations to Spick & Span Commercial Cleaning for being named finalist in the Queensland 2009 Sustainable Industries Awards against very tough competition. We worked with Spick & Span to create a great entry that reflected the power and innovation of their company in green cleaning. Well done Nuwan!
Banksia Healing Centre
Congratulations also to Charmaine Renaud from Banksia Healing Centre. Charmaine is a great acupuncturist and alternative therapist who has a thriving business but wanted to take it to the next level.
After 15 years in business Charmaine has her first website. We are pretty chuffed with the end result and she has already seen a growth in bookings. Check out her great website and the range of seminars she offers (my personal favourite - "Menopause - An Owners Guide").
Travel Associates
More congratulations to Travel Associates who have been seeing an additional 1000 new visitors each month to their website. We have been helping Travel Associates with article marketing. This company has the ultimate in luxury travel and is definitely worth checking out.
Kharma Consulting
A reminder that Kharma Consulting is holding a workshop on Sunday 31 May in Brisbane. I've booked to attend so I look forward to seeing you there. To book contact Julie
0417 460 741.
Copywriters and marketers tell you that you need to create persuasive copy. But are people becoming too cynical to sell to? This blog post about a psychological study lifts the lid on persuasion.
We will preview our June theme of "Business Marketing Tune-ups"
exuberantly yours
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
PS: This week's Small Business Tips blog included posts about "Twittering up a Storm" and "Take a Step back and Think".
Legal stuff: This newsletter is intended only a general guideline for Australian businesses. You should seek specific advice for your situation rather than relying only on this newsletter
Earnings disclaimer. Some of the content may include advertorial information, which means I may receive financial compensation for the products I recommend. But - unless I know and trust the product, I will not recommend it. .
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