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 At Six Apart, we’ve helped more businesses get started with blogging than any other company around. And we’re really excited about having the chance to share some of what we’ve learned about how to get started with business blogging.
What’s the most important thing to know? There are no wrong answers. Blogging is all about trying things out and making adjustments along the way. And this checklist offers some essential steps to help you get started.
Get comfortable with the basics of blogging
Make sure you understand what a blog is (refer to “What is a Blog?” in this guide) and then try things out for yourself to get comfortable. You might want to set up a personal test blog to gain experience. And don’t be afraid to click around some public blogs and leave some comments or email the site owners for their tips. Most bloggers love to help new people discover the power of blogs.
Start smart and simply
We’ve identified a few of the key scenarios that most businesses use blogs for, but in general they can be used anywhere you’d like to improve communications online. A key here is to understand your company’s culture and begin with an area that requires the fewest changes from current practice.
Begin in a small, well-defined area
Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Pick a specific area of focus and define an achievable goal (i.e., “increase the number of repeat visitors to our website by updating at least twice a week”; “speak to the enthusiast audience that’s most passionate about our brand”; or “link to positive testimonials that we find in the blogosphere”).
Set goals for the trial and educate stakeholders
Talk to everyone on your team who’ll be contributing to or judging the success of your blogging project. Set expectations about what you’ll achieve during your blogging test.
Create a first draft of a blogging policy
As you start experimenting with blogs, you’ll likely find a number of concerns about communication, employee policy, and company culture—things that have nothing to do with technology. Don’t wait until there’s a problem! Anticipate this need, and tell your community you’ll be revising the policy based on feedback.
Set up a single point of contact for questions
When questions come up you need to have a single place that anyone in your organization can go to ask questions. The majority of your community will never take advantage of it, but having that resource available will avert problems before they arise, decrease the odds of any liability issues arising, and help inform you about any improvements that need to be made.
Identify your technical requirements
Your main technical considerations will be how well blogging fits into the workflow and processes of your organization. If you have the support of technical resources such as your IT department, consider an installable software platform such as Movable Type Enterprise Solution, which offers extensive integration with your current applications. If you’re doing a smaller project, an unofficial experiment, or can’t get the support of your technology team, you can get a blog up and running quickly and inexpensively with a hosted blogging platform such as TypePad Business Class.
Have a “quiet launch” of your blog
Most organizations make small mistakes or have some glitches when they start blogging. Reduce your risk by starting with a low profile blog. Many vendors offer a trial period to get the bugs out—take advantage of it to evaluate the technology and the workflow process for blogging. Let your bloggers and your community knows that the effort is a work in progress and that feedback is welcome.
Make changes based on initial deployment
Now that you’re collecting feedback from your community, put it to use. You don’t have to do every single thing that bloggers ask for, but if you make a few changes and explain how they were driven by the blogging community, you’ll earn both respect for and trust in your effort. And don’t forget to update your blogging policy if you need.
Use community feedback
Your audience will tell you when they’re ready for your blogging platform to evolve: Additional feedback options, new blogs aimed at particular communities, even simple improvements to the design or visual appearance of your blog—any of these changes can help people feel invested in your success in blogging.
Identify successes
The benefits that blogging can provide are sometimes in unexpected areas. Reach out to others in your organization with different areas of expertise to help measure your achievements. Brainstorm ways in which these improvements could apply to other areas of your business.
Push for broad deployment based on achieved business objectives
Now that you have some real benefits to talk about, it’s time to formalize your blogging effort. Find out how to scale up both the technology and the workflow you’ve implemented for your current blogs. Pick enthusiastic advocates within different divisions or workgroups to help be your ambassadors within the organization. Give them this checklist, (with your own lessons and tactics that have been effective). Most people who become blogging advocates are passionate about both the technology and its results, but it’s important to present the benefits of blogging in business terms instead of personal ones. If you need help, we’ve created a blogging advocate’s guide with great pointers and tips.
Download Six Apart Guide to Business Blogging
PDF format, 264KB, 38Pages.
CONTENTS:
checklist: getting started 1
Get comfortable with the basics of blogging 1
Start smart and simply 1
Begin in a small, well-defined area 1
Set goals for the trial and educate stakeholders 1
Create a first draft of a blogging policy 1
Set up a single point of contact for questions 2
Identify your technical requirements 2
Have a “quiet launch” of your blog 2
Make changes based on initial deployment 2
Use community feedback 2
Push for broad deployment based on achieved business objectives 3
the basics 4
An introduction to blogging 4
What’s a blog? 4
Why would a business want a blog? 4
How do I get a blog? 5
Why would I want more than one blog? 6
Facts and figures 7
Blogs vs. other communication tools 8
Send update notifications 8
Publish XML feeds (aka RSS feeds) 8
Your own online space 8
Feedback through comments and links 8
Comparisons to other online community tools 9
Blogs vs. regular websites 9
Blogs vs. email 9
Blogs vs. traditional content management systems (CMS) 9
Blogs vs. forums or bulletin boards 10
Blogs vs. wikis 10
Blogs vs. chat 11
The benefits of blogging for media companies 11
Low-cost web authoring 11
The fastest way to publish 11
Publish from anywhere 12
Increase your reach 12
Search engine optimization (SEO) 12
XML feeds (RSS) 12
Lead the conversation 13
The benefits of blogs for small and medium businesses 13
Fast and inexpensive publishing 13
Boost search engine rankings 13
Increase your reach 13
Humanize your corporation 14
Customer research and insight 14
Create loyal customers and get good PR 14
Show, don’t tell 14
The benefits of blogging for marketers 15
Marketing and public relations 15
Ways to use blogs in your business 15
Marketing and promotion 15
A voice for executives 16
Guide to creating a blogging policy 17
Why you need a blogging policy 17
The #1 rule: Have a hotline 17
Key areas of risk 18
General principles 18
Learn from example 18
Starting small 19
There are no right or wrong answers 19
Set proper expectations 20
Use your community for feedback 20
your blogging community 22
Why you need to keep track of blogs 22
Don’t panic! They’re not out to get you 23
How to track your company or brand 23
Use simple searching tools 23
Use services designed to track blogs 24
Engage a professional services organization that monitors blogs 24
How do I know which bloggers matter? 25
Identify related topics 25
Use services designed to discover blogs 25
Finding the bloggers that matter 26
Know who doesn’t count 27
blog deployment 28
Evaluating blogging platforms 28
Vendor support 28
Community and third-party support 29
Extensibility, customizability and openness 29
Customer references 30
Industry reputation 30
About feeds 31
Who publishes feeds? 31
What do I need? 31
What feed reader should I use? 31
Subscribing to feeds 32
Publishing a feed 32
Technical details: What is an XML feed? 32
What’s the difference between the various formats? 33
What is podcasting? 33
About TrackBack 33
What is TrackBack? 33
Why would I want to use it? 33
Are there any challenges with TrackBack? 34
What’s coming next with TrackBack? 34
Visit Six Apart Website
Six Apart Ltd., sometimes abbreviated 6A, is a software company headquartered in San Francisco, with an international presence in Paris and Tokyo. It is the creator of the widely used Movable Type blogware, TypePad blog hosting service, and Vox, and the owner of LiveJournal . The name is a reference to the six day age difference between its married co-founders, Ben and Mena Trott.
The company was founded in September 2001 after Ben, during a period of unemployment, wrote what became Movable Type to allow Mena to easily produce her weblog. When version 1.0 was put on the web, it was downloaded over 100 times in the first hour.
In 2003, Six Apart received initial venture capital funding from a group led by Joi Ito and his Neoteny Co., something which allowed the company to hire additional employees, acquire a French weblog publishing company, and unveil plans for what was to become its hosted weblog publishing system, TypePad. In 2004, Six Apart completed a second round of funding with August Capital, a move which allowed it to make acquisitions of other companies. In January 2005, Six Apart purchased Danga Interactive, parent company of LiveJournal, from owner Brad Fitzpatrick, who was named Six Apart's chief architect. In March 2006, Six Apart announced the acquisition of the SplashBlog camera phone blogging service. The combined user base is now over 7 million, and the merged company has more than 100 employees. June 2006 saw the release of their new Web 2.0 blogging platform, Vox.
Its Silicon Valley-seasoned CEO is Barak Berkowitz. Prominent weblogger Anil Dash joined the company in 2003, as did the former head of Wired Digital Andrew Anker. Six Apart's Board of Directors consists of Barak Berkowitz, Mena Trott, David Marquardt, David Hornik, Reid Hoffman and Jun Makihara.
On September 6, 2006 Six Apart bought Rojo.com. President Chris Alden became executive vice president of Six Apart and general manager of Movable Type. CTO Aaron Emigh became executive vice president and general manager of core technologies.
On July 24, 2007, there was a major power outage in San Francisco and power was lost to Six Apart's colocation which lead to outage affecting all 6A services, Craigslist and Technorati.com.
On Sept 15, 2007, Chairman and Chief Executive Barak Berkowitz stepped aside and was be replaced by Chris Alden, who had run the company's professional software unit.
(From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
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