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Business Blogging Startup Guide

bloggingjezatkinsonOnce you’ve decided to start blogging for your business, all the little steps may become overwhelming, so we’ve created this guide to get you started.

Blogging Software/Platform

First you need to decide where you’re going to blog – what software or website you’re going to use.  Having the blog hosted by another company makes things very easy.  Best of all, some of the best options are free, WordPress and Blogger.  We use WordPress for all of our blogs, so I highly recommend it.  The hosted version at WordPress.com has a full set of features, and with spending just a little bit extra, $25 per year, you can customize the theme and the domain name.  Whatever blogging platform you chose, make sure you are comfortable with it and it can grow as your blog grows.

Domain Name

The domain name, or URL, for your blog is almost as important as the one for your business website.  By leveraging your existing domain name (the one for your website), you can make it easier for people to find your blog. It also allows the content on your blog to count towards the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website.  How?  Let’s say your website domain name is mycompany.com.  Use a blog domain name of something like blog.mycompany.com (see how it uses your domain name for the last part?).  This is a bit trickier than using the default domain names that many blogging sites give you (mycompany.blogger.com), but pays off in the long run.

What to Write

Now that you have your blog all set up.  What to write?  Write whatever you think your customers would be interested in.  Showcase your expertise.  Try to help your customers by getting knowledge out of your head and onto your blog.  Worried about losing competitive advantage?  Actually by showcasing what you know and your willingness to help, you have a much bigger competitive advantage than keeping it all in your head.

How to Write

Writing for a blog is a bit different than other types of writing.  Posts should be relatively short and to the point.  Using headings or bullet points to highlight your major points make the posts easier to read.  Titles should be catchy (think newspaper headlines).  Adding images to break up the text of your posts makes the blog more visually appealing.  Use a personable voice so readers find you approachable and encourage readers to voice their own opinions in comments.

Getting Readers

Add your blog link to your email, your website, your business cards, and anything else you send out to customers.  Join social networks which target your intended audience and interact with the community.  Once you’ve got a feel for the community, start adding comments to other posts and posting your own articles and blog posts.  Also use social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter where you can syndicate content right from your blog.  Use services like Feedburner to syndicate content from your blog onto your other websites.  Getting readers takes a bit of effort and time, so we’ll go into more detail in a future post.

Be Patient

Getting readers can take time.  Even blogs that are popular today took quite a bit of time to get that way (usually a year or more).  You need to committ to posting regularly for a long period of time to see results.   This also includes marketing your blog through the means discussed in Getting Readers above.  Luckily, once you do get some readers, you should start to see your efforts quickly multiply as they tell others.

(photo by jez.atkinson @ Flickr CC)

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Ruby one-liners get answered

rubymegyarshThe guys over at Rails Envy, a Ruby on Rails enthusiast podcast, have a running joke.  Their catch phrase? – ‘Rails can’t scale.’ Yeah, I wasn’t too sure I got the joke either.  Then I heard it myself in CIO level discussions from smart business people parroting things they didn’t understand and read somewhere once in an article in a magazine bylined by a guy in a suit who looked corporate and trustworthy.  Rational reasoning and discourse can sometimes be co opted by bumper-sticker wisdom even at the highest levels.

Here is the thing about corporations; enterprises are in the business of managing calculated risk within the market or industry they operate.  They do this by forcing non-core operations to be conservative, risk-adverse and predictable.  It’s a bit like hedging your business’s bet in the junk bond market (core business) by backing it with rock solid, non sexy T-Bills (non-core like software development).  Sure, the return on the T-Bills is lousy but you know in three years you won’t be out that investment.  Java, backed by Sun Microsystems, and .Net, backed by Microsoft, are some of the blue chip securities of the programming world.  Enterprises trust them.  One-liners like ‘Rails can’t scale’ are the one-handed brushoff of entrenched corporate IT’ers to the mere idea of using something new like Ruby or Rails.

Still, Ruby is a persistent pitch man, especially in the web technologies.

Corporate IT: Ruby uses green threads and Rails is single threaded, why are we even talking?

Ruby: Ruby’s MRI is green threaded, but the JRuby interpreter uses native threads in the JVM, just like Java.  Also, Rails 2.2 just released 2.2 RC1 that is thread safe.  Merb was thread safe from the start and just released 1.0 RC2.

Corporate IT: There aren’t enough ruby programmers to staff a project.

Ruby: The Rails Rumble contest didn’t have any problems finding entrants.  Five hundred programmers just gave up a weekend to write 248,000 lines of code. Teams up to four completed 131 different Rails projects in under 48 hours, so you can see just how productive a small group can be in Ruby.

Corporate IT: Sorry but we need dependable database connectivity, not this serial locking business.

Ruby: So pooled connections in jruby and Rails 2.2 scratch that itch?

Corporate IT: There still isn’t a big company backing it so no support.  No support, no chance bub!

Ruby: Have you ever actually called Microsoft about a .Net problem?  Or maybe Sun to support your Java app?  Maybe you have, or at the very least arranged a support contract with a .Net or Java consulting company.  Try instead one of the fine Ruby consulting companies like EdgeCase, HashRocket or ThoughtWorks.  Sun already bankrolls the JRuby guys and for the Softies out there, Microsoft is putting its wallet behind Ruby on the CLR.

Corporate IT: Books?

Ruby: New one every day.

Corporate IT: You’ll get me to use some text editor in place of my IDE when Heck freezes over.

Ruby: Not a problem.  NetBeans guy, Eclipse, or IntelliJ?

Corporate IT: Yeah, okay, you win.  Now can I have that stack of waterfall project specs back, they were holding up the table at that end.

Ruby: Have you ever considered Agile?

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Photo attributed to Megyarsh @ Flickr CC

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Creating Leads with Customer-Centric Design

butterflyjustchaosNow that we’ve had an overview of what customer-centric design is, let’s discuss how it can be used to create leads.

Providing Valuable Information

Having a reason for customers to visit your site is the first step in creating leads. The most important aspect of customer-centric design is providing your customers with exactly what they are looking for.  Think about everything they might come to your website to look for and make sure the information is easy to find.  It should also be easy for customers to contact you with questions or concerns.

A Place to Connect

By providing a place for your customers to connect with each other and with you, you can help your customers get the information and support they need.  More importantly, you’ll be able to get information about who needs help and where they are in the buying process.

Enticement

Do your customers have a reason to give you their contact information?  Is there some useful information or service you can provide for free in exchange for contact information?  Enticement to create leads can be very effective for you and provide a useful service for your customers.  Remember to keep information gathering to a minimum. (name and email work best).

How do you use customer-centric design to create leads?

(photo by Just chaos @ Flickr CC)

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