Writing a corporate or business blog is not just about piling your thoughts on paper and then publishing it on your journal – it far more. Content, presentation, layout, and public perception of your business are keys in helping you write your post. The web is full of blogs written by individuals that have paid scant attention to detail and presentation and ultimately their fantastic blog post they have spent hours writing has ended up looking like a Times broadsheet or a page from the Magna Carta.

Keep the Journal Article Relevant

One of the posts I had read at SEOmoz was by Rand Fishkin talking about this very same subject. Rand went on to note that an important factor in business blogging is keeping the content relevant without being promotional – all too many business blogs will talk about their services and give their readers the impression that they are trying to sell to them – this can be put readers off as they will feel that the post is not of any great value and just another sales blog.

If we can’t sell our services, then why are we blogging?

Selling your services does not just come from selling the product, any good sales person will tell you that setting yourself up as an authority on all the areas based around your product will ultimately push your sales.

An example is a local auto garage near to me. In my free time I am bit of a sports car enthusiast and enjoy enhancing my engine subtly to give that extra kick in the horsepower. I went to a mechanics garage near to me who did a marvelous job on ‘chipping’ my engine. When I was leaving they asked if I would not mind if I could be added to their mail list for their latest updates on car customization. Of course I said yes and it was entirely opt-albeit by snail mail. Several weeks later I received their eight page newsletter ‘Out of Gear’ while it was neatly branded with their business logo, and logos of motor racing companies, the newsletter primarily talked about everything from best tips for driving in wet weather with low profile tyres, driving in Europe, and a lot of other interesting facts and news items.

Out of Gear also had a commentary section written by their owner who wrote a compelling article on “greedy auto insurance companies” that he believed were partly responsible for driving insurance prices up on sports cars. Reading this newsletter I never got the impression that I was being sold too, quite the opposite, in actual fact my impression was putting these guys as experts on everything auto. My mind was made up that if I wanted further parts for my car they would in fact be my first port of call.

The above should be translated into writing a blog post about your business – set yourself up as the authority in your given business area, “ make and create the news, be opinionated, talk about parallel markets that affect your business. Strive to be the source of news.”

Linking to your product

There is nothing wrong in selling your product but this can be achieved by your brand logo prominently placed at the top of your page, the occasional link to your services – don’t flood a page with links to your website, one link will suffice to a relevant area on your site based around the subject matter of your article.

Do not be afraid to link out to others web pages, even competitors, if someone is doing something good in your industry then shout about it – this will go towards creating good relations, while at the same time placing yourself in a stronger position of authority. It may also garner you a link back.

The following video will provide some very useful tips on corporate and business blogging:

Break Up Your Content

For a lot of readers seeing a long blog post or article can be quite a daunting task to read – and may put off some from reading the entire article. In this day and age of high speed internet, ADHD, and a culture that is becoming increasingly more impatient – it is a good idea to break up your article with images, diagrams, and maybe even video. It gives the reader a short breather before they dive in your next paragraph. It also looks good visually.

Enjoy Yourself

Don’t be put off by writing a blog, the mistake would be to believe its just another chore, enjoy writing about what you know best – most business owners or directors will have an insight into their business that others will not know – sharing this info will not only set you up in becoming a leader in your industry, it will also provide that warm fuzzy feeling that you have done something good for your industry.

The ubiquitous search giant’s new browser will be a direct challenge to Microsoft and Internet Explorer. This all marks the entrance of Google into the browser wars which has been so far dominated by Microsoft with IE, Mozilla’s Firefox, and Opera Software’s Opera Browser.

It was only two years that speculation roamed the Web that Google may purchase Opera Browser, this turned out to be purely rumour.  However the seed was planted and many believed it was only a matter of time when Google would look into building its own web browser.

Screen shot of myJournal on Google Chrome Browser

At various times in the blogosphere it has been mentioned that Google may also attempt its own operating system, after this recent announcement it would come as no surprise if they did have this in the pipeline, or something similar.

It’s fair to say that Microsoft will not be taking this very well. It’s also true to say that while Microsoft has pretty much seen it all with every would-be challenger, the development of a browser by Google Inc, will be sure to irk many at the Microsoft Corp.
Google’s brand has a far reach on the web; it would not be too hard for them to promote this to their users.
There is more information about Chrome Google blog.

Amir points out that one of the failings on social media sites are that a user will join and go on a ‘adding friends wild spree’ with very little success. All those friends added some of them will come others will not, once they are there, it’s all about how you interact with them, and keeping in touch.

We feel this is an important topic and it is something we are mindful at myJournal. As we get ready to come out of beta and go live August 12th we do not want it to become just another social media application. myJournal has been built for businesses, business owners, and individuals to interact with each other and promote their businesses in a social / business environment.  To this end we have created categories for the users’ friends, this includes business contacts, friends, family etc, meaning that a user can have multiple category contacts and can designate who sees what.  This is something we always felt was missing from a lot of sites, and after watching the video of the Tim Berners-Lee interview where he mentions briefly about categorising contacts we felt it would be too important to pass up.

Amir goes onto give several good points that help in maintaining your social network such as:

1. Add a few people at a time - preferably like-minded people and power users.
2. Interact with them, and make it a daily goal.
3. Meanwhile, keep in touch with those you’ve already added.
4. Maintain your focus on power users and
5. Turn acquaintances into friends.

Keep the interaction going with your invited friends.  Half-hour a day or more spent promoting your profile, and interacting with your invited friends and colleagues should reap some good benefits.

We have worked with several hotel companies in the past who have all wanted flash presentation in their websites ranging from virtual tours to sweeping panoramic images of their rooms etc. The problem lies in that also want to rank these pages high in the search engines for various search queries. Flash embedded in their websites had a detrimental effect on these results.  Worst still we often found ourselves converting websites from Flash to HTML - some of these websites had hundreds of key-phrases embedded within them to try and capture the rankings. The end result was that if they were reported to Google they would more and likely lose their rankings or be de-indexed.

In a statement released today Adobe said:

Google has already begun to roll out Adobe Flash Player technology incorporated into its search engine. With Adobe’s help, Google can now better read the content on sites that use Adobe Flash technology, helping users find more relevant information when conducting searches. As a result, millions of pre-existing RIAs and dynamic Web experiences that utilize Adobe Flash technology, including content that loads at runtime, are immediately searchable without the need for companies and developers to alter them. Adobe Advances Rich Media Search

All in all it’s good news for webmasters, SEO’s and even better news for website owners and businesses that want to use Flash in their online presentations and websites without the worry they will not be indexed by a search engine.

For the build of myJournal we discussed many different packages ranging from lesser the known to the biggies. Then along came Woopra. First time I read about this was from a link that Paul Arlott at Tolra Systems sent me to Lorelle VanFossen’s blog article Whooping Woopra – her enthusiasm for Woopra peaked my interest and I was soon following the various threads and discussions about the Woopra stats program.

The myJournal team members after some initial discussion decided it would be a great idea if we had Woopra as our stats package of choice. We felt that new beginnings deserved new technology. As we are built on the Wordpress MU platform, it was only fitting that we should utilize Woopra. After a mail discussion with John Pozadzides, and Vi Kim Vu who gave their ‘nod of approval’ we installed it sitewide for use in the main system. myJournal is still very much in beta and we have not really had the chance yet to kick the tyres of Woopra and really put it through its paces. What we have seen so far is quite impressive. We are awaiting until John and his team are able to get to work through subdirectories, then we can offer it to our future users. In the meantime we are finding Woopra quite a pleasing resource to our marketing tools.