Bloggers are not special people, though if you look at some blogs you might be amazed at the output of these individuals; when do they sleep? Some bloggers write several very long articles each day; others blog with loads of little posts throughout the day. It seems as though all they do is blog.

Blogging brings your business several benefits, such as search engine visibility and use by the media to help with your publicity. However, when faced with the barrage of blogging from prolific authors it is somewhat off-putting. Indeed, whenever I speak with audiences about blogging, the most frequent question I get asked is about how often do you "need" to blog and if blogging is a daily activity, how on earth do you get so organised to be able to do that?

Having a constant stream of blogging ideas is something I have written about at ProBlogger. But even if you do produce loads of ideas, how do you physically write them? After all there other competing demands on your time.

The answer is in the way your brain functions. The cells of your brain work by connecting to each other. However, they also need to know is this an important connection or not. If you only blog occasionally, your brain cells can't get to grips with this activity. They're not told that blogging is important. So, your brain assumes it isn't - and the result is you only blog occasionally, which is worthless.

Your brain strengthens the connections between brain cells when the relevant activity is important. So how does your brain get the message that something is important? Repetition. The more times you do something, the stronger those connections become between the relevant brain cells. When those connections are strong, the associated activity becomes easier and is more memorable.

So, the way to ensure you blog every day is to strengthen the neural pathways associated with blogging. To do this, set a time in your diary that you can definitely make every day for the next three weeks. Then, every day, without fail, write a blog entry at the specified time each day.

After three weeks, your brain's blogging pathway will have been strengthened by "habituation". In other words you have made it a habit and your brain won't be able to stop doing it. Make blogging a habit and it then becomes so much easier to do. The problem for most people is they give up blogging after a few attempts and they haven't laid down those strong neural pathways. It would be a bit like having you first driving lesson over and over and over again. You managed to learn to drive a car because you had several lessons in quick succession.

Do the same for blogging; make it a habit by repetition and you'll be amazed how easy it becomes to blog every day. You just have to be strict with yourself in the first three weeks.

Labels: blogging, internet psychology

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Phil Calvert is a marketing expert who encourages everyone to market themselves "live" at seminars and other events. But he also says that blogging is the equivalent of live marketing because it places you in front of a large audience.

Indeed at an Ecademy event he explained to the 250-strong audience that social media of all kinds were now essential to anyone doing business. He went on to say that he is involved in over 30 different social networking groups and leads 50 different clubs on Ecademy. So it poses the question, when does Phil find time to do any work?

One person said to me at this event that she was far too busy working to do so much online social networking, blogging and group activities. So can you do too much online? How much time should you spend online compared with actually running your business?

Well, here's the rub. People like Phil have realised that the online world is the real world. People who claim that they are too busy running their business to do social networking are still thinking there is some kind of separation between the Internet and the "real world". But there isn't.

Online and offline have now merged; few people aged under 25 understand why older people think there is some kind of barrier between the two. To them, the Internet is "where it is at" because - well, just because.

In the good old days of business - the 1990s - there used to be armies of sales staff who travelled up and down the motorways simply knocking on doors and seeing people. Then, back in the office, there were account managers, who spent all day on the phone, simply chatting to customers making sure all was OK. There were also client liaison officers whose task was to keep people happy, that's all. Indeed, back in those good old days, bank managers spent most of their days just meeting customers, chatting with them and taking them out to lunch.

Then along came the Internet and businesses saw a way of saving cash. Sell everything online, they thought, and we can dispense with half our sale staff, we can manage all the accounts using some kind of online database and a couple of clerical people and we can have an Internet controlled call centre somewhere cheap, so we can get rid of all those client liaison people. Whoopee, we'll be rich, they thought.

But along with the savings businesses have made as a result of Internet technology, there has also come a cost. All those sales staff, account managers and client liaison staff did a hugely important job - relationship building. As relationships dwindle, so does loyalty and businesses now have to constantly get new customers.

Online, now, thanks to social networking, blogging and so on, you can build and maintain relationships. The tools of Web 2.0 have replaced those endless streams of sales calls and account management meetings with clients. So, those companies who see social media as something that is a time waster for their business are rather missing the point. What Phil Calvert does is not a waste of time, rather it is essential for the success of any modern business. All those social networking engagements build relationships - just like the sales calls of the past.

If you see the divide between the online world and the "real world" you are unlikely to think that social networking or online clubs are the way to go; indeed you will see them as an unnecessary intrusion into your time. Younger people, in particular, expect online social networking and if your business does not do it - and you've dispensed with those older ways of relationship building - well, you can probably say goodbye to your business fairly soon.

Extensive online social networking is no longer a "nice to have", as Phil Calvert has shown, it is an essential activity. Either that, or re-employ all those sales teams and account managers. Which is more expensive? Extra staff, or a few hours online each week? You decide.

Labels: blogging, future, internet, internet marketing, internet psychology

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At April 22, 2008 9:54 AM  Hjörtur Smárason said…

At May 08, 2008 10:27 PM  john said…

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A new study of online behaviour confirms that good old-fashioned public relations is essential in getting search engine results that people actually click on. The research, conducted by the search engine marketing firm, iProspect, reveals a significant "click behaviour" which every online business owner needs to take notice of.

The study looked into the impact of "blended" search results. Up until relatively recently, search engines like Google only presented search results from web sites. Now, when you search on the main Google page it "blends in" search results from its news service, the image search, blog search and so on. In other words, the results you get are no longer just from plain, ordinary web sites.

News is king
The iProspect analysis shows that 36% of searchers click on a news result. However, if the searchers only looked in the news section, than a mere 10% click on a link. What this shows is the fact that if you get your company in the news, you'll appear on the main Google results page and you will get more clicks by doing so. Importantly, the study revealed that news results are "the most clicked on" results in blended search. In other words, if you are not in the news, you are significantly reducing your chance of getting clicked on when your company appears in a Google search result. In order to get on the Google search results and get clicked by more people you simply must be in the news.

At one of the keynote talks I give about the Internet I concentrate on the need to use offline public relations to gain online benefits. This new study adds a new twist to what I have been saying. Not only does public relations get you better search engine ranking, but it also means you get more click throughs to information about you.

Most business I speak with are using search engine optimisation or pay per click as their central strategies to improve their online business. This new data from iProspect shows that this is a weak strategy. The strongest results are going to come from having public relations as your central focus for improving your online business.

You must be in the Top 10
And there's on other important point. The iProspect study showed that 68% of people never go beyond the front page of Google. And guess where the news results end up? That's right - they make the front page of a blended search result, whereas other more "ordinary" web sites get relegated to secondary pages. But the study showed something even more revealing. Four out of ten people said that if the company was mentioned on the first page of Google results they thought the company was a "leader in its field".

So, to be seen as a leader, to get the clicks you want, you have to be on the front page. No news there then. But to be on the front page, you need to be "in the news". And if you are "in the news" you'll get more clicks than for an "ordinary" web site. So, call that PR agency now - you need them much, much more than you thought. There's only one problem - in my experience, few PR agencies actually understand online public relations. Oh dear.

Labels: blogging, internet, internet marketing, speaking

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At April 16, 2008 8:19 AM  Neil Armstrong said…

At April 16, 2008 8:20 AM  Neil Armstrong said…

At April 16, 2008 8:53 AM  Graham Jones said…

At April 21, 2008 3:54 PM  Abhishek said…

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The BBC has been pioneering the use of the Internet for several years. It has invested huge amounts of cash in its new media strategy and is seen as having real leadership position for the way it has incorporated the Internet into what was a rather fuddy-duddy organisation.

Now, though, it has started openly censoring user contributions to its web site. The Radio 2 presenter Sarah Kennedy has made several gaffes on-air, some of which have drawn public criticism. Audience members had made their feelings known on the BBC web site; but not any longer. The BBC has now announced that user contributions about Sarah Kennedy are banned.

At first sight this appears to make sense. After all, you would want to protect your employee and your investment in them. You might think that the negative views are minority positions anyway and so they shouldn't be given an unfair hearing. There again, if you were the BBC, you might not want your own web site to contain negative material about your organisation.

It's a new world online
Welcome to the new world BBC. We are going to have to live in a world where we do carry negative material about ourselves and our businesses on our own web sites. Audiences expect it; no longer is the biased, one-sided, overtly "promotional" view of a company or organisation acceptable. People now expect honesty and openness. Censoring the views of your audience is red rag to a bull, these days.

If the BBC had thought for a second they may have realised that online it is not possible to censor views. You might ban them from your own web site - upsetting your audience in the process - but you can't make those views go away. There are already a couple of anti-Sarah Kennedy groups on Facebook and a search amongst blogs finds a huge array of negative criticism of her - not much positive.

In the past we could have "buried" such negativity. People may have written and complained or phoned in with their criticisms, but the "public" would never have known. Organisations and companies have been able to sweep under the carpet all the negativity about their business for centuries.

Not any more. Even if you ban such negativity from your web site, it will surface and be made very public, very quickly. Businesses will avoid that situation if they accept negativity on their own web site. Transparency is the new order of the day - online you avoid that at your peril.

Labels: blogging, internet psychology, social networking, user-generated

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Russell Shaw was a prolific blogger on technology subjects. I say "was" because, sadly, Roger died of a heart attack a few weeks ago at the age of 60. Marc Orchant, a blogger with the publishing giants ZDNet also passed away recently at just 50 years old, also from a heart attack.

The similarity between these two men and their untimely deaths has not passed the mainstream media unnoticed. The New York Times, for instance, linked the deaths to the stress of blogging in a 24/7 world. It's true that stress is a fundamental cause of heart disease and early death. And if you are a prolific blogger, eager to be the first with the news or any comment, desperate to please your audience, then you could well be increasing your stress levels and making fatal illness more likely.

A Blogger Personality?
But, there is a significant link between personality and heart disease as well. The go-getting, dynamic, always in a rush kind of individual is the most likely to have serious heart trouble. And my guess is that prolific, always "there" bloggers are likely to be those "Type A" personalities who succumb to the stress induced heart trouble. Sad as it may seem, but if blogging didn't exist, the people who get stressed out by it would have found some other activity to match their personality type.

Yet there is a way you can blog a lot, keep your readers happy and avoid the stress of being "on the go" the whole time. Routine. Every year some person or other reaches 110 years old and they are asked their secret to a long life by some hapless TV reporter who has no idea how to really connect with "old people". Every time I've heard them, these old'uns say the same sort of thing: they did the same things every day.

My Auntie Flo lived until she was 90 - and you could tell the time of day and the day of the week by her activities. Washing on Monday morning, ironing on Monday afternoon; cupboard cleaning on Friday morning, shopping on Friday afternoon. Routine kept her going.

Blogging routine has hidden benefits
I get asked how I manage to keep blogging. Routine. It means I can blog regularly, without getting stressed about it. In fact, knowing that I have a set time to write my blog relieves the stress of worrying about it. True, I might have to adapt my routine to accommodate travel and so on, but generally I stick to it.

But the routine means I always have something to write. Rather than sitting at my PC facing a blank screen and wondering - and getting stressed out, I just sit at the appropriate time in my routine and type away on the subject that I have already pre-planned.

True, it may not stop me getting a heart attack, but I'm confident it will help. And as every doctor will tell you, fear of getting ill is often the pre-cursor to illness. Confidence you are well, often means you stay well. So I can type away, stress free. If you are blogging and you get worried or concerned about it in any way, you need to review what you are doing. Take stock, set up a routine for blogging and have a file for ideas so that you can face your computer without stress. If you don't do this, the New York Times will tell you that your life is in danger.

Labels: blogging, internet, internet psychology

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At April 09, 2008 1:22 PM  Jeremy Jacobs said…

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Blogging is little more than what we have all done for years down the pub - chatting to people. A blog allows you to hold conversation with your readers and chat away, just like the "real world".

For businesses this can be a bonus; it can help spread "word of mouth" about your products and services. And as you know, "word of mouth" advertising is the most powerful. Several surveys show that we respect what our trusted contacts say about other products and services they have used. If they like it, so will we.

For the past few years many businesses have been experimenting with blogs to see if it can have an impact on their income. Indeed, I have encouraged several people to write blogs to boost their own business; yet many of them come back to me and complain they haven't made any money online using blogging.

Now, new research on "social shopping" shows us why. The study shows that blogs are the least respected source of information on products and services you can find. As ever, the research finds we respect "people like ourselves" more than anyone to give us credible information about business products and services. We also trust analysts and academics a great deal. But as the graph shows, we detest bloggers. Interestingly, previous studies have always put the CEO of a company at the bottom of the list of credibility. Now, bloggers have pipped them to the post as the "least trusted" people.

So, the reason why many people don't make money from blogging is because their blog, well, it is a blog. Many blogs look the same, using templates; they all have the same features; and many are poorly written. Blogs scream "Hey, I'm a blog...!" - and that's the last thing you need to do if you want to be trusted, this research suggests.

I make money from writing these articles because people read them and pay me for consultancy work or speaking engagements. But this blog doesn't look too much like a blog; yes I admit it has a lot of blogging features, but it looks more like a web site - plus I haven't called it a blog. Maybe that's why I make money from blogging and some people I know don't. They've called their set of articles a blog - and that is the big turn-off.

So, if you want to make money from blogging - and you can - don't call your blog a blog. Indeed, this study has suggested that I need to revamp this site so it looks even less like a blog. Watch this space...!

Labels: blogging, internet, internet marketing, internet psychology, social networking, speaking

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At April 08, 2008 3:07 PM  Hjörtur Smárason said…

At April 08, 2008 4:05 PM  Graham Jones said…

At April 09, 2008 11:05 PM  Mattsaze said…

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Big business is notorious for failing to either understand the Internet or to use it effectively. Indeed, the vast majority of large corporations have web sites which have cost them tens of thousands but which have no impact on their income. In other words, for most businesses, the Internet actually costs them money, rather than makes them money.

Even those large businesses who earn money from their web sites are not earning as much as they should or could. They appear happy with 2% conversion rates - a rate at which they would shut down their High Street operations without thinking twice.

Now, we discover they have got together in a group called "The Blog Council" to discuss blogging. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against big business forming a community to help them discuss things. But it's the thinking behind it that is telling. According to The Blog Council - which has Coca Cola, Dell and Microsoft amongst its members - "corporate blogging is different". Er, no it isn't.

It doesn't matter how big or small your organisation is, blogging is the same. It is holding a conversation with your audience. Simple. Apparently, says The Blog Council, big businesses "have to speak for a corporation, but never sound corporate". Well you shouldn't "sound" corporate in anything you do. That's why so many big business fail to engage with their customers - they seem to think that being big means speaking in some dreadful language invented by MBA students to make them sound important.

Then The Blog Council says that big firms "have to reconcile the often contrasting rules of corporate communications and blog etiquette". Well if you need "rules" for communication, you're probably in deep doo-doo anyway. One of the reasons for huge turnovers in corporate staffing is that big businesses simply won't allow people to be themselves.

In other words, these views about corporate blogging indicate deep seated problems in the whole nature of big business. They clearly haven't even seen that the world is changing around them. The Internet is the biggest threat to corporations there has ever been - indeed, we don't need them at all any more. It's perfectly possible to set up multibillion pound enterprises with a loosely organised community of people all working independently, all being themselves, rather than some corporate robot.

The Blog Council's concepts indicates that the desire for big business to have some kind of group of clones working for them is still rife. Younger generations are rejecting that notion in huge numbers. Combine that with the lack of big business to engage with the Internet and they are sealing their own death warrants.

And it's not just me who think The Blog Council have got this wrong. Take a look at The Marketing Pilgrim's views.

Labels: blogging

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At December 12, 2007 9:03 AM  Rob Watson said…

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Back in January I suggested that the blogging company Six Apart was going to be sold. A representative of the company soon contacted me and told me that I shouldn't read too much in the reports I'd read and added a comment to my blog entry. However, today I read that Six Apart has indeed sold off one of its blogging platforms, LiveJournal. So I was nearly right...!

What's interesting in the coverage of this sale is that it has gone to Russia, where other blogging platforms, like Blogger or WordPress have failed to gain any substantial users. Maybe LiveJournal supports the Russian alphabet more easily than Blogger or WordPress. Maybe Six Apart has had some really vocal fans in Russia that have helped them gain popularity for LiveJournal. Maybe I was right all along - that SixApart is selling up.

There are several different blogging platforms, from Blogger, to WordPress, Microsoft's offering Live Spaces as well as those from SixApart, including LiveJournal and Movable Type. There are dozens of others, as well as scripts you can download to set up your own blogging system on your own web site.

Much debate goes on in the blogging world as to which is the best system. Indeed, the sale of LiveJournal has sparked a debate, with some disgruntled customers suggesting SixApart always gave higher priority to their other blogging services. Whatever the truth of the matter, worldwide Blogger is the most popular system. It has its critics, true, and it has its problems. But, for anyone starting a blog - and for those wishing to easily integrate a blog into their own web site (such as this one) - it is by far the most straightforward system there is. It's not "No. 1" in the blogging hit parade for nothing.

If you want to integrate a blog into your business, don't let the renewed debate sparked by LiveJournal's sale, misdirect you into various dead ends of testing all the various systems out there. Just choose one you like and get going; for most people Blogger will be the solution as you can have your blog up and running within five minutes.

Labels: blogging

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At December 05, 2007 1:40 PM  Rob Watson said…

At December 05, 2007 11:07 PM  Graham Jones said…

At December 29, 2007 10:02 PM  Damien Senn said…

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Still, in spite of being around for ten years, people dismiss blogging as futile, unecessary or in some way "amateur". Far from it - some of the most successful web sites in the world are based on blog technology. Amazon, the BBC and Facebook are all derivatives of blogging.

But if you ever wanted to see the true power and benefit of blogging, read this blog by BBC journalist Paul Clabburn. It is a moving, personal account that no doubt helped Paul come to terms with the most appalling tragedy - the sudden, unexpected death of his teenage son in his sleep. But more than that, it is a blog entry that will help every reader think about life - and death in a different way.

If blogs do nothing more than help us think, they have achieved a great deal. And as Paul's story tells us, the Internet has enabled him to join a "club" that none of us would really like to be members of. If you read nothing else today, read this blog.

Labels: blogging

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At November 28, 2007 10:48 PM  Jeremy Jacobs said…

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Bloggers often find it hard to locate information to write about. Indeed, at blogging workshops I run, people often say they run out of ideas for their blogs. Well, if newspapers ran out of ideas they'd soon lose money...!

So, where do newspapers get their ideas from? Other media - that's where. Take a look at any daily newspaper and you will see tell-tale signs of recycling content. Specialist reporters, for instance, check out the trade publications in their sector or professional or academic journals. For instance, you'll see phrases like "reported in this month's issue of the ABC Journal".

What trade publications or professional journals do you look at? Could you subscribe to particular periodicals that most of your readers won't see? Can you read academic papers and translate them for your blog readers? If you can do any of these you can find out plenty of material to "report" in your blog.

Many blogs simply report other blogs. The result is you read a blog, click on a link in it, to find another blog, that is merely writing about yet another blog. It just goes round in circles.

Take a different approach to provide new information to you readers - report on news and research published in little-read publications like academic journals. That way your blog will be unique and you will also provide a valuable service to your readers.

Labels: blogging

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There are over 100 million blogs in cyberspace now and the rate of growth is phenomenal. Indeed, if blogs continue to grow at their current pace there will be more blogs on the Internet than people on the planet, by 2010. If your blog is amongst all that noise, just how can you engage your readers so they return to your blog, ignoring the competition?

Here are five sure-fire ways you can get engagement with your readers:

1. Make your blog topical. Refer to something that's in the news or connect your blog with a current theme.

2. Ensure your blog is relevant to your specific audience. Don't write too generally, make it interesting to your audience. Don't aim for large numbers of readers, aim for the type of people interested in your information.

3. Make your blog unusual. Have interesting facts, alarming statistics or information that makes people go "wow". Don't be too ordinary - make people think.

4. Avoid being "ordinary". Have a viewpoint and be prepared to stir up some trouble. Controversy, conflict and turmoil will all help.

5. Write about people. The more you make your material human interest, the more engagement you will get.

If you take a look at these five ways of engaging people, they form a handy mnemonic to help you remember.

T - Topical
R - Relevant
U - Unusual
T - Troublesome
H - Human interest

So, just tell your readers the "TRUTH" in your blog and you will engage them.

Labels: blogging

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Bloggers are being used by mainstream journalists as a useful source of information. According to the results of a new study, 74% of business journalists already use blogs or will use blogs as a primary or secondary source of information for their stories.

This means anyone who has a blog is "on the radar" for magazine journalists. They turn to blogs on a daily basis for ideas for stories, thus giving your company an opportunity for increased publicity. So, having a blog is an essential component in attracting media coverage.

However, journalists are not interested in "puffery" - they want your blog to contain real news. That means it must be topical and up to date - no good for them if you update your blog once or twice a week; daily blogging is essential to catch a journalist's eye.

Equally, what you write about in your blog must be out of the ordinary, unusual. Writing about the same old stuff other people write about will not win you any fans in the media.

Furthermore, if you want attract the media to use your blog, it must be written in a quotable style. Your sentences need to be short and conversational, otherwise you won't get quoted.

Follow these guidelines in your blog and you are much more likely to get the media attention you want.

Labels: blogging

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At November 14, 2007 5:32 PM  Nigel Morgan - Morgan PR said…

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Windows Live is the latest blogging system to become available. It has been in beta testing for some time, but Microsoft has now made the system mainstream. For anyone thinking about blogging this throws another spanner in the works.

Now you can blog at Blogger, or Windows Live. You can use Wordpress or TypePad. If you want you could use Movable Type or SquareSpace. The list goes on.

Some people swear by Blogger; others swear at it. Vast armies of people swarm to the defence of Wordpress, whereas others will attack it at any opportunity. If you are thinking of blogging and try to research the field, all you are faced with is a barrage of conflicting advice.

So here's the secret to choosing a blogging system. Find one you like personally. Look for things that you get on with in terms of layout, ease of use and the way it all works. You might find Wordpress works for you whereas someone else reckons SquareSpace is easier. It does not matter.

The system you use to create your blog is largely irrelevant. What is most important is the content. Your audience is not that bothered with how you did it. What they are interested in is what you say.

For instance, pick up your favourite magazine. Take a good look at it; read it, study the pictures. Now, having done that, are you concerned with the printing technology that was used, or the lenses chosen by the photographers? Probably not. Your blogging audience is not bothered with the technology you choose for your blog either. So, simply choose a system you get on with - there is no right or wrong answer.

Labels: blogging

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