Your business blog is a tool that you can use to establish your credibility. One of the types of business blog posts that you can write is the success story of one of your clients. This will help to validate the effectiveness of your products and services.

Let readers know exactly how your company helped your client. Did you save them money? Did you save them time? Did you help them overcome an obstacle? Explain the problem, challenge, or conditions that your client was facing. Then, tell the story of how your company got involved. After that, state the accomplishment that your client achieved as a result of your business stepping in to assist.

A narrative approach is effective with this type of post, but be sure to stick to the important facts only. Keep it short, but include all of the necessary information as described. Including quotes or testimonial statements are particularly powerful and effective with this type of blog post.

Letting others know that you can make a difference in someone else’s business or life is one way to convince them that you can help them, too. Blogging about client achievements is a sales post without the sales.

At the bottom of this post is a small heart and the words ISBB.

If you click on the ISBB link you will then see other links to social networking sites including Facebook.

A Queensland Property Developer recently told me that the Blog - Facebook combination is assisting enormously with property sales.

Potential buyers find a property listing on a blog.  If they like the look of the property they click on the Facebook link described above and seek the advice and comments of all their Facebook friends by notifying them of the listing.

This process starts a mini-viral campaign and friends within the Facebook network pass the property link on to other friends.

If the initiator of the process does not buy the property they have certainly drawn the attention of it to many others thus increasing the possibility that others will buy it.

Real Estate Agents not blogging and using the integrated social networking links are seriously disadvantaged.

One of the benefits of publishing a blog for business is it can brand you as a leader in your industry.

Be aware of the latest trends, products and services in your industry and blog about them at the start of their life cycle.

To unearth topics to blog about, listen to your customers, read industry journals, research for  keywords people are searching on relative to your industry and create blog posts around them.

 Just think of the posts you make as press releases. A blog post allows you to portay to the world the expertise you have in your industry, post regularly and keep your brand name in front of the pack.

American Red Cross have a blog called Red Cross Chat and are to be congratulated on setting it up.

However, the first thing you encounter when you visit the blog is a flashing Java Script requesting a login username and password.

If you want to lock people out from your site then don’t present it as a “chat” or “blog” site as the primary purpose of corporate blogging and chatting is to have a two way flow conversation with visitors.

Stop shutting visitors out

Barack Obama has clearly demonstrated the power of blogging when it is linked in with cell phones.

Obama invited his supporters to register their cell phones on his blog so that he could notify them first of hot news.  Those that registered were the first to hear the announcement of his Vice Presidential running mate.

The new President now has a database of millions of supporters and he can plug into this network to seek support for important legislation and initiatives.

This is a wonderful example of taking democracy to the grassroots and using that power to enable the voice of the people to be heard loudly and forcefully well beyond the voting booth.

I anticipate a flood of sociological research and reports trying the explain the power of this relationship.

The implications of this strategy for business are obvious.  Organisations who are able to harness cell phone numbers and link them to a dynamic corporate blog will have an enormous advantage over those who choose to continue to trade outside the leverage of social networking media.

Cell phone subscribers who receive special deals or offers from companies will tell others and facilitate the growth of the network.  However, the offers have to be genuine and worth bragging about.

Every business will eventually have to embrace social networking if it wants to keep pace with the Net.  It is never going to be a question of IF but only of WHEN.

The following real estate firms clearly demonstrate what can be achieved from blogging:

Phoenix Real Estate Guy

Real Estate Zebra

The San Diego Home Blog

St. Paul Real Estate Blog

Edmonton Real Estate Blog

Blogging is an excellent way of increasing sales and building your brand.  Please contact us to make an assessment of your website and to suggest ways in which you can grow your real estate business by blogging.

We strongly recommend that corporations who are serious about blogging engage the services of a Public Relations Company to get their blog off to a good start.

PR Companies specialise in writing good copy.  They are highly skilled at finding and writing great stories that relate to your business.

A good PR company knows how to write copy that gets attention and gets publicity.

Engaging the services of a good PR company is even more important if you are one of the first in your industry or business classification to commence blogging.

PR Companies have the skills to assist you to grow your brand.  A sample of the type of work they do can be seen by reading some case studies from Hughes Public Relations, a PR firm in Adelaide, South Australia.

PR Companies have good relationships with the media and can place stories and news articles that will get your blog off to a good start.

If you want to launch your blog with a big fanfare then seriously consider using a professional Public Relations Company.

Chattanooga Real Estate Today (www.ChattanoogaRealEstateToday.com) announces the recent launch of a new real estate blog to supplement their previous Chattanooga real estate listings and general real estate resources. The new blog will feature general real estate news, as well as monthly Chattanooga sales statistics and reports on real estate agency laws and ethics, as a response to the brochure on choosing a real estate agent recently released by the FTC. The blog was launched on September 16th.

The Chattanooga Real Estate Today blog, located at http://blog.chattanoogarealestatetoday.com, will be offering information regarding legal and ethical issues as they apply to real estate agencies, as a means of expanding upon information recently released in the FTC’s consumer brochure on choosing a real estate professional.

Finding and retaining talented people is crucial to success and survival.  Talent provides competitive and strategic advantage.

“Take my 20 best people” says Bill Gates, “and, virtually overnight, Microsoft becomes a mediocre company.”

One of the most effective, and least expensive ways, of finding good people is by adding a Careers Portal to your Corporate website.

The first step in this process is to evaluate the current health of your website.  Is the information on the site up to date and is it regularly changed or only very occasionally?

Does the website engage in a “conversation” with visitors allowing them to post comments or is it static?

We expect our local newspaper to change every single edition and we should also regularly change the content on our website so that visitors have a reason to return.

Young people who are job seeking do most of their searching on the web.  If they come across your website and they find the information old and stale then they will probably conclude that your business is also out of date.

Building a Career’s Portal into a stale website will probably be self-defeating so you may have to bite the bullet and do a complete makeover.

An online Career’s Portal should be considered within the context of a total web strategy.  If your website is going to work well for you then it needs to receive lots of traffic.  I know of many business owners who have spent a fortune on web design but without any thought as to how to generate traffic to their site.

One of the most effective ways to increase traffic, modernise your website and incorporate a Careers Portal is to BLOG.

A Blog is a highly interactive website that makes it easy to post new content online without having to rely on external web designers or technicians.

Barak Obama raised an enormous amount of money for his Presidential Campaign by having a blog.  Dell Computers blog to obtain feedback and market new products to customers.

Here are seven good reasons why you should be blogging for business:

1. A blog will enable your organisation to interact with its customers in exciting new ways. A blog enables customers to engage in a conversation with your company about products, services, and client needs.  The ideas and suggestions Dell receives via its blog plays a very important role in the development and marketing of new products and services as well as fine tuning those that are already offered;

2. Blogging will assist you to build your Corporate Brand. Brand is a powerful force in attracting customers and talent into your business. Consider the power of Richard Branson’s Virgin Brand which is associated with music, airlines, credits cards and lots of other things;

3. A corporate blog will substantially lift your ranking in the search engines increasing web traffic.  Search engines appear to favour blog postings for two reasons (1) blogs are heavily linked to other blogs and (2) the individual posts can be easily indexed as separate posts by the search engines. We believe that blogging will increase your ranking particularly for the keywords that matter most to your business;

4. The Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feature built into blogs enables you to announce products/services to your customers in real time.  Subscribers to this feed will automatically receive email notifications of each post that is added to the blog.  RSS is a great way to announce new products, upgrades etc and adds enormous value to your customer relationships. People who are interested in applying for jobs can also be kept up to date with RSS feeds delivered vis email or in a browser;

5. Blogging is a powerful social networking tool that can turn a static website into a dynamic global communication tool.  Visitors to the your blog website will be impressed that you are a Web 2.0 site and that your content is fresh and up to date.  We are amazed at how few corporate websites have facilities for gathering ideas and comments from customers.  If you don’t believe us try submitting an idea to Telstra! A professional blog website is a good bragging tool for your staff;

6. Professional blogging will open up new strategic alliances for your organisation.  These alliances are formed as you post on other blogs and create new links;

7. Blogging is good for your corporate brain.  It will increase staff creativity and improve their writing skills.  Staff and marketing personnel will be required to regularly prepare articles and posting.  Commitment to writing regularly seems to open the brain to new ideas. We believe that you will be pleasantly surprised at the creative input you receive from this process.  Staff who participate in the training will become Professional Bloggers which is a highly desirable skill to acquire in the new economy of Social Networking.

Many business owners get overwhelmed by the whole concept of social networking and blogging.  This confusion stops people from taking action.  The inaction of others can actually give you a strategic advantage.  If you start to blog and get higher ranking in the Search Engines then your competitors will find it difficult to catch up.

If you would like to learn more about Blogging for Business then please call John Townsend on 02 6653-7121 or 0412 1988 or Bill Burdin on 02 0401 796-160.