Blogging Now Mainstream and Tips

A recent eMarketer study predicted that by 2012, 16% of the people in United States that use the internet will be blogging and 67% will also be reading blogs on a regular basis.

Some of your customers are very likely online right now discussing you via blogs and other social media channels. If there are conversations happening online that involve you and your business, can you really afford not to join those conversations?

I started to write a business blog about a year ago, I love to write the challenge is finding the time when one is juggling a career, a family and active in the community. Sometimes I am able to write 5 times a week and get 5 blogs out this week reflects this level of activity. Other weeks this is aspiration is impossible. I have come to the conclusion that I write when I can and try to add value to the conversation and not worry about the realities of my life's juggling act or disappointing anyone.

As I have come to appreciate the new social pheomena and its changing generational dynamics, I see that we are increasing our socialization competencies in new online ways. However, in my work I help large organizations make business sense of these new solutions and help to identify new ways to have a conversation with their target markets.

The first question is always the whopper Why Question?

1. Why start a blog? Why join Twitter, or Facebook, or Linked In, I can barefuly get what I need to get done in my working day. I usually just say do you need to have conversations with your customers your company your industry or your competitors. They usually stop and say yes, and I simply say well your customers are online having conversations and to reach them you need to think of increased online channel reach. The important point is each situation is unique, one blog strategy or approach does not apply to the next persons. Just because there is buzz - ensure you have a clear reason for going down the blogging path as it involves work already on jamm packed days..

2 – Who will do the blogging? Blogging is a lot of work. It's okay to have 2-3 writers handling the blogging communication. However, having your marketing organization and corproate PR handle all the blogs and screen all the content is over kill. Training orientation is needed to get people started, but the best way is to learn and get started. As your experience grows, your confidence will also grow and new ideas will emerge.

3 – What will be the focus of your blog? Make sure your blog will create valuable content for your readers. Get your focus set before your start. My interests are on innovation in the context of the future world of work, so I mix perspectives in my blog as this is what I like to write about and this is what our brand is about ... so find a writing groove that best works for you.

4 – What will be your blog’s comment policy? Get this down so your readers will know what’s expected of them, and when their comments will appear. Will you moderate comments, or let them go through immediately? If you’ll moderate, who is going to approve comments, and how will you ensure that it’s done in a timely basis? What specific terms will go into your policy?

5 – How will you measure the effectiveness of your blog? What metrics will you track to determine if your blog is a success? It could be traffic, or traffic sent back to your website, or reader engagement such as comments and/or links. But find some way to hold your blog accountable.