Like a number of you, I expect, I attended Charlene Li’s webinar in relation to her ‘calculating the cost of business blogging’ post (covered here, three posts down). Powerpoint slides and an MP3 of the presentation ought to follow shortly — I’ll update when they are.
A lot of the content was covered in the original post but two key ideas for right now:
1) The best place to start is a recruitment blog. “Every company should have one.” It has to be the place where a company wants to talk one-to-one. Also, the ROI is completely apparent in terms of the number of applications. Experimenting here might help clarify the reasons for blogging more generally in a company.
2) The “biggest piece of advice is to just get started”. Take out a Typepad or WordPress account and start to blog. Keep it password protected for the first 30 days while you work out your voice and what is and is not right for your company. Write down the top 20 posts you might want to write and have a go at them.
I’d temper the second piece of advice with the need to involve other key decision makers — get them to look at your blog and submit comments. You can always remove them, and any incendiary posts before you go live.
The second piece of caution is, of course, to know a little bit about blogs and blogging. “Read 30 blogs religiously for a month” is a piece of advice I have read or been told elsewhere (sorry for the lack of attribution).
The comments section on Charlene’s blog post also contains an interesting note from David Phillips who challenges the idea of ROI. Since it can’t calculate the incalculable value of some aspects of blogging (relationships), then should it really be used as a way of judging its value? Would SMART objectives be a better measure?
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Actually, I encourage people new to writing and reading blogs to find just 3–5 blogs written by people whom they’d like to influence or engage in conversation, read them for a couple of weeks, and start posting comments to them — before you even start to blog. That way, when you do start to blog, you already have begun some relationships that will help you build your blog usefully. No blog is an island, after all.
And in the long run, I encourage bloggers to spend at least as much time reading *and commenting on* other blogs as they do writing their own blog entries. That not only builds your reputation and expands your audience, it’s all more fun, and you’re more likely to maintain enthusiasm for blogging over the long haul. Treating it like a conversation, rather than a publication, is more fun for you and your community.
IMHO, of course, and others disagree with me.
- Amy Gahran
I am not religious about any of these so-called rules. It’s the idea that is good. Your advice seems sound — assuming they choose appropriate blogs, of course… There are certainly too many blogs that just seem to imitate other blogs. An authentic voice is worth a lot.
You’re correct on the fun element too. Blogging on your own is none whatsoever! I think it encourages you (me) to over-analyse and get carried away trying to create the perfect post. When really, what you’re looking for is relationships — and strangely enough, I reckon that applies as much to business blogs as it does to personal ones.