Business and Blogging

Imagine. . .

by Laura Spencer on July 12th, 2008

(www.businessandblogging.com)

Imagine that you could do whatever you wanted with your business blog, what would you do?

• Would you improve on the layout?
• Would you add crisp, enticing graphics?
• Would you make the interface more accessible to users?
• Would you change the writing style - making it more conversational and at the same time representative of your company.

If you could do anything that you wanted with your business blog, what would it be?

Well, guess what?

There’s some good news! It’s not too late. You can change your business blog for the better today.

Many business bloggers are dissatisfied with their current business blog, but they just don’t now how start the change process.

Here are a few easy steps that you can take to start the process of changing your blog:

1. Decide what one element is the biggest negative for your business blog, as it currently is. (Hint: Ask a neutral third party to take a look at your blog and provide feedback.)
   
2. Even after the worst aspect of a blog has been identified, many bloggers are confused about how to correct the problem. Try using other blogs for inspirition. (Hint: Pick ten blogs that you are drawn to. Notice how they handle the blog element that your blog is having trouble with.)
3. From the inspirition blogs, select a solution for your negative element that you would like to implement on your own blog. (Hint: This can be a narrowing down process with you selecting several options and choosing the best of those.)
   
4. Implement the change on your blog. (Hint: You may need to hire a professional to help you with the implementation.)

That’s all very well and good you say, but how does that work for an actual blog?

I’m so glad that you asked. Here’s an example:

Joe’s business blog has not been drawing as much traffic as Joe knows it can. Joe has hired an excellent blog who writes terrific conversational posts and interacts with the blog’s readers. The only trouble is, the design of Joe’s business blog has not changes since 2002! Joe checks with a colleague who confirms that his blog design is out-of-date.

Joe starts to take his business blog through the above steps. He’s already identified his blog’s problem, dated design. Next, Joe selects and examines ten blogs with designs that he really admires. Of those ten, Joe is able to narrow the list down to two favorites.

Next, Joe contacts Jennifer, a web designer. Jennifer looks at both blogs that Joe likes and recommends a magazine style layout for Joe’s business blog. She helps him implement the new look and the performance of Joe’s blog increases substantially.

Have you been through the process of updating your business blog? What steps did you use? Would you add anything to the above scenario?

Image Source: www.sxc.hu

Share This

Related Stories

• Business Blogging Tip Number 1: Post Regularly
• Would You Fire An Employee Who Blogged?
• How Common Are Business Blogs? (A Day’s Worth of Business Blogs)
• Elite Retreat Raises the Bar
• Mini-Blogging: Interesting Discussion about Twitter

POSTED IN: Blogging, Innovation, Web 2.0, Writing