By Debbie Weil
Publisher, WordBiz Report

If the "coolness" factor (i.e., how to sound smart and plugged-in day after day) is holding you back from blogging, consider these five down-to-earth tips from Rick Bruner, president of Executive Summary Consulting.

First, be clear on the purpose of your blog. As Rick puts it: "Is it to establish thought leadership or to offer useful, timely information to your customers and prospects?"

If thought leadership is your aim, you've got a more difficult task. Rick maintains a blog at ExecutiveSummary.com whose purpose is to promote his services as an analyst and consultant.

He posts less often to that blog because "I need to sound smart and analytical and insightful which is harder to do. I have to write commentary which means I have to think a lot more."

By contrast, he creates regular content for the blog on Biznettravel.com's site. The travel agency has outsourced maintenance of their "travel log" to Rick.

"It doesn't need to be original writing," Rick emphasizes. "The purpose of this blog is to be a useful resource. We're identifying useful articles on other sites, providing a sentence or two of context and then linking to them."

Rick's 5 tips to maintain a useful blog

Tip #1: Make it a discipline to post to your blog at least once a week. Try to do it 3 or 4 times.

Tip #2: Make each post short and digestible.

Tip #3: Make it easy on yourself by consulting a list of resource links.

Add to your blog a list of links pointing to sites relevant to your business or industry niche. When it comes time to post, "troll your resource list yourself." This is a quick way to do research and come up with new articles to link to. In other words, "don't wait for inspiration to strike."

Tip #4: Don't worry about a distinctive voice

Although a distinctive, edgy voice is often a part of personal blogs, it's not necessary for a "useful resources" blog. Rick recruited a freelancer to help him with Biznettravel's blog. They both post regularly and between the two of them produce more than enough content.

Rick says he may add a personal comment such as, "I lost my luggage recently and you know how aggravating that can be... " Then he'll link to a "top 10 tips" article on what to do when you lose your bags.

Tip #5: Write relevant, specific titles for each separate blog posting

The search engines love blogs and will index individual entries (no matter how short) if you've got your blogging software configured to create a separate page for each post.

In other words, think of each blog post as a Web page with its own title.

(Pub note: this was news to me. Turns out I can configure Movable Type, the software that runs my blog, to do this.)

Bonus Tip: "Your blog may end up looking smarter than you intended just by virtue of frequent, short, useful postings," says Rick.

Useful Links

Rick's blog at Executive Summary Consulting

Biznettravel's blog

MarketingWonk's blog
Note how each separate posting is its own page

The BUZZ Continues: RSS & Newsletters
by Kathleen Goodwin in ClickZ (Feb. 4, 2004)


Blogging Tools

Blogger (free tool)

TypePad (hosted; easier to set up)

Movable Type (software you install)

This article was first published in the Feb. 4, 2004 issue of WordBiz Report.