When it comes to Business Blogging, there are 5 ‘R’s which we should focus our attention on if we want to create a successful and sustainable small business or corporate blog. Our aim should be to put all the necessary elements in place on our Blog to allow these 5 ‘R’s to happen as smoothly and automatically as possible. When we manage this, we’ll have created a Blog which fulfils both our readers’ requirements and our own business needs.

These 5 R’s are:

Read - Reply - Return - Recommend - RSS

Simply put, we need to create and maintain a Blog which in the first instance will attract readers and then encourage them to participate by commenting on our posts or contacting us directly. We then need to make sure that it provides sufficient value or creates enough interest to make them return and become regular readers as well as recommend our Blog to others. The 5th ‘R’ of RSS underpins all of the others by supporting the distribution and the promotion of the blog.

If we want people to read our blog, then logically the quality of what we write in the posts will be important. However, we first have to attract readers to our blog - if they don’t know about us or can’t find us then we are going to fall at the first hurdle, no matter how good our content or services are!

So promoting the blog is always going to be a critical phase in getting our posts read and it’s important that we make use of all the methods at our disposal to achieve the best results possible – ideally this will combine offline marketing as well as online and blog specific marketing methods.

As part of this, we need to consider the Search Engine aspects when we write. It’s essential to focus on making the content interesting and useful to your readers but it also has to be written in such a way that it is appealing to Search Engines – they are a key way to attract readers so we need to write with one eye on ensuring our search engine ranking is as good as possible.

In addition, to make all of our other efforts as effective as possible, everything about the blog should be attractive and easy to use, from the general design to the layout of the blog and the positioning and display of our own marketing elements.

The first step in engaging properly with your readers is to have them reply to one of your posts and allow them to voice their opinions, thoughts, ideas and concerns. This creates the interaction, conversations and ultimately the connections that business blogs need to develop and thrive.

However, we cannot sit back and just rely on the comments simply appearing – instead, we need to be actively encouraging them, either by the way in which we write the posts or by asking open questions as part of the text or even by specifically asking for them.

Having encouraged people to want to reply, try to avoid putting barriers in their way – getting people to fill in a form in order to leave a comment is never going to get good results! It’s also important to listen and respond to the comments which are left, hence developing the conversation and working towards establishing and then building on a connection with the reader.

Effectively, we need to get to love comments and make sure that we respond to as many as possible that we receive. We should ensure that we respond to any negative comments which arrive – negative comments can often be the most important type!

As a last thought, you might even consider adding a list of recent comments as part of your blog to highlight those who have made the effort to leave a comment and to encourage them further.

If people are interested in what you are writing about and find value in it then the likelihood is that they will return to read more. By maintaining the quality of your posts and demonstrating your expertise on a consistent basis, you will be giving yourself the best chance of this happening.

In the process, you will develop not only a loyal readership but you will also be developing a growing level of trust between yourself and those reading your Blog. Make your blog THE place to go to find information on your specialist subject area.

Once readers return to your blog, make sure that they can explore all your posts as fully as possible – let ALL of your content shine through. To help this, make sure that the navigation around the blog is as clear as possible, that you highlight your key articles (the Foundation articles) and that you include links to related articles at the end of each post.

As a final point, try to keep an uncluttered look and feel – make it easy on the readers’ eyes again so that they want to return. No-one will come back simply because it looks nice but you want to avoid people deciding to stay away because it doesn’t.

This might have been called “Refer” but I prefer the concept of recommending which has a more positive connotation – and when someone recommends your Blog, that is a very positive thing!

How do you recommend a blog? Well, clearly, you can tell people about it directly! Word of mouth (WOM) is the most widely used form of recommendation there is so use it to your advantage. When people are considering books to read, films to see or hotels to stay in, arguably the most important element in the decision making process will usually be recommendations from friends. The online world works in the same way and blogs really are the online equivalent of W.O.M.

There are other online and blog specific ways which are just as important. The most frequent one is to simply reference a post or article from your a post on your own blog, as well as including a trackback. Another option is to include someone in your Blogroll, which is where bloggers highlight the blogs they recommend to their readers – high praise indeed. When this does happen, then just like the replies to your posts, follow up and thank the person for the link and hence the recommendation.

Don’t forget that you also make it easy for people to tell a friend about it using an “email a friend” type of function or links to social bookmarking sites such as Digg or Del.icio.us which will automatically add the post to then be shared online.

Lots of ways to be recommended so encourage them all!

Communication and dissemination of information is key to achieving a successful blog and the RSS functionality is the way to achieve that. So the 5th ‘R’ included here is RSS.

When someone subscribes to your RSS Feed, it means that they have shown a commitment to continuing the interaction – they are interested in receiving more information and with RSS you can provide them with immediate updates from your blog, cleanly and instantly. With so many benefits on offer for all parties, make sure that the RSS feeds are prominent on your blog to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find them.

To cover all options, you should also give people the opportunity to subscribe to RSS by email - 3rd party services such as Feedblitz or Feedburner make this straightforward. In any case, as RSS is still an unknown quantity in many quarters, it may equally be wise to provide a link to a page which explains what RSS is and what RSS Readers are available.

Once you have your RSS in place, use it to your benefit. Try to differentiate yourself in your feed and include branding elements such as your logo – tools such as Feedburner can really help you to do this simply enough. RSS will also allow you to syndicate your content on a number of different sites immediately and, as a final comment, don’t forget that you can create any number of individual RSS feeds to cover individual topics.

But whether you work from a single RSS feed or develop multiple feeds, it is important that you make RSS a central part of your blog promotion and reader retention program. It is something which underpins the other elements and allows the Business Blog to reach its full potential by making the information we produce as widely available as possible.

Summary

If we can achieve each of these 5Rs successfully in our Business Blogging, then we are well on the way to creating a Business Blog which will achieve the goals that we set for it, whether they are focused on creating a network, improving our reputation or positioning, developing a solid base of subscribers, increasing our Search Engine Rankings or “simply” generating new business.

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