Blogging to Build Your Business - NYTimes.com

Blogging for business is not a new concept, but for many small businesses, especially service businesses, it can be an extremely effective tool to build your social media footprint, establish your brand, or position yourself in your area of expertise. The ultimate benefit of blogging is the opportunity to communicate your expertise and establish your business as a resource.

While people have been saying, ?content is king? for years, the new buzz is that ?platform is queen.? The conversation is now focusing on your marketing platform. Creating a platform is about building a social media presence, a stage for yourself to be seen above the crowd. Content is the message, but a platform provides visibility, amplification and engagement.

Social media can be great tools to drive traffic, but it is the blog that will do the most to build a platform. While there is much debate about the return on investment for time spent in social media, the results of blogging are easier to evaluate: unique visitors, comments, interactions, time on site and other social media metrics can help businesses learn about customer interests and pain points.

Recently, I sat down with Michael Hyatt, who writes a leadership blog, michaelhyatt.com. On May 22,^, he released his New York Times bestseller, ?Platform: Get Noticed In a Noisy World? (Thomas Nelson), which he calls a practitioner?s guide to blogging and social media marketing. I read a review copy of the book, and while I consider myself a black-belt blogger, I learned a great deal. Any owner of a small business could benefit from this book, which is a step-by-step guide to merging traditional and new media to build a brand.

The chairman and former chief executive of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Mr. Hyatt shared his insights on how to build a platform. In fact, he?s a walking, talking example of what his book espouses. He used a blog to build the foundation of his business as an author and speaker. So how did he do it? Mr. Hyatt said he spends 90 percent of his time these days blogging and speaking. When he started, the first thing he did was to make friends with bloggers in high places. He built a community of support for his blog by sharing other people?s content ? including the postings of Seth Godin, Chris Brogan and Dave Ramsey ? and helping them sell their products.

Mr. Hyatt said that while he started his blog in 2004, it didn?t take off until 2008, when he committed to writing several days a week. In 2010, he started posting five days week, and each week one of his posts offers the transcript of a 30-minute podcast, which he also distributes through iTunes. In the last three years, his blog has gone from 1,000 readers a month to more than 300,000.

Many of his most popular posts are how-to guides to using social media and the Web. He is proof that not only can your blog help promote your business, it can even become a revenue source ? if you get really good at it. Mr. Hyatt said that his blog has several revenue streams, including advertising (banner ads and affiliate sidebar ads), sales of his e-books and speaking engagements. He said the blog generates at least $35,000 a month in revenue.

Rick Calvert, co-founder and chief executive of Blogworld, says the average blogger at his conference makes $50,000 a year from blogging ? but that doesn?t mean everyone can do it. ?Blogging is like music,? he said. ?Everybody can play the guitar, but not everyone can be famous. There are a lot of great bloggers, but they have no sense for business. You must be a content creator, business manager, sales person, do customer service, and be a community manger ? the whole package ? in order to succeed.?

Mr. Hyatt offers the following tips for blogging success:

Create the content yourself: You can?t hire a ghostwriter to blog for you. If you try, you?ll be found out and considered a poseur, which will do irreparable damage to your brand.

Start the night before: Allow your mind to start engaging on the topic in advance. Try thinking about what you are going to write the next day before you go to bed.

Go offline to write: Use a program called Anti-Social to turn off e-mail and all of your social networks so that you can focus on writing.

Set a timer: Help yourself write by setting a timer for 60 to 70 minutes to create a sense of urgency.

Start with an outline: If you start with an overview before you begin, you will just need to fill in the blanks to finish the post.

Write without editing: Don?t write and edit at the same time. Just write continuously without stopping.

Now edit yourself: Read your posts a few times, and shorten everything you can. Use simple words, short sentences and short paragraphs.

Boost your S.E.O. Mr. Hyatt suggests running the post through Scribe. It?s a monthly subscription service that analyzes content and offers suggestions to help with search-engine optimization.

I would also suggest investing in a copy editor to make sure that all spelling, grammar and syntax errors are caught before your content goes live. Blogging for business requires personal participation. You must be willing to give away your best content for free and engage in a continuing conversation for it to pay off for your business.

Melinda Emerson is founder and chief executive of Quintessence Multimedia, a social media strategy and content development firm. You can follow her on Twitter.

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