Raised Eyebrow Blog

Please forgive the somewhat meta-title and topic of this post. I mean really, writing my first post on our new Raised Eyebrow blog about blogging. Isn’t that just a little bit too self-involved? Perhaps, but I was sparked to write it by a question that came to me by email this morning from a friend. Specifically, she asked:

I am looking for information, ideas, guidance etc. regarding the use of blogs as a means to share your project (whether business, music, clothing line etc.) with the world. How do you start? How do you gain credibility as a sincere ‘blogger’ – not a non-profit/business/clothing company/band seeking to use the medium to achieve your ends? How do you know that a blog is a good blog? How much time do you have to devote to blogging?

Now that’s a whole lot of questions. But I’ll do my best to tackle each of them:

1. How do you start? There are a few different ways to answer this question. The first is to focus on the technical, ie/ where do you get yourself a blog, but I think the question was more about the strategy/planning process of “creating” your blog. Figuring out things like what you’re going to write about, how you’re going to write it, how much research you need to do before you start writing your blog posts, and heck what your first post will even be about. The best place to start when thinking about writing a blog (and here I’m going to focus on more professional blogging and not personal journaling) is to think about why you want to write a blog and who your audience will be. Because we’re talking about blogging for business (or similarly in support of your non-profit organization or cause) we can fairly safely assume that you’re wanting to write a blog to help spread the word about your business/organization through building up your profile in the online community. Your audience, we can also assume, is potential customers, clients or supporters of your business/organization who you want to know more about your activities, the expertise you have in your area or topics related to your business/organization.
2. Credibility. The second question around credibility flows nicely out of the first one. Credibility online is very important. Online users can sniff out a plant or an overly PR crafted blog in a heartbeat and generally they won’t be too kind about it. So how do you build it? The same way you do offline: with open, honest communication and sincerity. Feel free to say that you’ve started your blog to help support your business/organization. In fact, that’s a must. But make sure that what you’re writing is enough to keep readers interested in coming back. So, for example, don’t just fill your blog with announcements about upcoming events and formal news releases, instead the kinds of tangental and more informal information that blogs are so well suited to. Things like: information about why you have switched to using a new type of packaging: because it’s more environmentally friendly, or because you’ve formed a solid personal relationship with a new local supplier, or even because it is cheaper and is allowing you to keep your final costs low at a time when other production costs are rising; stories about where your finding inspiration lately, everything from music you’re listening to at the office, to photos of inspiration boards you’ve got up as you’re designing the new product line/creating a new campaign. Anything really, as long as you’re comfortable with the degree to which the information is personal (and please, on a business blog make sure that the personal info you share does have professional relevance) and as long as it is honest and genuine.
3. How do you know that a blog is a good blog? Well that’s a bit tricky. There aren’t many gold standards to judge a blog by — though of course for the few and super famous there are the Bloggie awards — making it tricky to set out a list of criteria on which to judge the success of a blog. You can pay attention to your statistics (web stats that show how often your site is being visited), and you can check your ranking amongst other blogs in Technorati, but while numbers of visits is certainly an awesome thing, quality of visits is also going to be really important in judging the success of your blog from a business perspective.

   Setting out some criteria for how you’ll judge success is always a great idea at the start of any project, so here are some sample criteria that you could use to judge the success of your blog. Is it increasing business, ie/ are you making more sales, getting more members, raising more funds, etc.? Are you creating a positive online community that is helping to inspire you in your work? It’s easy to get burned out in our little worlds and blogging can be a great way to reach out to other like-minded folks to share ideas and recharge your inspiration batteries. Is it helping you share information about your work you had no other outlet for? Blogs can be a great way to communicate more informally with your audience, ie/ outside of press releases or even email newsletters, and often it will allow you to reach an audience you may not be able to reach with the more traditional media outlets.

4. How much time does it take? Well this is a rather appropriate question for me to be answering as I write my first blog post on a Saturday isn’t it. The answer can really vary. We’ve talked many of our clients out of blogging when we’ve been able to see that their resources are already way to thin for the work they currently have on their plate. With the number of blogs out there, and how frequently some of them are updated it can be really easy to think that blog posts can be tossed off as quickly as text messages. And sometimes they can. But often, and particularly when we’re talking about professional blogs which are likely to involve more research and thought than personal blogs, they can be really time consuming. The answer to how much time it takes really depends on a whole lot of factors. Basic things like: how quickly do you write? Or whether you plan to include a lot of photos and images that you’ll have to either take or research each time you post to the blog. It also depends how often you want your blog to be updated. If once a week is ok with you, then chances are you’ll be fine with an hour a week. If you’re looking at daily, then bump that time up. Writing a professional blog can also often mean keeping on top of topics in your industry, so reading other blogs in your industry, or subscribing to email newsletters and print newsletters/magazines to stay on top of things. That kind of research time also needs to be factored in to writing your blog, though you may already be doing that anyway.

I could easily go on and on about this topic, but I’ll close by giving you some links to some blogs written by some business folks we know that I think do a great job of supporting their businesses. You’ll notice these are all blogs authored by ladies, that’s cuz I’m going to cheat a bit and use examples from women we profiled in the book that Lauren and I authored recently, after all it is Saturday and I need to get away from the computer.

Awesome business blog examples:

• Poise the Blog: Cinnamon Cooper makes fabulous handbags, messenger bags and the like. She blogs about being a craft entrepreneur, about her products specifically and sometimes about life more generally.
• LunaBlog: The Lunapads International Blog is authored by the two owners of the company as well as their staff, and also includes guest posts by customers. They talk about all things related to alternative menstrual products, life as business owners, life as mothers of small children, other environmentally friendly choices they’re making, inspiring books they’re reading and new products they’re dreaming up.
• Vickie Howell’s Blog: Vickie has a tv show, several knitting books and her own line of yarn. She blogs about cool yarn projects she discovers online (knitting, crocheting, etc), new patterns, new podcasts she’s posted, and life as a rock star (ok so maybe not that last part so much, but Vickie is such a rock star that it seems fair to throw that in).