Comments on: Should a small business blog?

By: Steve Mills

Steve Mills — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:51:02 +0000

We have got great benefit from our blog, and advise all of our customers that are in consulting or provide expert advice to customers to do the same. A blog is a great way to engage your customers in a new way, and to develop a relationship with them that is different from advertising or other marketing methods.

The main thing is that once a blog is up and running, it needs to be maintained and reguarly updated. Otherwise a negleted blog can be more of a detriment then a benefit

By: Nicky Jurd

Nicky Jurd — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:23:45 +0000

Businesses are using blogs as an easy answer to a newsletter. They prove to your customers you are an expert in your industry, have a dynamic product range and are on the ball with current issues.

Blogs are engaging, giving your visitors a reason to return, promoting word of mouth and providing an effortless means of website interaction.

Sounds technical? It’s not, it’s easy! A blog allows you to write short, punchy snippets which are then automatically displayed on your website.

Write about industry news, company achievements, customer comments, suggestions… whichever topics you feel will repeatedly interest your customers and motivate them to return to your website over and over.

Your internet savvy visitors will go a step further, and elect to have your posts automatically sent to them — how’s that for getting your message in front of potential customers?

A blog can be installed and integrated into your website like a news page. Lots of free software is available, one of the more popular ones is Wordpress. Your web designer can install this at a very low cost.

(I hope this is a less technical answer and provides easy-to-digest responses!)

By: Marina Durban

Marina Durban — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 01:04:11 +0000

Hi there,
This blogging……if customers can leave comments, what is to stop people leaving rubbish? We have had to implement an anti – hackers device on our testimonials page to stop nuisance messages which take up space and are junk downloaded from a web page. We don’t want to get ourselves into that sort of situation again.

By: Dominic Mapstone

Dominic Mapstone — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:47:01 +0000

Something I do on the side to raise money for our work with homeless people is internet marketing consulting. So your email I understood but I’d rather get higher level experienced advice if I’m going to get any email from you on this topic.

I understand dealing with clients there is always that knowledge gap, and have the advantage of if I use a technical term I can explain it to them. Perhaps what you could consider is providing a link to a pop-up explanation for all technical terms in your emails, or something like that.

Technically I disagreed with the wording of some of your claims, not so much that they were false, but more that a bit of a stretch of reality was involved.

Point being you should respect the spectrum of understanding your clients have. Some are at expert level, in terms of search engine optimization and some are completely uninformed.

Perhaps a new product line – a tutorial in seo / sem especially for the beginners. I know this email was some kind of attempt at that but given beginners received the email, you pretty much missed the mark on that one.

Finally, If you don’t want to be laughed at by expert clients, get your advice in order before you send it out.

I don’t mean to salt your game, just giving respectful and honest feedback.

By: Dai Wynn

Dai Wynn — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:32:15 +0000

I have a ‘blog which I publish twice weekly to a small mailing list using a PHP list manager. As an artist, I include an image of a painting with a brief explanation of where the painting was executed, the media, size and price.

I also write a ‘blog for an art site in the USA (ArtID.com).

In both ‘blogs I try to be accurate, honest, , factual, fair and uncomplicated. I certainly do NOT use my ‘blogs for propaganda purposes, or include one-sided arguments, or partial truths when it suits me.

You might like to review YOUR OWN ‘blog policy in the light of these comments, particularly when quoting examples of well-known ‘blogs in the article above.

You have my apologies if this comment is too subtle, but I have very strong feelings about honesty in public statements. A ‘blog is a document in the public domain.

Perhaps you might care to include http://www.tellthetruthtelstra.com.au as another example of a ‘blog with a different point of view.

Cheers,

Dai

By: Patricia Beatty

Patricia Beatty — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:56:46 +0000

Brian’s comments typify mine. I’m an ‘oldie’ with very little experience with computers but willing to learn and try anything! It would be fantastic if I could start a ‘blog’, ’story’, ‘communication’ etc. on my website for the public to read and primarily be informed and educated from, which will then, hopefully, lead them to me! I really do like this idea!

So, do I just add another webpage to my website with an appropriate name for the public to click onto, add some informative chit-chat and a form for the public to fill in and comment? Then, regularly update this ‘informative chit-chat’? Is this how it will work? It sounds to me like a monthly article in a magazine but with none of the costly fees!

Please enlighten me and thank you for your education.
Sincerely,
Patricia Beatty

By: Nigel Foth

Nigel Foth — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:20:23 +0000

Carrying on from what Brian has said, how does a blog differ from a Chat room? Some answers to Brians questions would go a long way to clarifiying the situaution.

By: Brian Herne

Brian Herne — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 04:13:24 +0000

Sory to report your explanation of a “blog” still has me confused but I’ve only been using computers for business for the last 27 years. I had adopted the position that I would ignore all the hype about ‘Blogs’ until someone eventually explained how the heck they were different to anything I already knew and was doing. Sadly I’m still waiting.

You mention that “success box” as an example of a ‘type’ of a blog, but that begs the question – what is success box? Most people would have no idea. So simply explaining the functions and objectives of “success box” in your article may have been a good start.

Us oldies are familiar with the principle concepts of “publishing” news or opinions on our own web site or providing “feedback” to news or opinions on other people’s web sites. Is blogging just modern venacular that seeks to subsume these old, tried and simple concepts?

Is a blog an on-line company news medium or a personal opinion medium? Or are the responses that people leave to those new items a blog? I would have thought that responses would have been known as feedback.

After your valiant attempt ot explain blogs I suspect some of the simple questions people may still have about blogs are:

What type of information constitutes a blog? More importantly is there any that dosen’t?
Where does a blog live on the web? My web site or someone elses?
Who owns a blogging site, some examples?
How is one classified as a blogger?
How does one physically make a blog? Is it by filling in a response form on someone else’s web site? Or by publishing information on your own web site?
What ‘Old fashioned’ names could blogs have gone under in the near past.