Read other blogs in your target marketplace. This is a great way to listening to what is going on in your marketplace.
Proofread your blog for grammar and spelling errors. Use a naturally sensible and conversational tone as if you were actually speaking to your audience in a public setting.
Leave comments on other blogs in your target audience marketplace. You should also provide a link back to your blog so people can find your blog if they want to learn more
Reward your advocates and loyal contributors with kudos and support for their endeavors. This will help you to strengthen marketplace relationships that are win-win.
Develop a strategy to counter your detractors, consider employing the help of your advocates in strategically flanking your detractors.
Do not beg for site-links or link exchanges. You should spend your time figuring out ways to get people to link to your blog because of your content.
Be diligent in responding to comments and questions from your audience. You goal is to keep the conversation going so you can pull valuable information from your target audience so you can provide them with what they need.
You do not need to have the whole world linking to your blog or reading your blog; your focus should be about connecting with your target audience.
If you buy or use a free template for your blog style, try to find template that is not too cluttered, sometimes having too many blog features will distract your target audience from your message.
Be polite and ask permission from others that you would like to publish on your blog. If someone sends you a great email you may want to publish it, but be careful, you do not want to offend the sender.
Do not engage in negative criticism of others in your marketplace. Be thoughtful and pay attention to what you are trying to accomplish.
Talk about your competitors. The marketplace will respect you if you can take a dignified approach to showing your strengths as compared to theirs.
No one wants to read a boring blog, but cheap entertainment only brings in a few visits. You should be a subject matter expert in your marketplace.
Register your blog with indexers. feedster, technoratie, ice rocket, google, yahoo, pubsub, and others.
Use analytics to monitor and understand the traffic coming to your site, at minimum, Google Analytics (free) or another server based tool.
If you have multiple target audience strategies, you will need multiple bloggers that focus in on each of those areas individually.
Once you have some content, let the analysts in your industry know that you are blogging. You can either give them a call or link to their blog if they have one.
Devise a plan for how to handle bad news, a company crisis or blog detractors. You must decide if you will engage, ignore or redirect these issues. Different companies handle this with a variety of public relations methods, plan in advance what the best strategy is for your online reputation.
Public Relations are not dead, in fact, they have just started, and blogging is now part of it. Blogs are the new public relations tool of choice.
Do not hire marketing firms to help develop your a blog strategy if they are not blogging themselves. If they do not do it, or do it poorly, then how can they help you?
When writing in your blog, use the language that your target audience uses; avoid using terms that are too industry specific.
Find or train a blogging expert to help guide your blogging strategy. This person may or may not be your corporate blogger, but find someone that can guide, provide best practices, and get the tools in motion.
Seek out industry blog leaders, read their work, talk to them and hire them if necessary.
Ask offline neutral third party advisors to provide feedback about your blog. Negative feedback as well as positive feedback will be helpful.
For long posts, use text editors for grammar and spelling. Edit and reduce your content before posting.
Do not disappear for long periods between posts. Your readers will disappear as well. You must post on a regular basis so that it gets readers into the pattern of constantly wondering what they are missing by not reading your blog today.
Develop thick skin. People may besmirch your company, your products, your ideas and maybe even you.
Be very cautious when starting a blogging program. Take your time and make a plan. Do not just start trying things out. If you make a mistake, you may have to spend countless hours and dollars repairing your errors.
Your online reputation depends on your input as much as the input of others.
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