Thinking of starting a blog for your business? Not sure where to begin? Here are some guidelines that will help you get things in motion.

1. Select a platform. WordPress is popular for small businesses, and it will do the trick for most simple blogs and web sites. You may also want to investigate Drupal or Joomla if you’re planning to build a heavier-duty site.
2. Select one primary topic for your blog. A common problem with a lot of bloggers is the tendency to blog about anything that comes to mind on a given week. That leads to a confused audience, and getting people confused leads them to lose interest. Start with one topic, and spin off sub-topics within your primary topic.
3. Set up categories on your blog. You can use categories to give your readers an easy way to sift through your blog posts and find the ones of interest. Don’t create too many categories; just create enough to differentiate the different sub-topics that you blog about.
4. Sign up for Google Reader. This easy-to-use software makes it easy for you to follow other blogs and see what other people are discussing. Coming up with ideas is a cinch if you do this regularly.
5. Learn to use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to research SEO keywords. Even if you’re not an SEO geek, this tool is invaluable for helping to come up with new blog post ideas. This tool and Google Reader make a powerful combination.
6. Set a weekly routine for your blog. This should include some time that you spend reading other blogs in your industry as well as brainstorming titles for blog posts. If you put these two activities first, the writing part should come easily.

Blogging for your business not only helps to create a positive impression for viewers who visit your web site, but it also helps your site’s SEO. More indexed pages carries heavier weight with Google. As with most things, the best way to start is to just get started.

by Dave Baldwin

Blogging is a secret weapon of every business owner. Most people still aren’t using them. Today, I’m going to cover yet another unrecognized opportunity behind blogging: strategic alliance building.

Have you ever attended a networking event and met someone in a complementary industry, thinking to yourself that they might make good referral partners? When I started my freelance writing business in 2007, I attended a lot of different networking groups, and I reached out to a number of different business owners in different industries who I thought might make good allies. I went through the same routine every time: I’d invite them to meet me for coffee so that we could learn about each other’s businesses. I found that this made sense when we both belonged to a group and had a means of regularly staying in contact, but that it didn’t work so well for people whom I was unlikely to see again.

When I started using Google Reader, I used it to keep up with the blogs of anyone I met at networking groups. Unfortunately, I found that most people either didn’t have blogs, or posted to them very infrequently. The few who did post regularly, though, were easy to keep at the top of my mind. For example, this handyman belongs to my BNI chapter. Nearly every week when I see him, I know something new about his business.

Taking Blogs a Step Further

Following and reading the blogs of people in your circle is a good thing for keeping them at the top of your mind, but it doesn’t necessarily help keep you at the top of theirs. Sure, you can comment on their blogs, but you can’t guarantee that people will actually pay attention to your comments. I’m not saying don’t comment. I’m just saying don’t count on it to work. To leverage the most benefit from a blog, embrace guest blogging. Find the people in your network with complementary industries who you believe might make good referral partners down the road. When you see someone in the right industry who has a blog and updates it regularly, offer to guest blog for them once a month. Offer them the opportunity to guest blog for you.

Think about it. You don’t have to have more coffee meetings. You get to stay at the top of their mind, and they stay at the top of yours. You learn about their business over time, and they learn about yours. You get content written for your blog with someone else’s name on it, which can increase your credibility. They get the same benefit from you. Your content goes farther, because both of you have a self-interest in promoting it.

Do you have a blog yet? If not, why not? Every day that you don’t blog, you’re missing out on opportunities.

by Dave Baldwin

Is blogging a real value-added business activity? What’s the point of blogging? I get questions often about this. I’ve found that few people really understand the real value of blogging (including many bloggers). Blogging is not about getting on a soapbox. It’s not rambling on about whatever topic you happen to be thinking about at the moment. Quality blogging, in my personal opinion, should be done with three purposes in mind: to deliver value to a specific audience, to create a meaningful conversation online, and to forward your own measurable objectives. I’ll briefly cover each here.

Delivering Value to a Specific Audience

When I say “specific,” I mean a group of people that have something in common. For example, the intended audience for this blog is small business owners who are curious about how blogging might help their businesses. Also, I’m writing this blog to people who know me personally, specifically in the Raleigh, NC area. The value I’m intending to deliver is encouragement and focus. I would like for a business owner to feel better about blogging after having read my post. Who is your audience, and what value do you want to deliver to them?

Creating a Meaningful Conversation Online

I don’t mean posting on Facebook about how you took your cat to the vet this morning. I’m talking about a conversation between people on subjects that matter. I have created a lot of posts on the subject of blogging lately, for the specific reason that it’s something people ask me about regularly. If you create content in response to questions that real people ask, it will spark a conversation. This is the difference between a “soapbox” blog and a blog that really engages people. I don’t always succeed at this myself. Some subjects get responses and others don’t.

Forwarding Your Measurable Objectives

What goals do you have in your business? My business is an internet business consulting firm and my market is small business owners (particularly professionals such as attorneys and CPA’s). I need to stay in front of people in my market, and other small business owners who may know people that are in my market. Staying at the top of people’s minds is a big priority for me. Creating content for blogs and newsletters is a service offering of our company, and it’s one of my strongest areas. This makes for an unusually convenient fit.

What if you’re not in the business of writing content for the web? There’s still plenty you can talk about as it relates to your profession. For example, my friend Elizabeth is a massage therapist who describes herself as someone who provides “outrageous sustainable results to people who burn the candle at both ends.” She has plenty to say in her blog, and it paints a picture that authentically aligns with who she says she is. That’s the key to successful blogging.

If you plan ahead and really think through these three things, you’ll find that you have plenty of relevant things to say.