Business Bloggers – Type-A Conference 2011 Liveblogging

Next up, I’m heading to one of the Tribes sessions – Business Blogging with Julie Cole and Caitlin Madden from Mabel’s Labels. I’m here because I do a lot of business blogging with my Phenomenal Content clients. We’re a very intimate session here, with our two speakers and our four eight attendees.

Do you talk about your business on your business blog?

For Mabelhood, they blog about organization, parenting, and other topics…but Julie doesn’t blog about labels. Strategically, she blogs to let their customers know that the people who own and run the company are real people.  Caitlin will blog more about things the company is doing, media appearances, community events, etc. But people don’t want Julie blogging about labels. She gets no comments when she blogs about the company. They want to read her crazy stories about her six kids – and that translates into sales. People don’t want to buy from some corporate guy in a suit; they would rather buy from a friend.

How personal do you get on your business blog? Do you use your children’s names? How careful are you about outing things with your children, like Julie’s oldest son’s autism? Everyone has various comfort levels regarding privacy. It also depends on the purpose of the blog posts you’re writing. Are you writing in the first person singular, a story about yourself, or are you writing in the first personal plural, using the word “we” to speak for your company?

Word of mouth is so important. That’s why social media is such a big thing. (I know the value of this. I’ve gotten a lot of my writing clients via Twitter, and I get referrals via Twitter mentions!)

People don’t buy products anymore – they buy stories. Products are interchangeable nowadays. People buy into your stories. That’s what you can do with business blogging.

You can use different channels or categories to clearly indicate what people can expect on your business blog. Julie has Mom of Many, while Caitlin has The Mabel Files. People know what to expect when they write their posts.

If you’re running a business and you’ve got a blog for your business, how often do you blog? You need to update semi-regularly. (My professional blog needs some work in this respect.) Once a week, or every other Thursday…people will come back to your blog to read your content when you have a regular schedule. It doesn’t have to be often, but you have to do it consistently. But don’t frequently futile; we you say something, make sure it’s good. (Julie got that from Scott Stratten.)

Determine whether or not it’s worth your time to guest post. Are you already reaching that audience elsewhere? How effective is the opportunity? You only have so much time to do your work, your blog, and take care of yourself and your family. You can only do the things that are going to be beneficial to you and your business.

I am liveblogging as a volunteer for the Type-A Parent Conference, and an edited version of this post will be available directly on Type-A Parent.

Christina Gleason (976 Posts)

That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.