NewsBusiness

When it comes to sending newsletters and/or emails to your mailing list, we recommend getting something out there at least once a month. And as you might have seen in this post, we weren’t doing this ourselves until quite recently.

With blogs we don’t think once a month cuts it. For a blog to be useful and worth subscribing to or visiting we think it should be updated at least once a week. Since it’s confession time we’ll own up to not doing this – in fact the blog entries we’ve put up today are the first in about a month. From now on (!) we’ll be updating this blog at least once a week, but if you’re on our email list we’ll continue to send you a summary once a month.

If you’d like to read our posts when we post them, why not subscribe to our RSS feed (by clicking on the orange icon at the very top of the screen, next to the Home and About buttons) or sign up to Google Reader and subscribe to our blog there.

Why it’s important to keep your website content fresh, relevant and up-to-date

Humans like their information to be fresh and up-to-date. If this wasn’t the case all TV stations, radio stations and newspapers would be out of business. There might be a couple of magazines left.
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Search engines like fresh information too and are biased towards those sites that update their content regularly. This is why search engines like blogs (see this post on blogs). And why an oft quoted motto on getting good search engine rankings is ‘content is king’.
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So if your business has a website that hasn’t been updated in a year or longer, not only is it unlikely to be ‘crawled’ (ie visited) that often by search engines, which will probably result in lower search engine rankings, but the humans that visit your site will probably notice too and won’t be very impressed. They might even wonder if you’re still in business.
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But if your site is obviously up-to-date and filled with information that your clients (or prospective clients) would find useful, not only will they appreciate that, but the chance of them returning soon will increase dramatically. And who knows, on their third or fourth visit (or seventh or eighth) they might buy something from you, or pick up the phone to enquire.
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But putting fresh, relevant content up on a website on a regular basis is hard. You need to have something new to say and you certainly need to set time aside to do it.
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At News Equals Business we’ve been on both sides of the table – working in-house with external web designers who were waiting for us to provide content for a new website, and on the other side waiting a long time for the client to put together the content for their website.
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An added complication when putting content together for a website is that it needs to satisfy two masters at the same time – the human visitors and the search engines. And on top of that it needs to give human visitors a reason to stick around for longer than 8 seconds before surfing off somewhere else.
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One of the areas we help our customers is in developing compelling copy that works for humans and search engines, and then helping them keep their websites fresh, up-to-date and relevant. We’re about to launch some web-based services in this area and we’ll let you know when we do.

I have a theory that the only reason for the existence of public relations as an industry is that human beings innately have a problem blowing their own trumpet. It just doesn’t come naturally calling the editor of a magazine/TV station and saying ‘I’m great – you should feature me’ – it’s much easier to get someone else to do it for you!

Seriously though, if you’re in business, you must overcome any fear of appearing too big for your boots or, worse, becoming victim to tall poppy syndrome.

It’s absolutely vital to be willing and able to communicate positive news about your business and/or yourself – both to the media and to your customers and target customers.

You can be as reticent and self-effacing in your personal life as you want, just don’t carry this over into your business life, or you will miss many opportunities to grow your business.

And if you’re doing your own PR it’s even more important you don’t let any ‘modesty’ get in the way of telling your story for the media, whether you’re telling your story on paper or down a telephone line or face-to-face. And if you get any rejections – don’t take it personally. Remember it’s the story they’re rejecting, not you.

Blogs (blog is short for ‘weblog’) have been around for a while, but recently they’ve gone mainstream and now all businesses are asking themselves ‘should we have a blog?’. If you’re unsure what they are, what they do, and what the possible commercial advantage of having one could be, read on.

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In basic terms a blog is simply a sort of diary published on the web for all to see. Many people use them just to keep friends and family up-to-date with what they’re doing.

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Blogs are worth considering from a business perspective if you want

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1)  an easy way to keep your website current
2) a way that people can interact easily with your business online
3) a communication channel with the world that is friendlier and more immediate than most corporate communications
4) your website to rank more highly in the search engines
5) more chance of the media running stories on your business (good stories we hope)

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Let’s have a look at these in turn:

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1) An easy way to keep your website current
Blogs are very straightforward to set up and once they are up and running adding an item or ‘blog entry’ is very easy indeed. You can then put a link from your main navigation bar on your website to your blog so people can see that you have one.

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2) A way people can interact easily with your business online
Blogs were developed to allow visitors or readers to post their own comments on them. As the blog owner you can ‘moderate’ these comments ie decide which ones go up and which ones don’t. The more people see other people are commenting the more likely they are to take part in the conversation and the more ‘engaged’ they will be with your business.

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3) A communication channel with the world that is friendlier and more immediate than most corporate communications
In a world of corporate speak and communications departments, the conversational style of a blog is often able to show a friendlier face. Some large corporations in the US experiencing customer service issues were able to resolve these quickly and regain their good reputations through frank and helpful discussions with disgruntled customers through  corporate blogs run by middle managers (see this Wired article on ‘Famous Frank’ at Comcast in the US who used another ‘Web2.0’ tool – Twitter – to do this).

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4) Your website to rank more highly in the search engines
Google loves blogs because it knows they are generally updated often and can be interesting and informative discussion forums. More good content means better search engine rankings.

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5) More chance of the media running stories on your business (good stories we hope)
This is an interesting one. Journalists interested in particular companies or particular industries will often seek out relevant blogs and follow them for story ideas. If you establish your credibility as an expert in a certain area in your blog, you may find journalists seeking you out for comment in your area of expertise. Subscribing to a blog is also a bit easier than subscribing to a newsletter – you don’t have to give anyone your email address or alert anyone to your interest in them!

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Before diving into blogging yourself, it’s a good idea to have a look at a couple of blogs in your field, perhaps even participate so you can get the hang of it. If you do decide to start a blog, make a commitment to add something new to it on a regular basis – aim for at least once a week. Each item doesn’t need to be a full report – treat it as a diary entry and then build this into your schedule. You can then promote your blog through all the usual channels – and through blog directories and blog services on the internet.

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How to let your computer read through your (e)mail so you don’t have to
An ‘RSS Reader’ (RSS stand for Really Simple Syndication) allows you to track a number of different blogs without having to visit them all – the Reader just compiles all the latest blog posts from all of the blogs you are following on one page. Google has one called Google Reader which you can sign up to quickly and easily for free (and there are a number of other ones out there too). If for example you follow say 20 email newsletters and they all have an ‘RSS feed’ (this means they have a blog) you can subscribe to those ‘feeds’ in your reader and you won’t have to check your email any more to get the latest stories from those newsletters.

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So why not sign up to Google Reader and subscribe to your first blog – why not the News Equals Business Blog!