Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

5 Blaring Mistakes NOT to Make on Your Business Blogs

The Blog Squad is steaming mad. Folks, I hate to be negative, but when I see such blaring mistakes on blogs, I hear fingernails scraping on a blackboard. In the words of Charlie Brown, ARGHHHHHH!

Puhleeeze, do not do these things to your blog. There otta be a Board where I can report Cruelty to Readers.

I'm not going to embarrass you by naming names. You know who you are. Let's just review these mistakes and correct them before I get nasty though ...you've been warned.

Here's the latest fad in business blogging no-no's:

1. Poorly named blog that doesn't adequately describe what it's about
2. No authors name viewable right off the bat so readers know who's talking to them
3. Poorly written About page, which doesn't explain why the author has expertise or why we should believe anything they say...or care
4. Author or company-centric content, all about  their products and services, nothing about readers or clients' needs or wants
5. No way to subscribe to get email updates (on second thought, maybe this is a good thing...)
    

Ghost Town Movie Highlignts Theme of New Blog: Nobody's Dead

Ricky Gervais is a very funny guy, even when he plays a crabby dentist who hates people. I loved this movie: Ghost Town. It's a comedy about "seeing dead people," and it brings together an odd mixture of thoughts about people, death, forgiveness, and love.

Here's a blog about dead people worth investigating: Nobody's Dead is the blog of intuitive counselor Suzy Morgan of San Diego. Denise and I had the pleasure of setting up Suzy's blog and getting her launched in the Blogosphere.

Suzy saw Ghost Town recently at says this: "We all need to be reminded of now and then that:

• What goes around, comes around.

• How you treat others is how they treat you

• Love is the answer to everything.

"And from my viewpoint as a Medium, it's love that you're left with. It's love that can change anything, even the dead. "

Blog Content: Where do you find it?

During our recent contest asking "what's your biggest blogging challenge?" several people mentioned their challenge with finding enough content to write about. This seems to be a bigger challenge with new bloggers who may not have developed "blog antennae" yet.  Here's one comment we got from Joanne Hunold of Overwhelming Success for Solopreneurs:

Coming up with timely, relevant (to my target market) and informative posts on a consistent basis. I have a new blog that needs content, and until I am more established, do not want to use guest posts. So my biggest challenge now is to create many posts in a short period of time; and I am finding I don't have a lot of ideas for post topics.

Honing your blog antennae requires a little time. First, set up Google alerts with keywords on your topic/niche. You'll probably get tons of ideas from that alone.

Second, read other blogs in your niche. What are your colleagues writing about? How can you spin the content into your own viewpoint. Do a search on Technorati.com or Six Apart's new Blogs.com.

Finally, use your email as a source. As a professional or business person, no doubt you get a lot of email from clients and customers. Write Q&A posts (as long as you don't reveal client details). It's a good bet that if one person has a question, there are others who want to know the same thing.

Here are a couple of previous blog posts that may help as well:
Blog Content Ideas: What's the best source?
Writing Blog Content
Google Trends Can Help You Find Blog Content

Wordle: What do you write about?

When I saw a wordle on Writing on the Web, I just had to do one for this blog too. It's actually a good test to see if the writing on your blog is really focused on the stated topic of your blog. Wordle creates a "word cloud" of the most commonly used words on your blog. This tool functions like TweetStats, which gives you a "cloud" of the most words you tweet about.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

Here's the Wordle for Build a Better Blog:
Good to see "business" and "blog" are prominent! What are your blog's prominent words? Do they match the intended focus of your blog?

Internet Usage: The Affluent Spend the Most Time Online

Affluent people hang out on the Internet more often and for longer, according to research by Ipsos Mendelsohn and reported by eMarketer.com.

There's a strong link between income and Web time.

Among US affluent heads of household surveyed, those with annual household incomes of $250,000 and over spend the most time online, according to a study conducted from March through July 2008.

The researcher found that the average number of hours logged weekly increased with income, and that users in the top income tier spent nearly 6 more hours online per week than those whose incomes ranged from $100,000 to $150,000.

What does this mean to bloggers? If you're using your blog for business, your target audience has money. When's the last time you asked them to buy something?

Blogging Challenge Contest: Getting Readers to Comment

This past week we ran a contest on The Blog Squad Fan Page on Facebook. We asked: What's Your Biggest Blogging Challenge?

30% of the respondents cited in one way or another that getting readers to comment was their biggest challenge.

And that's exactly what our winning blogger wrote as well.

The contest winner is Lisa Braithwaite, a public speaking coach who writes on Speak Schmeak. Congratulations! Check out Lisa's blog. She writes good stuff about how to be a better public speaker and uses story and metaphor well to illustrate her points. And please, comment on her blog!

Here's what Lisa submitted to the contest:

My biggest challenge is probably encouraging my readers to comment. I know they're out there, but only a few leave comments.

First, understand that only about 1% of blog readers will ever comment. 

That being said, there are ways to encourage comments.