Guide to Business Blogging

At Afterabc Limited, our mission is to help businesses blog. We provide tools and technology, but also knowledge and experience in professional blogging. This guide is designed to cover the basics for beginners to tips for experts.

The Checklist: Getting Started

At Afterabc Limited, we experienced at helping businesses get started with blogging, and are pleased to share here within some of what we have learned about how to get started with business blogging.

If you just want to get started quickly, this short checklist offers some essential steps Afterabc feel you will wish to follow.

The most important thing? There are no wrong answers. Blogging is all about trying things out and making adjustments along the way - The Afterabc guide is designed to provide some shortcuts that might help you get there with a little less trial and error.

Get comfortable with the basics of blogging
Make sure you understand what a blog is and then try things out to get comfortable. For example, set up a personal test blog of your own to gain experience, click around some public blogs and leave some comments or email the site owners for their tips. Most bloggers love to help new people discover blogs.

Understand the ways blogs can be used in your organisation
Afterabc has identified a few of the key scenarios for which that most businesses use blogs, but in general a blog can be used anywhere a company wishes to improve communications online. It is important to understand your company's culture and begin with an area that requires the fewest changes from current practice.

Identify a small, well-defined area where you'll start
With any new technology, it is important to start in a controlled small way that is easily manageable, and grow in stages. Pick a specific area of focus and define an achievable goal. Some examples: 'increase the number of repeat visitors to our website by updating at least twice a week'; 'speak to the enthusiast audience that's most passionate about our brand'; or 'link to positive testimonials that we find in the blogosphere'.

Set goals for the trial and educate stakeholders
Talk to everyone on your team who will be contributing to or judging the success of your blogging project. Find out their ambition and thoughts and manage their expectations about what the company thinks is achievable during the blogging test.

Create a first draft of a blogging policy
As the company starts experimenting with blogs, it is likely that a number of concerns may arise that are not to do with technology, but about communication, employee policy, and company culture. Do not wait until there is a problem! Anticipate this need, and tell your community the company be revising some policies over time based on feedback.

Set up a single point of contact for questions
When questions come up, ranging from blogging policy to a simple "how do I do this?" you will want to define a single place that anyone in your organization can go to ask questions. The overwhelming majority of your community will never take advantage of it, but having that resource available to help employees make smart choices will avert problems before they arise, decrease the odds of any issues arising, and will help inform your company about any improvements that need to be made to the blog.

Identify your technical requirements
A Company's main considerations for the technology behind your blogs will be how well blogging fits into the workflow and processes the organization already uses. If you have the support of technical resources such as your IT department, you might want to consider our installable software platform, which offers extensive integration with your current applications. If you are doing a smaller project, an unofficial experiment, or it is difficult to get the support of your technology team, you can get a blog up and running quickly with very low cost using our hosted blogging platform.

Have a "quiet launch" of your blog
Most organizations make some small mistakes or have some glitches when they start blogging - reducing the risks by starting with a low profile is sensible. Let your bloggers and your community know that the effort is a work in progress and that feedback is welcome.

Iterate on the initial deployment
After collecting feedback from your community, use the information to make some changes, and explain they were made following the feedback from the blogging community. Following the additions, it may be necessary to update the company blogging policy.

Use community feedback to judge when to broaden deployment
The Company blogging community will tell you when they are ready for further developments: Additional feedback options, new blogs aimed at particular communities, even simple improvements to the design or visual appearance of the blog - any of these changes can help people feel invested in your success in blogging.

Identify successes in trial deployment
Once your community has started to take hold, identify where you have had some successes, whether they were expected or not. The benefits that blogging can provide are sometimes in unexpected areas, so you may need to reach out to others in your organization with different areas of expertise to help measure your achievements. Brainstorm ways in which these improvements could apply to other areas of your business.

Advocate broader blog deployment based on achieved business objectives
After the trail period and soft launch, the Company will have some real benefits to describe and it is then time to formalize the blogging effort. Set aside the resources to scale up both the technology and the workflow the company has implemented for your current blogs. Pick enthusiastic advocates within different divisions or workgroups to help be 'blogging ambassadors' within the organization. Give them this checklist, refined with your own lessons and tactics that have been effective in your company. Most people who become blogging advocates are passionate about both the technology and its results, but it is important to present the benefits of blogging in business terms instead of personal ones. Afterabc is able and is happy to help in these areas.

An Introduction to Business Blogging

The word "blog" is short for "weblog", and it describes a website that is frequently and easily updated, showing the most recent information first, with the ability to collect feedback from the community that reads the site.

A better definition of blogging is not about technology, it is about what the technology makes possible. Blogs are a safe, easy way to share information with the audiences about which you care.

There are millions of blogs in the world, ranging from personal journals, used to communicate with friends and family, to business blogs used to help improve communications within an organization. Blogging began in communities that were about personal expression, and consequently blogs are usually associated with having a more 'human' or personal voice than the sometimes impersonal tone found on corporate websites.

One small issue with getting started with blogs is the jargon. Nevertheless, the technology itself is not that complicated. Afterabc likes to avoid most of the jargon, and if it is used, we will ensure such is explained.

Updating or maintaining a blog is called; 'blogging'. Blogging and it has become one of the most popular ways to interact on the internet.

Blogs can be used to share words, text, photos, movies, audio files, and anything else that helps people communicate with each other. Blogs can be delivered to an audience wherever they are, whether at a computer, a mobile phone, or a mobile device like an iPod. (If you have heard of 'podcasting', this is how it works - you are delivering a media automatically).

In short, blogging establishes a relationship between a site's publisher and its readers, and makes it easy to maintain that relationship over time.

What would a business want a blog?
There are a few key reasons a company will want to start a blog. Blogs make it easy to communicate more effectively with the audience the company is concerned to engage. It is the easiest way to update a website, provide simple and effective ways of automatically organizing the content the company creates, and notify your audience when your site has been updated. Blogs can also optionally allow you to collect feedback from that audience, either to the company website or via traditional means such as email.

Blogs are often used by marketers or media companies to increase the number of visitors to a website, and inspire those visitors to return more frequently. Having a blog can also make the company site more attractive to search engines, which means it is more likely the company site will show up in the results when people search for your products or services. Think of how often you find a useful product or service by typing a few words into Google or some other search engine: With a blog, your company can show up in those results, too.

Having a public blog can also inspire positive reactions from your customers or audience.
A company blog can be used to improve community relations or as an important part of a crisis management plan. In short, a public blog makes your company seem more approachable and human, and those traits will serve you well if you need to engage in a dialogue with your customers or community. By letting them in on the fact that real people work at your business, you get a few simple benefits:

     Potential customers will like your company better, because they will feel like they 'know' someone who works there.

     Your community will be able to discover new products or services that you create, and can provide feedback.

     Customers will be more forgiving of mistakes or glitches; it is easier to see that real people make mistakes, but we expect corporations to be perfect.

Public blogs are a great complement to the communications technologies you already use, such as email newsletters, conference calls, or mailings. Further, the messages you send using a blog can be automatically delivered to your audience wherever they are; - on their browser's start page, in their email inbox, to their mobile phone, or on any other mobile device.

Many companies also create private weblogs for use within an organization, to simplify tasks like project tracking, workgroup collaboration, or process management. Inside your company, blogs take a place alongside knowledge management tools, portal applications, and email.

How do I get a blog?
Afterabc is here to help.

Why would I want more than one blog?
Most organisations that deploy blogs end up creating and managing more than one. It is easy to understand why.

First, many large companies are using blogs as a simple but powerful way to share information on an intranet without a lot of cost or complexity. In these cases, it makes sense to create a new blog every time you need one:

     A blog for each workgroup that wants to share updates with the whole company.

     A blog for each of your products, talking about features, tips and tricks, or promotional offers.

     A blog for each project team that wants to talk about its milestones or progress.

     A blog for executive leaders who want to communicate about goals, or even,

     A blog for each employee in an information-focused or services company.

Blogs are similar to email in that you might set up a blog for each project or group just as you would set up an email list or group for a project. The difference is people who are not members of that group can discover the information on the blog if you let them, and the archive is easier to search and retrieve than messages that are locked away in an inbox.

Ever had to wait to be added to a relevant email list for information on a project, or found out that the information you were looking for was sent to the list before you subscribed? Once your team gets in the habit of putting that information on a blog, you don't need to worry about either of these problems.

If you are using blogs as a communication or promotional tool to the public, it makes sense to have one blog for each of the audiences to whom you are talking.

Whether it is inside your company or to the world at large, it makes sense to have one blog per conversation. A single blog for each communication channel is easy since blogging tools let you keep track of all those conversations easily.

For the readers of your blogs, it is easy to discover the content they are seeking, since blog posts can automatically be organised into archives.

Data about Blogging

The numbers, however impressive, are not going to be what gets someone excited about blogging - but the results will, and the numbers prove blogging works.

Statistics from 'The State of the Blogosphere', by Technorati.

More than 133,000,000 blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002
77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann
Two-thirds of Bloggers are male
More than half are married and more than half are parents
60% are 18-44
75% have college degrees and 40% have graduate degrees
One in four has an annual household income of $100K
Around half of Bloggers are working on at least their second blog
68% have been blogging for two years or more
86% have been blogging for at least a year
One in five Bloggers report updating on a daily basis.
The most common rate of updating is 2-3 times per week.
The majority of blogs use tags (85%).
82% of respondents say that they post photos to their blog, making images the most popular form of multimedia.
Bloggers participate in an average of five activities to drive traffic to their blogs.
72% of respondents are classified as Hobbyists, meaning that they report no income related to blogging
56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry.
58% say that they are better known in their industry because of their blog.

Motivations of bloggers:

70% of all respondents say that personal satisfaction is a way they measure the success of their blog
Bloggers are most likely to describe themselves as "sincere" (75%).
16% describe themselves as snarky.
71% say they blog at least in part in order to speak their minds.
72% say they blog in order to share their expertise.
61% say they blog in order to supplement their income.
53% of professional bloggers are interested in attracting new clients from blogging.
72% of those who are self-employed and blogging are interested in attracting new clients.
19% are concerned that their employers might disapprove of their views on their blog.
For most bloggers (81%), even if the economic downturn has disrupted lifestyles or lives it has not changed the kind of topics or themes of which they write.
63% of respondents say that blogging has led them to become more involved with things they are passionate about because of blogging.
Respondents report that blogging has had chiefly positive impacts on their personal lives; just 6% say that relationships with friends or family members have suffered because of blogging.
42% have become friends with someone they have met in person through their blog.
15% say that they have more executive visibility within their company because of blogging.
57% say that their plans include blogging even more (including 74% of 18-24 year olds).
35% - including 43% of part-timers - plan to one day publish a book.
Part-Timers, Pros, and Self-Employed are blogging as much as or more than ever (73%, 76% and 80%, respectively), while
Hobbyists are blogging somewhat less.

The how of blogging

15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging.
One in five bloggers report updating on a daily basis.
The most common rate of updating is 2-3 times per week.
The majority of blogs use tags (85%).
20% of all users report having updating their blog or adding content from their mobile device.
59% percent report doing so at least somewhat more this year than they did last year.
Fewer than 10% of bloggers say they do not know the traffic to their blogs.
Bloggers participate in an average of five activities to drive traffic to their blogs.
On average 27% of a blogs page views come as referrals from a horizontal search engine.
74% of all respondents use a third party service to track their site traffic. Google Analytics is by far the most popular tool in the space.

Blogging revenues

72% of respondents are classified as Hobbyists, meaning that they report no income related to blogging
Of those who have monetized their blogging to at least some extent:
• 54% are Part-Timers
• 32% are Self-Employed
• 14% are Corporate
89% believe that it is important that the advertising placed on their blogs align with their values.
More than 2 out of 3 bloggers monetizing their sites leverage self-service ad platforms.
Comparing 2008 to 2009 there has been a 68% increase in the number blogs with ad tags installed.

Blogging brands

70% of bloggers are talking about brands on their blog organically.
46% of respondents post about the brands they love (or hate).
38% post brand or product reviews.
Part-Timers and Self-Employed bloggers are talking about brands at a much higher rate (80%), with one in three posting reviews at least once a week.
71% of all respondents who maintain blogs for a business - their own or one they work for - report that they have increased their visibility within their industries through their blogs.
56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry.
58% say that they are better known in their industry because of their blog

Twitter and blogging

Just 14% of the general population use Twitter - but 73% of respondents in the 2009 State Of The Blogosphere survey do.
52% syndicate their blog posts to their Twitter Account, and 41% do so while also posting tweets that are not associated with their blogs.
26% of bloggers who also use Twitter say that the service has eaten into the time they spend updating their traditional blogs - though 65% say, it has had no effect.
35% of those who do not use Twitter say it is because they do not understand the point. In addition, 54% report that they do not feel the need to broadcast their life, despite the popularity of "personal musings" as a blog topic.
Blogs with greater than 100 page views a day received on average .83% of their page views from Twitter referrals. This referral percentage was constant.

Blogs by the numbers

133,000,000 - Number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002
346,000,000 - Number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)
900,000 - Average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period
77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs
81 - Number of languages represented in the blogosphere
59% - percentage of bloggers who have been blogging for at least 2 years

Comparing Blogs to other Communication Tools

One of the most common areas of confusion about blogs is in understanding how blogs are different from the other technology used on a website, for example a 'forum'.

How are blogs different from other web sites?
Blogs have a number of unique features that complement the other communications tools a company use. Below are highlighted the differences of where blogs either work to improve a company's other systems, or where they can replace systems that do not work as well.

Send update notifications
Blogging tools let your audience be automatically updated via email or XML feeds whenever the company updates the website. Most sites require people to remember to visit, and then to judge what has been updated since their last visit on their own, but blogs reduce the amount of effort required to keep up to date. Many companies already have websites that offer information people could find useful, but those people are not going to remember to come back. Blogs solve that problem by reminding them to return.

Publish XML feeds
This technology (often called RSS) notifies your readers of updates, but it also gives you the ultimate flexibility in reaching your audience. Feeds can be read or displayed on mobile devices like iPods, PDAs or phones and can automatically be delivered to desktop and laptop computers, either in the web browser or on other websites. XML feeds reach your audience, wherever they are, with whatever information you choose to share.

A lobby, not a pavement
Blogs are a space online that you "own". This is an important idea: It means your company sets the tone of the conversation and the expectations about behaviour. One simple way to think about this is to compare the difference between how people act on the pavement in front of an office building as opposed to the lobby inside the building. The lobby is an 'owned' space, so disruptive behaviour, or simply unwanted salespeople, can be stopped and prevented from participating in the conversation. In the same way, blogs can make sure a conversation online is productive and stays on topic while still being welcoming.

Feedback through comments and links
When the internet was first gaining popularity among business users, there was a lot of talk about companies being able to take advantage of rich interactivity to find out the sentiments and suggestions of their customers. Blogging actually helps you take advantage of that potential by building in simple tools that let you get comments and feedback from your audience.

Feedback, can be published on the company site, collected through email, or displayed using a system called 'TrackBack'. TrackBack shows when another blogger has linked to your site. This kind of direct, personal feedback used to be expensive to collect, but with blogging, it is a natural part of participating in the community.

The Company's audience is happy because they can respond, and the company is happy because you are collecting valuable feedback without painful or expensive surveys or polls.

Blogs vs. regular websites
Blogs are more dynamic than traditional websites, and are more likely to have a human voice. That means readers form a tighter connection with the blog and the company that publishes it. Blogging promises an ongoing relationship, without requiring a lot of investment or obligation on the company part. A static 'brochure' website does not always indicate that there are real people on the other end who care about customers and their needs.

Blogs vs. email
Email is a fantastic tool for updating customers or members of your team, but these days most people feel frustrated that their inbox is just another burden to deal with. Problems with junk or spam email make delivery unreliable at best, and frequently impossible.

Blogs complement email by being more permanent and reliable, less demanding or intrusive for readers, and able to reach a wider audience. The example below highlights, a common scenario that shows the problem with email, and how blogs can help.

A group email message is sent to 10 recipients, and eight of them get the update with the information they needed. Two people on your team did not really feel the message was relevant to them, so they just ignored it, though it contributed to the clutter in their inboxes.

Worse, two other team members who wanted the message were not included in the first place. By the time the next project rolls around, they may not remember what this update was about, but they will definitely remember that they were not included on the message. Further, those first recipients of the message start sending "Reply All" emails, making the problem even worse.

Soon, you have people sending the 'Why was I copied on this message'? And 'Get me off this list' emails.

Everybody on the team could view a blog post with the same update information at their leisure, without cluttering up their inboxes. Comments or feedback can be collected even from people who were not included as recipients of the original message. Further, all the information and comments are stored permanently so that you can refer to them for your next project.
The benefits of blogs vs. email are not just limited to project teams inside your company.

For marketers, using blogs to share a message eliminates concerns about opt-in and privacy. Subscribing to blogs or XML feeds automatically verifies a reader's interest in the content, and makes it easy to send new messages without having to learn new technology or tools.

In any organization, blogs can be updated by email, making it easy to build blogs into your existing email workflow. Further, the company can send out blog content by email to people who are used to getting information in their inbox and do not want to learn anything new.

Blogs vs. traditional content management systems
Most content management systems are designed from a technology or process perspective, instead of from the perspectives of the people who will be using them. Though CMS vendors describe advanced workflow capabilities or permissions as benefits of the system, most regular users see those 'features' as a pain, and they avoid them like the plague.

Worse, to deploy a CMS, you often have to have your people trained, and if the IT or IS department sends them away for a day of training, they'll come back still being unwilling to use the system, only now they'll be resentful for having their time wasted, as well. On the other hand, blogs are easy (and fun) enough to use that people do lots of blogging in their free time - we still have not seen anyone who uses an enterprise CMS in their free time.

Despite being much simpler for non-IT people to use, blogs offer most of the benefits of more expensive traditional content management systems:

You can easily output your content through templates in multiple formats.

     The system manages archiving, organization, categorization, and publishing automatically.

     You can set permissions over who can create or edit content.

     Blogs can integrate with your existing website and other applications.

Moreover, with blogging, you can probably take advantage of expertise that your team already has: If your organization employs 100 people or more, you already have people on staff that have experience in blogging. Blogging tools tend to be more flexible than older CMS's, making it easy for even those with no technical practical understanding to change the output and design of your published pages.

Blogs vs. forums or bulletin boards
Forums and bulletin boards have traditionally been extremely difficult to navigate, and often allow almost anyone to start a conversation. It is a strange tradition - you would not let random people outside your company write whatever they want on your company newsletter, but that seems normal with forums. As a result, the burden of managing these communities is high; you end up either playing forum police, always on the lookout for bad behaviour, or your forum becomes a haven for those who have a lot of time on their hands.

In most forum software, the tools for encouraging good behaviour are poor or non-existent, and the discussion tends to fall to the lowest common denominator.

As we mentioned, except in the best-maintained forums, the person with the most time on his hands tend to dominate the conversation. Somehow, successful and busy professionals are never the people with tons of free time on their hands. A disgruntled customer with an axe to grind or a competitor using a fake name can turn a forum into an ongoing maintenance nightmare.

With a blog, your company is in charge and controls the conversation in a way that forums just do not allow. Instead of anyone being able to create their own thread or conversation, you can limit posting to authorise staff on your team. You also do not have to worry about content appearing on your site without your approval - it is easy to set comments on your blog only to be published after you have approved them. Therefore, there is no scramble to go back and clean up a conversation that has gone off the rails and polluted the company website.

Blogs vs. wikis
Wikis are a part of a newer breed of tools designed to allow anyone in an organization to collaboratively edit or revise documents stored in a central repository, and many organizations find wikis are a good complement to blogs. To date, business use of wikis have been limited, because most of the tools are simply too hard for non-IT people to use. As with most technology, though, it is getting easier as more people try to figure wikis out, and the ease of creating documents with a wiki makes the tool a good match for the simple publishing of blogs.

The biggest distinction between blogs and wikis is that wikis are designed to create a single collaborative result, the sum total of the efforts of everyone who can view that web page. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Wikipedia, which is trying to use everyone on the Internet to create the most comprehensive encyclopaedia ever made. However, sometimes you want to share some information and be the owner of that information. Blogs are perfect for these situations: They only allow people to respond or react to the information you have shared, but they cannot modify it themselves.

If you are considering a wiki, pair it with a blog to get the most out of it. Use the blog to post information about updates on the wiki or to collect comments from your community about content on the wiki.

Blogs vs. chat
Chat systems such as instant messenger applications have exploded in popularity in recent years. They share some common traits with blogs, including an immediacy and simplicity of use, and blogs share the same ability to let people communicate in a human voice. But most instant messenger chats tend to disappear as soon as they end, making it impossible to archive, search, or recall a conversation without buying additional expensive software.

Fortunately, it is possible to connect chat and blogs, and to use a chat interface to create or suggest new content for a blog. That way, your blog can collect and store the best information that your team is sharing through chat systems right now.

The Benefits of Blogging for Media Organizations

Many of the first organizations to adopt blogs have been in the media industry, because the media business is always looking for faster and more effective ways to share information and entertainment with their audiences. From the largest media organizations in the world and global television networks to hometown newspapers and independent publishers, blogging is an easy way to extend reach. Even better, readership of blogs has been steadily increasing, so average readers have become familiar with the medium.

Blogs also make it easier for people to find your content once they have visited your blog, since a blog automatically organizes your information, publishes it via XML (RSS) feeds, and makes it easier to discover through search engines. Best of all, blogs are ideal for reaching audiences that are tough to connect with in other channels. People listening to iPods, road warriors on laptops, or TV fans at home watching DVDs -these are all groups that get more and more of their information through blogs.
Below Afterabc outlined a few of the key benefits of blogging that media companies have seen, based on real-world blogs that are in use today.

Low cost web authoring
Publishing to a blog does not require an expensive content management system, meaning the organisation can get started without the involvement of your web team or IT department. Further, blogging is as easy as email, so editors and writers can get started without being forced to endure a lengthy training process. Getting content up on a website quickly while it is still newsworthy can be a hard, and blogs are designed to make that process as simple as possible. Independent research says that blogs can reduce the costs of web publishing by 90%. (Source: SKK)

The fastest way to publish
Publishing to a blog is fast and the results are immediate. Often, it is important to get a story or news item online a quickly as possible, and posting the item to a blog can be a perfect placeholder until the organisation has time to publish a more in-depth story. If management want to enforce standard editorial process, the process can define as little or as much workflow as you need. Importantly, the creative people can get the word out without being stymied by software. The organisation need not have to choose between posting to a blog and publishing content in your traditional content management system - blogs can integrate with the company's existing systems and complement the processes you already have in place.

Publish from anywhere
If the company need to let writers post stories to your website from on the road, from their portable computers or from any other mobile device, blogging software offers this capability automatically. You can simply email content directly to your blog, or use one of a number of dedicated applications that are available for mobile devices such as Blackberry or other PDAs.
Working from a laptop computer, blogs can be updated from anywhere you have access to a standard web browser. You do not need to install any software on your computers, and you can even access your blog software from shared or public access Internet terminals.

Increase the Company reach
Blogs help a company increase its reach: The Company's current audience can get updates more easily, and the people who have not found the company site yet can discover the company blog with the standard search engines they are already using.

Search engine optimization (SEO)
Because they are frequently updated, blogs rise fast to the top of search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your website. Search engines rate content that is new and updated highly. In addition, search engines favour sites that are well structured, heavily linked, and accessible to any kind of reader. (If you've ever seen a website that says "works best with" a certain browser or software, that's exactly what not to do.)

Good news: Blogs meet these criteria automatically, without you having to change any settings or even think about what the search engines want. Modern tools even notify the search tools when you update, so they can add your latest content to their search index.

XML feeds (RSS)
XML Feeds (sometimes called RSS) are very popular; if you have ever seen a site displaying, 'Add this to My Yahoo' or 'Subscribe to our feed', you have seen feeds in action. They help distribute your content to your readers by sharing your blog posts in a format that can be subscribed to in a web browser, via email, in a reader's homepage, or in special programs called feed readers.

Further, similar to optimizing for search engines, publishing feeds for a blog takes place automatically whenever updated. Using third-party services, you can even place ads in your feeds, reaching your most dedicated subscribers, and there are services to let the administrator measure the number of readers for your feeds so you can track their impact.

In short, feeds deliver all the advantages of email newsletters without the hassle of managing a subscriber list, dealing with spam filters, or having to maintain a system for letting readers unsubscribe.

Lead the conversation
The most important reason to start a blog as a media company is so that you can participate in a conversation with your audience. These days, media is more than just publishing stories and hoping readers like them. It is increasingly about provoking a dialogue and shaping the debate, and the best way to jump in is to lead your audience in a conversation about the topics of which they care. The audience has a voice, too, and they are expecting to be heard. Blogs give you a chance to start that dialogue in a way that is controlled, so you can have the benefits of an open exchange without having to deal with unwanted or unproductive content being published on your site.

It is worth embracing an open conversation for its positive benefits and not just because you feel it is required. Once you have established your credibility in the blogosphere and earned your audience's loyalty, you will be rewarded with an engaged, loyal audience that will add value to your site over the long term.

The Benefits of Blogging for Small Businesses

Blogs are the perfect tool for a smaller business - Blogs are easy to set up so you do not have to have an army of technical experts on staff, and they let you show off the personal touch that distinguishes your small business from a faceless giant corporation. Further, blogs can open up new channels for SMEs to talk to customers while improving the performance of your current communication tools.

Fast and inexpensive publishing
Blogs let facilitate a truly dynamic website that encourages people to visit and gives them incentive to return in the future. Updating business websites can be a slow process, requiring the involvement of an IT department. Publishing to a blog, is fast, the results are immediate and no IT resources are required. A business blog lets a SME maintain a relationship with its audience on the web, without requiring an ongoing substantive investment in technology management.

Boost search engine rankings
Because blogs are updated frequently, blogs are favoured in search engine listings. Surveys have indicated that 83% of companies that have launched blogs saw both a traffic increase to their website and received more qualified traffic directed from their blogs. This is one of the few areas where a small company's marketing efforts can equal or better the biggest companies in the world. No matter how much money a global corporation has to spend, the content that is most interesting and relevant is going to be favoured by search engines. That means a SME can outmanoeuvre them on that first page of Search engine results for your product or service, just by blogging about topics to which people want to link.

Increase your reach
Information published with a blog can find your audience wherever they are. Because blogs are distributed through XML feeds, readers can find your information in the places they are already looking, such as their web browser's start page, or on their mobile devices and iPods. Importantly, the SME does not have to rely on customers taking the initiative to come to their website to be notified of changes - ideas can be notified to them automatically. That means the SME can reach an audience anywhere in the world, while still keeping the human touch.

Humanize the corporation
One of the key advantages a SME has in competing with larger companies as a small or medium business is that they can offer the perspective of real people who know and care about their customers. Blogs let you communicate in a personal, open voice. Businesses talk a lot about the value of having a real relationship with customers, and blogs let you deliver on that promise efficiently. Further, if you are a small company that wants to seem larger, the professional design and cutting-edge features like XML feeds that come automatically with your blog can make the company look bigger and more successful.

Customer research and insight
Blogs can collect valuable and immediate feedback from customers. Without the budget for a formal research and development or market research team, a SME has to improvise. However, customers use the company products or services more often than do the employees, and that means that they, the customers, can come up with new ideas or improvements to suggest. Until recently, there has not been an easy way to collect that feedback and make use of it. The most engaged and active customers are hungry to give you their advice, and on a blog it is as simple as leaving a comment for you to collect and share throughout your company.

Create loyal customers and get good PR
Blogs allow SME to engage with customers in an informal conversation. By establishing an open dialogue, it is likely customers feel included in the company decision-making process. Consequently, customers will be more loyal and likely to promote the company products.

For example, when a customer can say; - 'I suggested something to this company, and they actually listened', the company will have made a customer for life. Especially if they compare it to waiting on hold forever, just to try to reach a big company by phone.

A blog can create huge PR potential value. Journalists and other bloggers are often looking for an expert to talk to about a particular industry. While a global corporation might be busy having their PR team negotiate with their lawyers about what exactly they can say to the press, a SME can simply be available for contact through their blog and be ready to respond to the press when they are working on a story. (A Backbone Media survey of hundreds of business bloggers from late 2005 showed that 35% of companies that were blogging got an interview request from a journalist within the first 3 months that their blog was running).

Thought leadership
Blogs can position a company as a thought leader. If you are an expert in your field, the best way to have customers find out about it is to follow the old adage: 'Show, don't tell'. A blog lets a company demonstrate its mastery in an area by example, making its unique qualifications obvious and reducing the need for the "hard sell" when persuading new customers.

Customers often prefer to do business with small or medium companies, as it is easier to trust a company that has not grown to an inhuman scale. Nevertheless, potential customers might perceive a greater risk because of concerns about a SME stability and reliability, whether a small company has the resources to satisfy the customers' needs. A blog the best way to reassure a potential client or an existing customer about those worries while telling the story about successes and sharing testimonials from current customers.

Benefits of Blogging for Marketers

The first way that most large companies and enterprises have used blogs is in public-facing communications with key audiences. Whether it is talking to customers, potential customers, or partners, blogs have already become a common part of a company website. The reasons why are simple: Blogs are extremely easy and inexpensive to update, and thus form a complement to, or even an alternate distribution venue for, content that used to be sent as an email newsletter or direct mail piece.

'To blog or not to blog? The answer, simply enough, is to blog. No better opportunity exists to engage in an open dialog and exchange of ideas with customers and potential customers'.

                                    -Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman, General Motors', (Business Week magazine).

One of the best reasons to use blogs as part of company's marketing mix is that it gives the company instant credibility with other bloggers. In many industries, the influencers and tastemakers in the community already have blogs; being able to engage them with the company messages is a critical opportunity to have available.

The voice of your blog can help build a brand and gives a company an outlet for messages that are too long, detailed, nuanced, or personal to communicate through other media.
Ways to use Blogs in your Business

If you are interested in blogs but are not sure what is the right way to use them, Afterabc have outlined some common scenarios that apply to any size business. (Note: We have not covered in this section the use of blogs for professional publishing companies. - See, 'The benefits of blogging for media companies').

Marketing and promotion
The earliest adopters of blogging technology in many corporations have been marketing, public relations, and promotional teams. The combination of immediacy, authenticity, and flexibility makes blogs a natural tool for talking to audiences you wish to engage.

One blog per audience

Most products and services are targeted at a number of different audiences, but traditional mass marketing requires some compromises in order to reach the widest variety of possible customers. Blogs do not have that same constraint; while many blogs are aimed at a broad audience, it is possible to target a single specific audience with your blog and communicate to them in their own language. Best of all, it's cost-effective to target a narrow niche with a blog, which might be prohibitively expensive in other media.

One blog per brand, product or campaign

Just as you can target a single product to multiple audiences, it is common for more than one of a company's products to be appropriate for their audience. In this case, customers may have more of an understanding of or appreciation for the product with which they are most familiar. Alternatively, the company might have a particular campaign that is not appropriate for all their audiences, but has a particular resonance for one of them.

To take advantage of that connection, it often makes sense to create a single blog for each distinct product or brand that the company offer. During the 2006 Winter Olympics, Visa wanted to communicate a specific message behind their sponsorship of athletes in the games, as opposed to a general promotion of the Visa brand. To that end, Visa created a blog called "The Journey", with contributions from a number of Olympic athletes, each using the same technology as Afterabc to share their own perspective on their games with the world.

This unique channel reinforced the core branding message Visa was looking to promote, but was addressed specifically to an audience that was invested in these individuals and their stories. By using a blog platform for sharing that message, Visa was able to cut through the clutter that may have resulted if the blog were trying to address all of the campaigns Visa promotes.

Industry thought leadership, or a voice for executives

Regardless of what line of business a company operates, it is valuable to be seen as an innovator and leader in the space. This can be accomplished in a few different ways, each of which emphasizes the creativity and innovation of the company.
First-person blogs from a company's founders or executives can speak to the vision a company is defining. Talk about challenges that face the entire industry, describe overarching strategies that explain new products and services, or provide examples of the traits that make 'your' company unique - any of these are perfect fodder for a leadership blog.

It is important to note, though, that leadership blogging does not have to be the exclusive domain of founders and C-level executives. Almost any member of a marketing organization can make valuable contributions to a leadership blog. In many companies, members of a customer service team or product development team have unique perspectives that are fascinating for customers, offering a behind-the-scenes peek at the company.

Even if the company CEO or other senior executives are blogging themselves, they do not have to do all the work alone. Busy CEOs do not always have time to do all the homework and writing for a blog all by themselves. If the CEO acknowledge the team that helps write a blog post, just like they would acknowledge people who help do research for a presentation or a business meeting, it's completely okay to have people contribute to a blog that's "by" a CEO.

Here are the key points, if a company decides to use a senior executive as the voice of one of the company's blogs:

It is okay to update infrequently. Only update when there is something significant to say, and tools like email subscriptions or feeds make it easy for people to get the updates in a timely fashion.

It is okay to get help in writing a blog. Some executives are not natural writers/bloggers, and even the ones who are will have busy schedules that might preclude extensive research or copyediting. Just make it clear that there is a team effort involved, and readers will be happy just to see you engaging in a dialogue.

Creating a Blogging Policy

Blogging is all about communication, and whenever people talk, there will sometimes be miscommunication. As we have seen in the past with the introduction of new technologies ranging from the printing press to telephones to television, the key is to use a medium appropriately and to set proper expectations.

Immediate communication is fantastic for sending updates on timely matters, but also lets people share ideas without thinking them through, while in the heat of emotion, or before they've had a chance to do proper research. Further, tools such as search engines that record and index content mean that much of what we say through blogs can be considered permanently "on the record".

Clearly, most organizations do not offer media or communications training to everyone in the company. This means that employees who want to go out and comment on public blogs or publish content on the official company blog might not have the experience or judgment to decide what is appropriate to share.

The danger is not from blogs, it is from the fact that any of us can talk to the whole world at any time. Whether your staff is talking too loudly in the supermarket, is taking ill-considered pictures with a camera phone, or forwards an email to the New York Times, you will need to have a smart policy that adapts to all the new risks of communicating in our culture.

The #1 rule: have a hotline

Above all else, company staff needs to feel comfortable in situations that could possibly be contentious or risky. This means that before they update a blog or submit a comment on a site, they must have a place to go to verify its appropriateness.

Here is what to do: Create a single point of contact where any question about appropriate communication can be addressed, such as a single phone number or email address. This is an important increasingly requirement regardless of whether your company uses blogs or not. Then, encourage all members of your team to err on the side of contacting the hotline whenever there are any concerns or qualms about something that is going to be posted on a blog.

Of course, management will need to monitor those points of contact. Once a company has created a blogging policy, those responsible can coordinate between groups such as human resources and communications or marketing to decide the appropriate resources to allocate to responding to blogging questions.

Most organizations that are blogging today have found that creating such a hotline does not require an extensive investment of resources. The mere idea of having a point of contact encourages employees to be responsible with what they say, and most questions are quickly answered by reviewing the message against the terms of the company's blogging policy as well as its general human resources, trade secrets and nondisclosure policies.

Key areas of risk

A company needs to identify the risk areas that will shape their blogging policy, it is easy to start with topics that are probably already part of the company general guidelines about behaviour and disclosure. Blog posts or comments about the personal life or traits of any individual, company financial information, legal proceedings, and material statements about publicly traded companies, trade secrets, or mentions of competitors or partners should clearly be off-limits in almost any organization. In addition, organizations with government relationships or in high-security industries will likely have a lengthy additional list of content constraints.

In most organizations, a good rule of thumb is that employees should not blog about any message that they would not be comfortable having appear in a newspaper or on the evening news. Similarly, people who are publicly identifiable as company employees should often consider their statements as if they are representing their employer.

Most examples of employees who have suffered negative attention for blogging or commenting have violated company policy which would apply whether on a blog, in email, in print, when spoken, or in any other medium.

General principles

The policies should be made as consistent as possible, whether regarding blogging or any other behaviour that employees are likely to engage in. Understand that blogging is not fundamentally different than creating home videos and sharing them or in writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper - common sense covers most situations.

Though blogging may be the impetus for the creation of such a policy, a company can see this task as taking care of a risk that would need to be addressed regardless of the adoption of blogs.

Learn from example

Creating a blogging policy can seem complex. Fortunately, many organizations (including those with more employees and more lawyers than most) have already created some useful policies. As you would expect, Afterabc have researched a number of blogging policies and are happy to include an example in the appendix of this document.

Of course, a Company may wish to seek legal advice and the counsel of its own company's own leadership before deploying or approving any final policy.

Tracking Blogs in your Community

One of the first issues most organizations face in starting to work with blogs is that they are concerned what bloggers are saying about their products, services, brands, or company. There have been a few high-profile examples of companies being blind-sided by negative sentiments in the blogosphere, or by public relations problems that seem to happen almost instantaneously due to the speed with which blogs and the internet facilitate the share of information.

In addition to concerns about crisis management, companies need to monitor the blogosphere in order to start participating in the conversations that take place between customers, partners, competitors, and your own employees. The key lesson: The conversation about your company and its work is already taking place, so a company need to be aware of it and then, when they ready, participate in it.

All of us who care about the work we do want to reach out to our customers, partners and employees. The potential benefits are many:

     Learn more about what your customers want.

     Find out about issues which aren't problems now, but could become worse in the future.

     Discover ideas for new products or services, or suggestions for improvements to existing offerings.

     Help direct conversations about your industry in directions that emphasize your company's value.

     Provide a human voice for your company and show potential customers or partners that you're willing to listen.

     Empower your employees by letting them demonstrate their expertise.

     Identify testimonials, blogs, and praise that can be fuel for your own marketing, promotional, or blogging efforts.

They are not out to get you.
A lot of attention has been paid to companies that were caught unaware while a conversation about their products or services swept across a number of blogs, reached some of the more prominent sites, and eventually broke into the mainstream media on television, radio or in print newspapers. However, despite the fact that this has happened a few times, this is not the main reason a company should keep track of blog conversations about its company. What matters most? One simple fact: Some companies may face bad PR from blogs; all companies have the opportunity to have a positive conversation through blogs.

The reality of business is, any that company big enough to have more than one customer is big enough to have at least one disgruntled member of its community. A company cannot avoid at least some negativity happening in response to its brands, products or company: The reason to blog is so that the company can participate in the conversations that are already taking place.

How to track your company or brand in blogs

Once a company has decided the conversations taking place in blogs are important to its business it is important to start following the dialogue so that they can be aware of any issues that arise. Eventually, the company may want to use that information to help the company respond or to provide fodder for its own blogging efforts.

Fortunately, tracking blogs can be a straightforward effort, requiring almost no expense and very little dedicated time.

Use simple searching tools

The first and simplest way to find out what public blogs are saying about a company or your industry is to search using the popular web search services. Google and Yahoo are among the most popular, and tend to favour blog content above other types of web pages because the information on blogs is frequently updated, generally well presented, and is often formatted in a manner that's easier for the search engines to index.

To begin, just search for a company or product names, or for terms related to the industry such as competitor's names or issues that influence the business. On almost all these services, an XML Feed of the search results will be available (see "About Feeds"). The feed will automatically notify the subscriber when any new item that meets the criteria shows up on the web. Subscribers can to be notified of new items by other channels as well, making new items show up as emails in their inbox, via instant message, or even as a text message to their mobile phone.

Once familiar with the basics of these search systems, search terms may be refined over time to eliminate any spurious results and to improve the quality of results. Many of the results of standard web searches may be mentions in general-interest or trade press, which may be areas already track by the company using standard press monitoring services.

The next step after learning to track the web at large is to focus on just searching within blogs.

Use services designed to track blogs

The web search services mentioned above usually provide search engines designed specifically for tracking updates in blogs or on news sites. In addition to the general web search services, a number of newer sites have sprung up specifically around the task of tracking information that appears in blogs. These sites present mentions of your keywords as they happen, making it easy to stay on top of conversations that may be bubbling up. Some key services to watch:

     Technorati: Among the first and most popular services: http://www.technorati.com/

Any of these tools can complement standard web searches, and again, it is easy to track results from each service using an XML Feed. The results of all these feeds can be incorporated into one continuous stream and then check that source for updates once or twice a day to get a feel for the blog conversations that are taking place.

Of course, this does take some time investment, and for those interested in a more complete analysis of the information that's being presented but don't have the time or resources to do it, then it is sensible to engage a professional services organisations who offer services that can monitor blogs. These services can follow blogs, looking for topics that pertain to your company, and alert you to any issues or concerns that arise.

How do I know which bloggers matter?

The second step is to assess the bloggers' conversations about your company or products that matter, and then begin to cultivate relationships with the bloggers that influence and affect your industry. A little research will indentify which bloggers are key to your industry, and then engage them in a conversation that (hopefully) wins them over to viewing your company as valuable. The key here is to be of service to the bloggers in your community, and in return, these bloggers will be a resource you can call upon in the future, if needed.

Identify related topics

It is important to note as you start reaching out to the blogosphere is that you may have to look a bit outside of your usual areas of expertise. For some niche businesses, or in areas such as finance, heavy industry, manufacturing, or defence technologies, it is possible that general bloggers do not really discuss your business at all. As a result, discover which topics bloggers are talking about that can affect your business even if your company name is not mentioned.

For example, if your company is involved in supplying raw materials, you may wish to look for news and discussions about the manufacturers that purchase your products, as well as others involved in your supply chain. That way, even if bloggers are not discussing your own products, you can anticipate how blog conversations could affect your business.

Know who doesn't count

Some bloggers, even though they may have a lot of readers or traffic, just are not relevant to your business. If you sell yarn to knitters, a technology blogger who has 50,000 readers might say something good or bad about your product, but it might not make a difference regardless.

It is easy for someone who is influential with one audience to think that they are influential with all audiences, but it is not necessarily so. Prioritize your conversations with the bloggers who matter in your niche.

All about Feeds

Many websites have links labelled "XML" or "RSS" or "Atom". All of these are ways of saying that you can find out about updates to that site without having to browse to it yourself to check.

This feature is referred to as Syndication or Aggregation, or sometimes it is just called Subscribing. On some sites, instead of a link, they will have an orange button that might say RSS or XML. That is a sign that the page you are viewing has a feed available.

What do I do now?
Afterabc has provided information here on how you can get easily get started reading feeds on the web free. The following is a little background on how you can publish a feed of your own.

Who publishes feeds?

Anyone that publishes on the web can publish a feed. Blogs (or weblogs) were one of the first types of sites to offer feeds. Major newspapers and news websites, hobbyist sites, and retailers such as Amazon.com all offer feeds, too.

What do I need?

Just like when you want to watch a video clip or listen to music on the web, you need a "player" of some kind to subscribe to feeds. There are number of these tools available, and many of them are either totally free or free to try out.

The "player" for a feed is called a feed reader. (Or sometimes it has called a newsreader or RSS reader or RSS client. All these terms mean the same thing.) This tool lets you subscribe to any feeds you want, checks automatically to see when they're updated, and then displays the updates for you as they arrive.

Feed readers come in two varieties: web-based, or as an installable program. If you use one of the web-based readers, you can access your feeds from anywhere you go, just by signing into the website that manages your feeds. If you use a feed reading program that installs on your computer, your feeds can be stored for you even if you are not connected to the Internet.
What feed reader should I use?
Afterabc do not have an official preference, but we can list some of the most popular tools our customers have told us they like.

Our service LiveJournal provides a built-in way for users to read any feed on the web, right on their Friends page, which makes it easy to keep track of all the feeds, journals and blogs that matter to you.

Other popular web-based feed readers include Bloglines or NewsGator Online, both of which are free services designed specifically for reading feeds. Most web portal start pages, such as My Yahoo, My MSN, My AOL, and Google Personalized Homepage, allow you to subscribe to feeds and have them display within right on your start page. For business users, may newer intranet or portal applications may have a feed reading feature built in.

If you prefer a feed reading program that you can install on your computer, you can use FeedDemon or NewsGator for Microsoft Outlook if you are on Microsoft Windows. The same company as NewsGator makes both tools online, so you can switch between these programs and the web-based reader at any time. If you are on a Macintosh running OS X, the most popular feed reader is NetNewsWire, which can also connect to the web-based services.

Microsoft Windows users will have support for feeds in version 7 (and latter editions) of Internet Explorer.

Subscribing to feeds
Once you have a tool to read feeds, start by finding feeds that are worth reading by seeking recommendations, from those interested in similar topics, in addition, many of the tools listed above provide some built-in feeds to get you started. Then, as you visit other sites on the web, you can keep your eyes open for l XML or RSS or Syndication links, or for that orange button up above, and add the feeds you find interesting.

Publishing a feed
All 'Afterabc blog tools', publish feeds automatically, without you having to install additional software.

Technical details: what is an XML feed?
Despite the technical names, feeds are very simple. A feed is a small file, much like a web page. Feeds have a special format that allows a subscriber to collect information from a wide variety of sites and display the updates all in one place, as they happen.

Most feeds are offered free, to encourage you to read the site that publishes them, or so you will click on the links in the feed. Almost any information that is updated regularly is a good candidate for being offered as a feed.
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and Atom is just a name, not an acronym.

What is the difference between the various formats?
The various versions of RSS and Atom should offer similar experiences. At a technical level, RSS is focused on making simple syndication very easy, and is the older and more widely published format. Atom is a web standard from the IETF, one of the standards bodies that's helped define the web, and is more focused on enabling both reading and writing of content with a single format. At Afterabc Limited, all of our tools support both formats equally.

What is podcasting?
Podcasting is the popular name for using special feeds to distribute media files like songs, audio files, photos or even video. Feed readers that support podcasting will automatically download the media files in a podcast feed and then copy them to a portable device or to your computer for you to listen to whenever you want. Many people listen to podcast audio files on an Apple iPod, which inspired the name. But podcasting can be any kind of file on any kind of device, delivered by subscribing to a feed.