How to Start Communicating online �“ Blogs and Your Branding

Although business strategists discuss ad nauseum the importance of having a blog due to its ability to help with SEO and promote a brand, many would-be bloggers can’t work up the gumption or find the time to get started. To help the fearful procrastinators begin to flex their writing muscles, I have prepared a brief plan that will help anyone commence promoting their highly valued (I would hope for your sake) opinions on the glorious and ruthless world wide web.

1)      Find a blog host: The most popular for personal blogs are Blogger and Wordpress. You can start a basic blog on Word Press for free, but if you want to have your own domain and some more advanced features you will have to pay more.  Word press can also be used to develop a website and many companies can help you build a custom word press site if you decide to take your blog to another level. For corporate blogs, your CMS system will likely have a blog already integrated into it that you should be able to update on your own. The Adrecom CMS system that we offer includes a function that makes it to easy to add new blog posts and also has built in fields so that the posts are optimized for SEO. We often manage the uploading of the blogs for our corporate clients when they would rather just send an email than login to the back end of their sites.

2)      Choose your identity: If you are nervous about getting a bad rap online, you may wish to blog anonymously or create a fun online persona that embodies all that you wish to be in life. While I am not advocating that you use your best friend’s photo or use an Istock photograph and pretend it is you, there are ways to get people to relate to your personality online without giving away your real identity. If you are of a more narcissistic bent (take a test here to find out), you may wish to buy a domain with your name and write every post in the third person, making sure to occasionally drop details about your famous uncle, fancy degrees, flashy car, and May Flower heritage.

3)      Make sure to disable comments: I highly recommend doing this before you ever post a single blog especially if you are new to blogging or have mortal enemies out to get you. Even if you are the nicest gal in town, spammers still might see your open comment fields as an invitation to test your patience and use your pretty blog about ponies for their own malicious activities.

4)      Pick a Topic: If you are writing a company blog it is best to stick with professional topics that are related to your company’s business objectives. For example, if you sell orange crayons, orange paint, and orange stickers, you could write about the color orange and how it affects your mood, or you could potentially collect stories from artists about how they use orange paint in their creations. If you are looking to start a personal blog I recommend writing about something you know well and are passionate about. For example, if you are known among friends for your brilliant blender concoctions, maybe a soup blog would be a super (very bad pun intended) idea. Or, if you really know a lot about motor cross racing clubs for women, that might be a better subject for you to write about. The point is that if you are not interested in something it is unlikely that your readers will be interested in reading it. I just hope that your blog writing experience is not like my karaoke - I love to sing, but no one really loves to listen.

5)      Be Nice: One bad blog post about someone can start a war that will usually make your readers cringe and find something more positive to read. If you are not sure where to draw the line between critique and disparagement, I would ask yourself if you would be upset if someone made the comment about you. If you have tough skin and are determined to write the most biting critiques, then well, you may also want consider whether or not you have the time to wage an online war of opinions or hire someone to manage your public image.

According to a Technorati survey of bloggers, only 11% blog daily, so do not feel pressured to write every day. I recommend writing only when you have something to say or you can just share pictures of things you like when the words are slow in coming. After a while you will figure out what works for you in terms of your schedule, your interests, or your SEO objectives. If you eventually discover that people actually read your blogs (and like them) you can start exploring ways to syndicate or monetizing it, but that is something for a later chapter.