Blogging for Three Years

Not that anyone else is counting, but I am. I began blogging three years ago. That’s no time at all compared to some, and early compared to others. April 28 will be my three year anniversary.

Blogging for me has primarily been for fun. Like having a photo journal live. Or posting comments, except they’re longer, and usually less commented back on.

Round About Apex was my first blog, a photo blog about just about anything centered in Apex, North Carolina where I had just moved in February 2008. The first year I posted a ton. In 2009, less, and in the third quarter of 2009, I actually began to be paid to blog for local businesses, so I blogged less for myself. Later in 2009, I had a second client. In 2010, I continued, at a the beginning of the third quarter, I got a third client. So all of this meaning less time for my own blogging.

Once I had blogging clients, blogging was about showing visitors more about the business, anticipating questions they may have, and offering information they may be interested in. It’s for sure an art, rather than a science, but we can do things to increase the likelihood that we’re on target.

I get into the analysis – checking out Google Analytics to see what kind of traffic the blogs were bringing. Sometimes it’s not a pretty picture – sometimes people land on the blogs, but don’t stay, telling us that the topic was of interest, but the content may not have been what they were looking for.

It’s a fly-by-night business, people are coursing through on the Internet, searching for a billion different topics, all of which have hundreds of different angles, so no telling what anyone actually wants. Nonetheless, seeing any traffic at all is fun, and shows that we’re part of this megalithic online infrastructure of information.

Lessons on Business Blogging Part II

In my first post on Business Blogging, I wrote about using your common sense and what your business client wants in choosing what to blog about. I noted that readers have many different learning styles, so using multi-media content is helpful in reaching a broader audience, and I wrote about the variety of local details that are part of a local business that can add richness to your blog content.

Chef Greg Lewis of Raleigh's Catering by Design catering services company, flanked by two of his staff at the SAS Championship, an event they cater.

Here are some additional things I’ve learned about blogging for business.

1. Introduce your team. When you can, introduce the people who are part of the business. Show their pictures.

2. Highlight your Web content. Go ahead and surface content from your Web site, as a way of highlighting it. Just because it is in the Web site, doesn’t mean it’s getting noticed. Here’s another example of surfacing existing Web content. This post surfaces content on a FAQ list.

3. Write about things that help the business customers. This blog post about using an electric toothbrush is for a dentist’s blog. This post is about getting the most value from business catering. This one suggests getting an expert opinion before buying or building a house.

Lessons from Business Blogging – Part 1

Here are a few tips I’ve learned from clocking 30 months of business blogging.

This is Carrabba's Pizza Margarita. The menu shows the printed name of the pizza, but showing a picture of what it actually looks like speaks volumes!

1. There are as many different perspectives as there are people. You’ll never please everyone, and your competitors will always have a way to tell you your work is coming up short. So go with what makes sense, and what your client is comfortable with. 

2. Customers respond to different kinds of content. We know there  are at least 7 different learning styles. Wikipedia lists these 9.

• 1.1 Spatial
• 1.2 Linguistic
• 1.3 Logical-mathematical
• 1.4 Bodily-kinesthetic
• 1.5 Musical
• 1.6 Interpersonal
• 1.7 Intrapersonal
• 1.8 Naturalistic
• 1.9 Existential

Some people respond more to design and shapes and images; others to language; others to logic and math; yet others to what they can feel and touch; yet others to music and rhythm; others when there is interpersonal interaction; yet others when they can do work on their own, interacting with themselves; still others are engaged with seasons and evolving time. (I am not familiar with the existential intelligence.)

What does this mean – it means your customers fall across this spectrum of interest/learning styles, and so will be responding differently. Lesson: vary your content.

3. In the course of a year, businesses go through seasons, anniversaries, local events, weather situations, specials, participation in charities and other local events, attendance at fairs and conferences. Gathering news in advance of and during these changes is rich content for blogs (and other social media.) The value of physical time and space remains – even on this virtual medium of the Internet. Stay connected with reality in your content.