Whenever I give a talk on what is a Business Blog and how to use it as a marketing tool, I can guarantee that someone will ask me what the difference is between the type of Business Blog that we are discussing and a personal blog.

While the technology is the same, they are in fact very different beasts simply because of their focus and aims. The personal blog came first and gave people the ability to voice their opinion to the world in general using the internet. It was a personal publishing system in the form of an online diary where they could express themselves in whatever way they saw fit about whatever they wanted!

The main point is that the blog could be about anything and everything … and it usually was. The subject matter was therefore diverse and the topics covered were often unrelated – people would post about things as the mood took them.

Business Blogs developed from this. They use the same technology but are very targeted in terms of their subject matter and focus on a specific market area or niche. The most successful are set up with both an audience and a business focus in mind which they then stick to. Why? Because the audience they are looking to reach will expect it – that is why they were attracted to it in the first place and that is why they will return and recommend the blog to others.

In addition, with the arrival of Search Engines as THE research tool, this focus proved to be doubly beneficial for a Business Blog owner. The tighter the focus of the content, then the more likely it is to be keyword rich and so gain the type of Search Engine results that would make an SEO expert weep! A well set-up Business Blog has a structure which just adds further weight to this.

So to summarise: a Business Blog and a personal blog both use the same technology, but it is what they do with that technology that differentiates them. A personal blog will tend to be wide ranging and, well, very personal; a Business Blog will be much more focused in both its content and aims, and will have generally have a specific audience in mind.

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