The Art of Business Blog Marketing

Blogging for Business

In the beginning, blogs were all about 'self expression'.

Individuals published blogs to share their personal beliefs, fantasies, and opinions about anything - including their business. Blogging was a fun, casual, informal activity folks indulged in for relaxation and fun.

Blogging for marketing a business would have sounded as out of place as a teetotaller at the annual wine taster's ball.

Today, business blogging and marketing through blogs is a HUGE industry - and hundreds of savvy small business and home business owners are using business blogs for marketing their business.

Blogging for business marketing is serious, important, profit-impacting activity, and many businesses (including BIG business) take blogging very seriously. Some even hire or assign employees specifically to manage their blogs.

In the course of the weeks ahead, we'll look at the various business blog marketing strategies, view examples, analyze case studies - and of course, learn all about marketing your business with blogs and how to make money with your blogging for business tactics!

What do you like telling others about? Stuff you like, think fun, find interesting - or things you don't?

Make your business blog interesting, and marketing it just got a lot easier.

But, what makes a business blog interesting?

Few business blogs get the balance between informality and 'seriousness' just right.

What makes a business blog attractive enough to justify the time and effort involved in creating it?

Liveliness. In tone, design and content.

Honesty. Frank and forthright information relevant to customers of the business will keep them coming back to the blog regularly.

Interesting, yet informal. A business blog should be well written without being stodgy, stilted and strained.

The best business blogs showcase the personalities of the writers - and even the people inside the business.

But beware - you don't want to come off as a self-aggrandizing 'flattery brigade' patting yourself on the back too often and too obviously!

The longer answer takes more understanding about blogs, readers and the nature of the blogosphere.

Blogs are about conversations. Ones you start and your readers continue. And those conversations on your business blog, naturally, would be best related to your business.

But what happens if you blatantly post sales pitch after sales pitch on your business blog?

It's the social equivalent of walking into a living room where people are having quiet conversations, and then launching into a full-throated sales pitch for your product or business!

How would you 'pitch' your business at a cocktail party? Maybe gently guide the chit chat around to a news story about your industry, or rake up a controversial issue related to it, or even more directly bring up the newest product you launched but talk about how a buyer found it helpful.

As the listener responds, with a remark, or question or comment, you either carry on the discussion - or change the topic.

Doing it online is the 'trick' to blogging for business. You cannot be 'in their face' - but you need to leave it 'in their mind'. And that's the challenge!