BETTER BUSINESS BLOGGING IN 2011

‘Weblogs’ became popular in the mid 1990s as personal journals, maintained almost exclusively by individuals, containing daily details and passions that somehow retained their intimacy even as they were made visible to anyone with an Internet connection.

The dynamic nature and friendly style of blogs soon became popular with businesses as well,

and with good reason. Blogs gave a business opportunity to speak to the market directly, in its own voice and on its own terms. More importantly, blogs gave the market a chance to talk back and to share the conversation with like minded friends.

Webmasters soon noticed some unintended consequences. The evolving dialogues supported by business blogs frequently contained, in a rich organic environment, the search terms entered as queries by business prospects. When relevant sites linked back to the blog it further increased the likelihood that new customers would enter initially through the corporate blog.

Business blogging is now a practice that seems remarkably simple if done correctly. Individuals who actively manage and contribute to their own successful business blogs, is meant to help businesses increase blogging effectiveness in 2011. Successful results should be easy to see – the good business blog will reflect a business where everyone is united by their pride and excitement for their products and services. In short, exactly the type of place that people want to do business with.

With the right content and approach toward your readership, businesses can develop strong links that will help them build a solid reputation and foundation online. As content is consistently produced and comments are consistently reviewed and/or responded to, businesses are bound to find new readers who will check the site frequently for updates, get new search traffic, and establish visibility in their industry.

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EFFECTIVE BUSINESS BLOG DESIGNS --- PART 3

This is the final part in the series effective business blog redesign.You can refer back to part 1 and part2 of the series for more details. Remember this is a republished article originally written by Cameron Chapman.

5. Make Provisions for Other Content

While most business blogs still focus primarily on text it’s important to make provisions for rich multimedia content. You never know when you might want to expand your blog to include podcasts, slide shows or video content. Even something as simple as including images in a post is sometimes overlooked in the initial blog design. Think about the types of content that are commonly incorporated into blog posts and then think about how you can best serve those kinds of content within the design. Even things like making sure your main content column is wide enough to properly display images or video shouldn't be overlooked.

6. Make the blog a Reflection of Your Company’s Values and Personality

The design of your blog should reflect your company values and corporate culture. A company with a traditional take on things should reflect that in their blog design. A company that’s hip and modern should have a hip and modern blog design.

Besides these important points some other key factors to be kept in mind while thinking of blog redesign are:

• Paginate comments if you regularly get more than 10-20 comments on your posts.
• Separate your comments from your trackbacks (incoming links to blog posts from other website).
• Include a gravatar image for your commenters.

Blog designers, however talented, cannot change your corporate DNA. Work with them towards a presentation that is inviting, open and flexible while accurately representing the values and style of your business.

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EFFECTIVE BUSINESS BLOG DESIGNS --- PART 2

This is the second post post in the series "effective blog designs".In the previous post I have discussed the merits of Typography and readability.Here in this post I am going to discuss about nest two important facts:

3. Establish a Hierarchy of Site Elements

There’s a definite hierarchy of design and content elements in any blog design. You just need to make sure that the hierarchy your design establishes is the one you intended. In other words, make sure that the most important parts of your design and content are most prominently displayed.In most business blogs the two most important elements are going to be the main content and the header, which should include branding for the company. Make sure that when you look at the design of you blog that those are the two elements that stand out among all the others. Make sure, too, that hierarchy within elements makes sense. Your blog post titles, for example, should stand out over any subheadings contained within the posts. Elements within your sidebar should be arranged in a manner that makes sense in terms of usability (for example, the navigation of your blog should appear above any blogroll links you choose to incorporate).

4. Don’t Forget Comment Design!

Almost every business blog wants to foster communication and discussion with their visitors. After all, an engaged readership is more likely to come back on a regular basis and more likely to be loyal to your company.The comment form on your blog should be easy to use and make it apparent which fields are required (most often a name, email address, and the comment itself). The comments should be arranged and formatted in a way that clearly separates each comment. Make sure that the typography—the size and contrast in particular—make it easy to read the comments. You’ll also want to decide whether you want your comments to appear in chronological order or in a threaded manner (where replies appear under the comment being replied to). If you want to foster conversation among commenters, then the latter option will almost certainly work better. If you mostly want your commenters to converse with your authors, then the former might work better. Differentiate your author comments, too, to make it easier for readers to see an author’s responses to other commenters. Of course, if your authors rarely or never comment (which isn't a good thing), this becomes irrelevant.

The final part in this series is due next when another two important facts about successful business blog redesign will be discussed.

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