I was recently running a workshop about Word of Mouse Marketing using social media from blogging to microblogging, podcasting to video casting and it was heartening to see that about 8 per cent of the 140 attendees were blogging about their business.
However I then became disheartened as most of those blogs had been developed on a platform such as Blogger or Wordpress.com.
If anyone tells you that business blogging is not a significant investment of your time, they clearly are not a business blogger developing online content and implementing a link building strategy to bring traffic to their business blog.
Don’t get me wrong, blogging is a terrific online marketing strategy if executed effectively. I could think of no other way that I would have attracted as many leads to my business so cost effectively without a business blog.
However if you are going to invest in business blogging, be good to yourself… don’t have all those wonderful incoming links to your great content go to a blog that is not hosted by you.
You might think this is something that only happens for small businesses - it’s not!
A colleague of mine on a social media working group is employed as an online expert for an online insurance company, and their external consultant had advised them to develop a business blog using Wordpress.com.
I’ve even seen Marketing Directors of major companies who should know more about branding than most use a blog that is detracting from their personal brand online as they are using Blogger.
Online personal branding experts even look to encourage people to use Typepad.com as a blog platform - whilst it’s a great blogging platform that I use and recommend, if you also have a website, a Typepad blog is not going to help you with your link building and search engine optimisation strategy which is becoming even more critical as few people now move beyond page 1 of Google when searching and researching online. What do they do if they can not find what they are looking for online on the first page of their search? They change the words they are using to search with of course.
Investing a little in implementing a business blog that is hosted on your website not only makes you look like you take business blogging seriously as part of your online marketing strategy, it also means that every link to your great content is a link to your website.
That way you will be sure to benefit even more from your online content strategy buildng links to your business blog.
Many people claim that Blogger is not suitable for business blogging. But this is due to a misunderstanding about the way Blogger works.
Blogger is used widely and successfully in business blogs and maintains brand. My own web site (http://www.grahamjones.co.uk) is actually built from FOUR different Blogger blogs, all stitched together to make it look like one web site.
Few people delve into the guts of Blogger to find out how to make it really work for good business branding. But if you do, you discover it has better features for business branding than many other options.
To find out hwo to achieve that, see my videos at http://www.changingblogger.com
Comment by Graham Jones - Internet Psychologist — October 12, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
[...] blog should be part of your site. However, Krishna De writes that many businesses have opted to create their blog on third-party sites like Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, and [...]
Pingback by Business Logs » Blog Archive » Your Business Blog Needs To Be On Your Site — October 13, 2008 @ 2:28 pm
Graham - thanks for your comment. As a solopreneur then Blogger perhaps works well for you.
I am concerned however when I see established businesses with corporate websites then get advised by people that you should establish a blog on platforms that don’t connect those great links to their site.
Thank you for making available a link to your site with the videos.
But does that mean that your real estate is still hosted by Blogger rather than you? If so then I am afraid we have to differ in our point of view as I want to be sure that my IP and content are not available or not based on a third party.
Comment by Krishna De — October 15, 2008 @ 6:42 am