by David Wallace

Mack Collier of The Viral Garden
did an

excellent presentation yesterday on why businesses should blog. With some
background on why blogging matters and how companies are using blogs to spark
conversation, this workshop is designed to provide everything you need to know
to build a successful blog from selecting your blog software to planning your
blog strategy.
 
In this workshop, Mack is going to take us through several tools and resources
designed to help blogging. He starts off with
Google Blog Search and shows
attendees how you can use the service to monitor terms related to your business
and/or blog. He
also mentions that you can use RSS readers such as Bloglines to monitor buzz
related to your blog.
 
Next Mack talks about Twitter Search
for monitoring items that are being discussed on Twitter. Could be an even such
as this conference, a person, a company, a product or a number of things.
 
Next, Mack talks about the various blogging platforms. He mentions Blogger,
TypePad, Movable Type and Wordpress. Most have free versions while they all
offer some sort of paid elements/versions as well. There are opportunities to
have your blog hosted or to simply download the software and install on your own
server. I strongly suggest the latter so that you can have complete control over
your blog.
 
I use Movable Type for my SearchRank blog while I use Wordpress for all the
other blogs I run. The differences between the two are many but mostly the fact
that Movable Type published actual html pages while Wordpress is all database
driven. That’s why its crucial when running Wordpress to make sure you back up
regularly, whether you do that manually on a schedule or use a plug-in that
automatically does it for you.
 
On thing Mack points out as far as the content you publish on your blog is that
it is okay to talk about your own products and/or services but to do so with
moderation. If all you ever write about is your own wares, your blog is not
going to be very interesting and as such not attract many readers.
 
Another thing Mack points out is that you should put a face to your blog. Make
sure there is an about us page, blogger profiles, pictures, identities on
individual posts, etc. In other words, put a face to each post as people want to
know the personality behind the blog or posts.
 
Much of this workshop was looking at actual blogs, seeing what people are doing
right and what they are not doing right. Therefore it was difficult to capture a
lot of what was being said as you really had to be there to experience it. At
any rate, I hope you are able to get something out of the tips Mack provided and
the resources he mentioned as well.
 
============================
 
Note: These are raw notes taken while live-blogging sessions at the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Columbus, Ohio. Please excuse any spelling or grammar errors.

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