Business blogs – how personal to get?
I was prompted to write this article up after reading the comment/question left by Jennifer Gniadecki in this week’s Comment Friday. Jennifer was asking about her business blog and whether or not she could or rather should start adding things of a more personal nature in there.
This is a topic I’ve discussed, argued and lamented over with a huge number of people over the past year or so as I’ve endeavored to develop myself as blogging media consultant. You see often people will jump very quickly into one camp or the other. Blogging is personal and spontaneous so yes you should write personal stuff in! Or, business sites should be all business otherwise you’ll look unprofessional.
I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle and Jennifer has almost answered her own question with the statement:
“I’m very friendly and personable and my life is mostly an open book…”
What makes a truly brilliant business blog is one that gives an insight to that person that you may be dealing with professionally in the future. It’s why we have face to face interviews, even though it may have nothing to do with the job itself people want to get a feel for who you are. You may be a good solid web designer (for instance) but if the job comes down to two people who are both equally solid web designers, they are going to go with the one they liked or associated with.
How do you judge what personal stuff to put into your business blog though?
Think about what you would say in a conversation with a new prospective client. How much personal information would you give if asked? I’m reminded of a conversation I had with my rep when I was deciding on doing a contract. She asked about my kids, to which I replied I don’t have any but I do have two dogs that are like my kids. We spoke for a couple of minutes on the types of dogs and swapped one or two anecdotes regarding our canine friends. We also spoke about the flu that was going around and the measures we’d been taking to avoid getting sick.
Both of these topics were not work related but gave us insights into the other person. I became a lot more comfortable with the idea that the person out there looking for work for me has identified me as a real person and not just a statistic in her books.
So how does this apply to blogging? Simply put if I visit two business blogs in the same field, one of them writes simply about the business and the other writes equally about the business but also lets me know a little about what that person stands for and how I can identify with them. Then I’m going to feel more comfortable approaching the second person (that’s if I like them of course which is part of the gamble). Of course I’ll probably approach both which is smart business but I’ve got a natural attraction to the person I already feel I know.
That is me though. It needs to be said that there are people who don’t want to know about you, all they want to know is about your services so don’t make your blog your only selling tool. Have a top-notch corporate website that your blog is attached to. Generally those people will be happy just going through the website rather than reading the blog.
But there will also be people who don’t like you or don’t have dogs or pets or birthdays (well maybe not birthdays but they certainly don’t care about yours and your employee’s birthdays). This is when you need to weigh it up in your head, do you want to work with these people anyway. Chances are if they don’t like you online then they may not be easy to work with anyway. The main point I want to get across here is that people will judge you on what you write about and you should keep that in mind.
So what can you write about?
We come back to what would you normally share with a client? If you are like me (and from the sounds of it Jennifer) then you are happy to openly speak about yourself to a degree. I’ll talk openly about my pets for instance but I won’t share my thoughts on the occupation of Tibet. The old rules about polite conversation should be followed, politics and religion are probably best left alone. Even strong opinions should not be made unless you are willing to lose someone who thinks differently. That doesn’t mean you can’t voice your opinions but try and avoid statements such as ‘anyone who does not like Star Trek are idiots’. Those Star Wars freaks will all get up in arms and…. hey I’m joking!!!!
When is it too much?
Obviously you don’t want to share too much as we’ve already discussed, I’m really talking here about your ratio of personal to business posts. There are a number of schools of thought here. Business posts should always outweigh your personal ones, you need to work out your level but a two to one ratio at the very least. Never combine them either, don’t talk on a business topic and then add at the end that you’re getting married.ÂLeave that for a separate post. That’s not to say you can’t write a business related personal story you just can’t mash two different posts into one!
I can talk to you from experience here. Quit Your Day Job was to be my business blog, I was going to talk about blogging, discuss the internet and talk about web design.ÂI now discuss movies, comics, pop culture, environmental issues, personal stuff and Aquaman. My blog suffered untreatable personal post creep and today has evolved into a purely personal blog. Which for me is fine, but for other businesses could be a disaster! You need to be aware of your post ratios, never let personal outweigh business related.
Blogging is a very personal thing which I believe has led to its success. If you want to make your business blog more personal then by all means do so, carefully. Don’t feel you have to or even should
I’ll leave you with one other absolute rule, and this one I can’t bend on. Truth. Always tell the truth, spin it, leave it out, whatever but don’t lie or mislead a customer. Ever. If you say you have a dog and you don’t and the customer asks you about it and you slip up even slightly you can forget your credibility.
Using Traffic Exchanges with Google Adsense
As most Google Adsense users are aware of, you can have your Google Adsense account banned if you run ads on the same page as you host google ads on.
“It has come to our attention that invalid clicks and/or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account.”
Invalid impressions can come from traffic exchanges.
So, how can you still run google adsense and have your website on traffic exchanges?
Well this tip is especially good for newer blogs or websites, that are looking to increase their traffic, but still make a little money with adsense. You can also lower your alexa rank by using traffic exchanges.
When you use traffic exchanges, the traffic goes to the main page of your blog. Such as, https://blogaboutyourblog.com. If you are hosting google ads on individual single pages, then you will not be getting invalid impressions. The traffic exchange is sending visitors to your main homepage, that has no google ads on it.
By having the ads simply on single posts or pages, the money flow won’t be much, but it’s better than nothing. Then you can save your homepage advertising for something else, such as AuctionAds.
To give you a better idea what you can earn, Blog about your Blog earned 7$ last month by just using 2 google adsense units on the single pages of this blog. These are two simply units, not exactly ideally placed, and really blended. Our income could have been greater with more predominant ad placement.
Now you’ve got the best of both worlds. Google Adsense and Traffic Exchanges, on the same website.
Comment Friday Winner: Home Mom
Comment Friday was very different this week. We had some very insightful (and long) comments, and it’s really nice to see. People are taking some real time to write good comments.
This week a lot of questions were asked, and I didn’t get a chance to answer them, so I’m doing things a bit different. First I am going to pick a winner, then post some questions and answers.
With no further ado, this week I have chosen HomeMom as our winner! She’s given BAYB some link love, and mentioned our Comment Friday on her blog yesterday. Since she has found us, she has been an active commenter.
A lot of people had a strong opinion on digg it seemed, most don’t use it! I found that pretty interesting, and I plan on sticking with digging to promote this blog even further.
“Do y’all have a bunch of Friends on Digg? What’s your take on that?”
I only have a handful of digg friends. Want to be my digg friend?
Is it just me, or are the comments a lot longer this week?
Some comments were extremely long this week, very nice and surprising!
how much of my life should be in my business blog?
I personally think if you want to add your personal stuff to a “business like” blog, you should create two separate blogs. With that you could cross promote if you’d like etc.
Thats it for comment friday this week, thanks again to our participants!
Comment Friday For June 15th
We are sitting at about 20-25 comments per week on our Comment Fridays, and I’m ready to increase that number!
If this is your first comment friday, it is a fun and simple idea. Just leave us a comment about anything you want, and we can get our own little discussion going.
Each week we will chose one lucky commenter to be featured as our Blog of the Week and that blogger will get a link to their blog, and a spot on our blog roll for the week.
I’ve been doing a lot of promotion on digg, and I would love to hear your opinion on it. Have you been on the front page? What is the most amount of diggs you have received? Do you even bother getting dugg?!
If you have a minute, please digg our latest article about alexa. I’m hoping to make the front page on this article, so please help us out, and give it a digg.
Increasing your Alexa Rank Free!
I’ve read many articles on how you should increase your alexa rank. Some mention adding the button, others say install the toolbar, and others even use the redirect url.
I’ve added the toolbar, because I think that’s an obvious way to increase alexa. By visiting your blog everyday with the toolbar, it can really get you under 1,000,000 rank or even under 500,000. (I’ve read someone using this on a brand new blog, but I can’t remember where. Someone please give me the link!)
What people don’t mention is using traffic to get a lower alexa rank.
Traffic? Thats obvious. I meant free traffic!
I know most bloggers are familiar with blogexplosion, blogmad, and blogsoldiers. There are more you can use.
Websites such as bestfreetraffic, ultracoolsurfin, and surfdummy provide free and easy ways to get visitors to your blog.
Surfing can be timely, but if you find a few minutes each day to log into these traffic exchanges, you can earn enough credits to last you for that day.
By using these websites you can expect anywhere from 5 to 50 visitors per day, if you have the credits. This can dramatically help you lower your alexa score.
Can you think of a better way to get a better rank than actually getting visitors?
Introducing My New Blog – Celebrity Insider – Photos & News
I’ve diversified, at least I think that’s the word. After publishing Mike’s Money Making Mission for 35 weeks I’ve now started another blog. This time it’s about celebrities – no, don’t groan! People like this sort of thing.
Celebrity Insider – Photos & News has been up and running for 9 days and yesterday I had 543Â visitors – genuine hits, none of this hit exchange nonsense. I did say that people like this sort of thing!
I’ve aimed the blog at what we in the UK call ‘Sun readers’. This is a tabloid newspaper, lots of big headlines, plenty of pretty girls, lots of celebrity talk – no doubt there is such a newspaper in most countries.
So far Celebrities I’ve written about include:
Galilea Montijo
Paul Sculfor
Charley Uchea
Maria Ozawa
Amanda Beard
and so on.
Who? You may well ask.
Well that’s my diversification – probably best viewed by the over 18’s.
Good luck,
Mike.
Looking for some advice…
For a change instead of handing out my own hints and tips I’d thought I’d seek out some advice from the blog about your blog community.
I’ve just taken the next step for my blog and bought a new URL for it quityourdayjob.com.au – now the thing that I was wondering is how will this affect my technorati and other ratings sites? It’s not really a big deal I suppose since the old URL will continue on regardless but I’d rather hear about any pitfalls or problems from anyone out there who has done this themselves too.
Cheers in advance!
Getting More Web Site Traffic Free by Listing an Opp on Sponsored Reviews
And It’s Free! (I know its a long title, but its worth it)
I’m not referring to actually buying a sponsored review, I just mean listing an opportunity.
Last month for example I received more traffic by just listing an opportunity, than I got actually paying bloggers to review us!
Free Traffic
Like I mentioned, it doesn’t cost anything. Sponsored Reviews is the only website I know where you don’t have to supply funds while listing an opportunity. If you don’t find any bloggers you like, you don’t have to accept anyones offer. Therefore you can list an opportunity, and not be required to buy a review.
Even More Free Stuff
With traffic comes exposure. By other bloggers finding our website they still chose to blog about us, or add us to their blogroll.
For example, Prarie Rose came to our blog and said they liked it so much it didn’t matter if they got the opp, they were going to link to us anyway.
Most bloggers will write about your website if they like you regardless if they are getting paid. If your topic fits their niche as well, they will be more inclined to do it for free.
An example of that is when Kumiko blogged about PPP direct. She could of accepted their 10$ opportunity, but since it had fit her niche, she had already done it for free. We’ve done the same thing here at BAYB, when regarding the Bloggers Choice Awards.
Getting More Links for Free
When listing an opportunity, you can then see all the blogs and bloggers who bid on you. I’ve visited dozens of blogs, and found they have dofollow or a top commenters list. By then participating in their blog, and leaving a few comments, I can also receive a free link, without paying for a review. With a page rank increase in sight, I’ve been very active with getting more links, and that’s perfect.
When are you going to list on Sponsored Reviews?
Please note that I listed on sponsored reviews to buy reviews and have purchased several, but I realized there is more to be achieved there then just buying reviews.