Anyone who writes for a living, in any capacity, knows the term writers block. Dictionary.com defines it as “a usually temporary condition in which a writer finds it impossible to proceed with the writing of a novel, play, or other work.”  Blogs fall into the other work category. Calling it work is truth in advertising!

Blogging for your company falls into that category in two ways: it is work to write a blog and you are working to write the blog for, well, for work.

As an added bonus, you may be charged with encouraging your colleagues to post, which is a great way to share the work load, and to give voice to other processes and procedures that your audience will find valuable. Search engines find new content valuable, which then makes you more visible on the web. It’s a win all around!

But back to writers block. This is not just a psychological phenomenon. It also occurs when there is a surge of business, and everyone is just too busy running the company and taking good care of the customers to thoughtfully and actively participate in blogging. It is tempting to put in on the back burner during these times with the intent of picking it up again later.

Possible Remedy

An interesting idea is floated in Tom Johnson’s blog post Why is Corporate Blogging So Hard? His difficulties are fairly common, but his solution was active collaboration with his colleagues. He got ideas, uncovered a safe controversy or two, and re-energized his postings. Among the comments, I found another gem of an idea. The person commenting shared that they maintain various drafts of bits of information that can be fleshed out into posts at a later date, with more input or information. That’s a great idea for maintaining a stockpile of possible posts for that inevitable dry spell when colleagues are too busy, and you are just plain out of ideas.

Blogs are too important to be relegated to the leftover time in the business day, but the reality is that current client needs take precedence over adding valuable content. Any ideas that make your blogging task easier to maintain will benefit your company, by keeping you in front of your audience.

How do you maintain your blogging schedule? Do you keep a backlog of posts to use during the busy season? Let us know in the comments, you may show up in a future blog post!

Photo Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1338212

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive. She has worked in programming, design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client - tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com, or find her on Twitter, @ReginaSillitti.

Google doesn’t employ a full time blogger for any subject, people get paid to do their job and part of that job sometimes includes a blog.  If it works for Google, why doesn’t it work for the rest of us?

One thing that Karen said that hit home was that if the blog feels like a homework assignment that you will tend to put off, then maybe blogging isn’t for you.  It becomes one more task in a crowded week and the tone of the blog will show that.  If you are uninspired, how can you inspire your readers?

She then went on to say that blogging can be fun and whimsical at times.  Small companies especially can post about the culture of the company, like “Donut Friday” or other humorous topics and include pictures.  Other times, the posts will be longer and more focused on a topic of interest to your industry and community. Posting about news items works as well.  If someone is making a presentation somewhere, announce it on the blog.  If the company wins an award, let people know about it on the blog.  If you are changing business direction, or have a PR issue that develops, discuss it in a post or two. Invite your community to weigh in on these topics.

On the Google blogs, there are also many writers. No blog is owned by just one employee.  There are established guidelines and best practices that they follow, and someone who thinks like an editor who manages the whole thing.  There is no one with sole editing responsibilities.  Suggestions are made along the way on a topic or a post that is circulated internally prior to posting, but each author is responsible for their own posts.

At Dinkum, we understand the SEO benefits of blogging.  We know the value of building a community and keeping our community informed and engaged, and we teach that to our clients as well. It was good to hear Karen Wikre from Google expound on some of this information, and also that Google follows the same guidelines and principles in their blogging campaigns that we consider important.

How is blogging working out at your company? Have you run into the “blogging as homework” dilemma? And Rick, how about Donut Fridays?

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive.  She has worked in programming,  design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client – tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com.

Kelly Dunning is a Sales Consultant for Dinkum Interactive. With 10 years experience in sales and marketing, she keeps Dinkum’s new accounts, and Rick, in tip-top shape.

The post offers a variety of interesting predictions for 2010, but the point I found most interesting suggested that business marketing will increase focus on content creation. The literal quote is:

“Companies will start to turn their marketing departments into production studios for creating content”

What does this mean to small and mid-sized businesses? As the effectiveness of traditional marketing continues to decline, wise companies should increase the importance of content development in their marketing strategy. Here are a few examples of how smaller companies have created content to market themselves:

Attract Interest in Jewelry on Flickr.com – Catherinette Rings leverages the photos they take of their existing jewelry by posting them on Flickr.com. By effectively tagging each photograph with phrases searchers might use, Catherinette attracts the interest of prospective buyers who can follow a link on their profile page to buy rings on Estsy.com. This technique can be used to publicize a variety of products and services not limited to something as popular as jewelry.

Sell Vinyl Fencing Using YouTube.com – Hoover Fence is a fencing supplier located in Newton, Iowa. While I’m sure that they use many traditional marketing methods, they’ve created a series of videos that give prospects a good idea of what they do and how they do it.

This video has received over 31,000 views. How many fence buyers watched this video, saw the ease with which this product can be installed and purchased the materials from Hoover?

Promote Your Services Using a Blog – Radiant Plumbing uses it’s blog to answer simple questions, discuss new products and focus on its community of Austin, Texas. It’s post My New Navien Tankless Water Heater is on the Google’s first page for “Navien Tankless Water Heater“. Not a bad investment in time for what is likely to generate interest in Navien and sales for Radiant.

These were just a few diverse examples about how businesses might shift their marketing strategies to focus on the creation of content to “pull” prospects in the coming year.

What do you think? Will a shift toward the creation of content make sense for your business?

Bill Rowland

Keywords: inbound marketing, content creation, flickr, youtube, blogging, internet marketing

• What is Google Wonder Wheel?
• What Can You Do With It?
• How to Use Google Wonder Wheel

Bill Rowland

Update: I just found some additional insight into Wonder Wheel by the guys from The Marketing Over Coffee Podcast. Check it out, I’m sure you’ll find it helpful.

What is a Comments Policy?

A Comments Policy is a statement defining your policy regarding comments on your blog and informs the reader of what you will allow on your blog, what you will not allow, and what they are allowed to do. It is a form of “responsibility statement” to clearly define each party’s rights and responsibilities.

Why Is a Comments Policy Needed?

Interaction by commenting is a key ingredient to any blog, but a solid set of ground rules will manage the expectations of all parties. Continually generating content, developing ideas and interacting with other community members can be time consuming, so having a Comment Policy in place will:

• Save Time
• Maintain Relevancy
• Preserve Quality
• Encourage Interaction

The goal of any business blog is to develop relationships with prospects and peers, so allowing readers to behave badly reflects poorly on both the commenter and the business. Personal attacks, irrelevant content and embedded links are just a few behaviors that will make any reader question the professionalism of the business in question. Lastly, it’s rare that comment signatures like “Buy Viagra” or “Hawaii Condos” are relevant to any post.

Creating a Comments Policy

Comments Policies will vary with every blog and situation; it’s up to each business to decide what’s acceptable. While requiring some thought, this should not be difficult; most blog commenting policies touch on:

• Control over Content and Comments
• Ability to Edit, Sensor, Delete Comments
• Use of Language
• Comment Spam

My experience has been that most businesses and individuals are thrilled to receive any comments at all and that they think that a formal policy would inhibit reader interaction; this is not the case. Lorelle Van Fossen in Does Your Blog Have a Comments Policy? makes the point that while a Comments Policy governs the way in which comments are handled on a blog, it is not a license to freely edit, censor or delete comments. Furthermore, it  simply makes public the rights and remedies a blog reserves to address comments that do not meet established ground rules.

Does Dinkum Have a Comments Policy?

No, we don’t. But that may change sometime soon.

For all the reasons previously mentioned, I feel that it’s something that we must consider. Our goal is to help small and medium sized businesses market their companies online; a big part of that is providing valuable, relevant content and an interactive forum where ideas can be shared. Having a Comment Policy will help us achieve this.

I will follow up this post in the near future to highlight the steps in our Comments Policy development process.

In the meantime, have you developed a comment policy for your personal or business blog? If so, how did you do it? We’d like to know…

Bill Rowland

The post offers a variety of interesting predictions for 2010, but the point I found most interesting suggested that business marketing will increase focus on content creation. The literal quote is:

“Companies will start to turn their marketing departments into production studios for creating content”

What does this mean to small and mid-sized businesses? As the effectiveness of traditional marketing continues to decline, wise companies should increase the importance of content development in their marketing strategy. Here are a couple examples:

Attract Interest in Jewelry on Flickr.com – Catherinette Rings leverages the photos they take of their existing jewelry by posting them on Flickr.com. By effectively tagging each photograph with phrases searchers might use, Catherinette attracts the interest of prospective buyers who can follow a link on their profile page to buy rings on Estsy.com. This technique can be used to publicize a variety of products and services not limited to something as popular as jewelry.

Sell Vinyl Fencing Using YouTube.com – Hoover Fence is a fencing supplier located in Newton, Iowa. While I’m sure that they use many traditional marketing methods, they’ve created a series of videos that give prospects a good idea of what they do and how they do it.

This video  has received over 31,000 views. How many fence buyers watched this video, saw the ease with which this product can be installed and purchased the materials from Hoover?

Promote Services Using a Blog – Radiant Plumbing uses it’s blog to answer simple questions, discuss new products and focus on its community of Austin, Texas. It’s post My New Navien Tankless Water Heater is on the Google’s first page for the search: Navien Tankless Water Heater . Not a bad investment in time for what is likely to generate interest in Navien and sales for Radiant.

These were just a few diverse examples about how businesses might shift their marketing strategies to focus on the creation of content to “pull” prospects in the coming year.

What do you think? Will a shift toward the creation of content make sense for your business?

Bill Rowland

The post offers a variety of interesting predictions for 2010, but the point I found most interesting suggested that business marketing will increase focus on content creation. The literal quote is:

“Companies will start to turn their marketing departments into production studios for creating content”

What does this mean to small and mid-sized businesses? As the effectiveness of traditional marketing continues to decline, wise companies should increase the importance of content development in their marketing strategy. Here are a couple examples:

Attract Interest in Jewelry on Flickr.com – Catherinette Rings leverages the photos they take of their existing jewelry by posting them on Flickr.com. By effectively tagging each photograph with phrases searchers might use, Catherinette attracts the interest of prospective buyers who can follow a link on their profile page to buy rings on Estsy.com. This technique can be used to publicize a variety of products and services not limited to something as popular as jewelry.

Sell Vinyl Fencing Using YouTube.com – Hoover Fence is a fencing supplier located in Newton, Iowa. While I’m sure that they use many traditional marketing methods, they’ve created a series of videos that give prospects a good idea of what they do and how they do it.

This video has received over 31,000 views. How many fence buyers watched this video, saw the ease with which this product can be installed and purchased the materials from Hoover?

Promote Your Services Using a Blog – Radiant Plumbing uses it’s blog to answer simple questions, discuss new products and focus on its community of Austin, Texas. It’s post My New Navien Tankless Water Heater is on the Google’s first page for “Navien Tankless Water Heater“. Not a bad investment in time for what is likely to generate interest in Navien and sales for Radiant.

These were just a few diverse examples about how businesses might shift their marketing strategies to focus on the creation of content to “pull” prospects in the coming year.

What do you think? Will a shift toward the creation of content make sense for your business?

Bill Rowland

People are worrying when Google’s next update of Page Rank score will be rolled out and if their site will be adjusted up or down.

Page Rank score are at the whim of Google and can and do change periodically despite your best efforts. Also Page Rank only is pertinent to Google not Yahoo or MSN.
After the basic of good SEO are implemented it is far better to focus energy on building high quality content. What would make your blog more engaging?