The Business of Blogs

For the readers, the ability to leave comments on posts is what makes blogs interactive. “Blogs are all about creating conversations in a particular niche,” Stenback says. “They are also more timely, less formal, and speak to the audience in a way that is much more appealing than standard advertising or business literature-speak. A good blog includes readers in the conversation rather than delivers a canned message.”

Stenback says that blogs also serve as an aggregator of niche content and become a place where a reader knows she can go to find relevant information all in one place.

“People just don’t have a lot of time, especially at the corporate level,” says John Myhro, president of Myhro Communications, a marketing company in Plymouth. Myhro is working with Plus Relocation Services, an employee relocation company in Minneapolis, to establish a blog written by the company’s president, Susan Schneider. She will cover topics such as taxes, benefits, work-life balance, and trends for the relocation industry.

“It’s a chance to talk a little bit more candidly,” Myhro says of the blog, which will be updated once a week. The goal is to position Schneider as a leader in the relocation services industry.

Schneider’s blog will include a few personal details, including “what’s on my iPod” and “what I’m reading” sections. “It’s not just the Sarbanes-Oxley issue or tax issues,” Myhro says. Mixing in lighter content with business topics may entice more readers to visit the blog and come back for more.

In addition to heading up Plus Relocation, Schneider is a public speaker. If she’s not able to answer all the questions in a question and answer session, she’ll continue the conversation on susansblog.plusrelocation.com.

Brand Benefits

Blogs can do more than just connect you to readers; they can get you higher search engine rankings—the results you get from searches on Google or Yahoo. “Search engines love content that’s updated regularly,” says Marc Ohmann, president of Digital Solutions, Inc., a Web design and consulting company in Bloomington. Search engines rate Web pages on a number of attributes, including when the page was last updated. Pages that are updated more frequently appear higher in the search results.

“Blogging does wonderful things for your [search engine optimization],” agrees Graeme Thickins, owner of GT&A Strategic Marketing, Inc., a marketing consulting company based in Minneapolis. Thickins recently launched a new consulting service called NewMediaWise.com, which aims to help clients create and manage blogs, monitor outside blogs and other online sites, and fine-tune corporate messages. He’s launching this new service with a blog, which is what he often counsels tech start-ups to do. Thickins says a blog could be the public’s first contact with a new tech company and an opportunity to create a positive buzz.

Thickins’ own blog—graemethickins.typepad.com—is meant for clients and potential customers. It includes CEO interviews, trade show reports, and stories about successful start-ups. Every time he posts to his blog, Thickins provides the major search engines with keywords for the post to let them know new content is available and to ensure his blog will appear in searches on those keywords. “You can set that to be an automated process, but I also do it manually,” he says.

Thickins recommends that business blogs have a look similar to the company Web site, with the company branding style used throughout. “It has to link from the main page unless it’s going to be a private blog for customers or an internal blog for employees,” Thickins says.