The Corporate Blog Voice

Ghost blogging sometimes receives criticism because it's seen as manipulative or misleading. Answer these questions about your business blog:

• Is it written by the head of the company?
• Does it claim to be written by the head of the company?
• Is the author's name displayed on the blog?
• Is the displayed name a real person?
• Does that real person write the blog?

If a blog claims to be written by a real person who works at your company, and this isn't so, then yes, you're being misleading. Blog readers are looking for sincerity, and that's going to be hard to stake a claim to once you're found out.

So is there an ethical paid blogging alternative? Sure there is. Here are some options to consider based on the above list:

• A blog without a named author
• A blog penned by a fictional character made up for your company
• A blog written by a corporate mascot
• A blog written by "the marketing department" or other division of the company

A corporate blog doesn't have to be the voice of a single person - as long as you don't claim that it's being written by the CEO, no one's going to take you to task if it's not written by the CEO.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott has a number of sound ideas for marketing with blogs, and he stresses how important sincerity is. A corporate blog which doesn't make a false claim about its authorship goes a long way towards being that kind of sincere.

Why you should stop spellchecking your blog

It's true that grammatical errors, and even more often spelling errors, can be really noticeable in a blog. Those misteaks may turn readers off, sending the message that your company lacks professionalism - or they may make your blog more authentic.

Currently reading Y-Size Your Business: How Gen Y Employees Can Save You Money and Grow Your Business, in which Jason Ryan Dorsey argues that typos in a blog can seem more sincere to the Millenial Generation, who have been reared on self-publishing technology like Twitter and expect a few errors to slip through.

What this means is that it's more important than ever to develop niche blogs for target audiences. How you communicate with a 20-something or Baby Boomer can be very different, even if you've got the same story to tell.

A review of Y-Size Your Business will be a featured business book review as soon as the book is finished. Follow the blogger for more reviews.

Building better links with blog content webs

Google hides most of its practices to make it more difficult on the black hat SEO crowd, but some things we do know from observation.

• Newer content is given more weight.
  
• The words (anchor text) in links to a site should relate to the text at the destination.
• The number of inbound links matters.
• Inbound links are weighted by the popularity of the linking site.

This all can lead to a bit of a circular problem, since the most popular sites can make other sites popular faster by linking to them. It almost sounds like an Amway meeting. They also make the strategy of building blog content webs useful.

When your blog is updated by the PaidWeBlog staff, rest assured that other blogs we manage will include relevant links back to your when appropriate. This means that keyword-rich links will be provided from other sites, increasing that post's ranking when users search for that keyword. Since the links from and to your site will only be relevant to both parties, we cannot promise a specific number of links; for this reason, we do not charge extra for this service.

Make your blog, and your site, more visible by hiring a paid blogger to be your corporate voice.

We blog so you don't have to

Solving the time problem for businesses too busy to blog

Blogs seem to be the new black – everyone's wearing one. Entrepreneurs get a lot of pressure to blog, without any real explanation of the value of the activity. Even business owners who understand why having a blog is important often neglect writing new blog posts, because it takes a fair amount of time, and more than a little skill, to blog well.

Why blogs are actually valuable for businesses
The most common – and arguably the most useless – explanation for why a blog is important is, “Google loves new content.” By itself it doesn't mean a whole lot, and technically it's not even really true, but it's not exactly false, either. Confused? Fear not!

Saying that we should regularly update our blogs because Google loves new content is putting the cart before the horse. Google doesn't actually have a preference either way, but the engineers behind the search engine invest considerable time into making it give us the results that we want to see. Particularly in the United States, there is a high perceived value for things and information for new things.

• The latest model of car, even if it only has small cosmetic changes
• The newest updates on a breaking news story, no matter how minor the change
• The freshest styles in clothes and music

We have taken our desire for newness to the web, and Google, its largest search engine, has responded by making new results show up quickly in searches. So yes, Google may love new content, but always remember that this is only because people like new content – people that could be clients of your business.

So what does this mean to the small business owner? In a world where most people who reach for the Yellow Pages rather than a computer to find a local business are over 75 years old, it's increasingly important to have an online presence. The internet has made it easier to get answers to life's questions, so today's shopper does a lot more research before making a buying decision. This tendency to place value on the newest information makes it easier to give your target customer what he or she wants, in the way he or she likes to read it online.

A regularly-updated blog keeps the search engines returning to your site, which in turn brings the people to your site. Those people want information, and a blog is the perfect place to educate these virtual window-shoppers, keeping your site in mind when they're ready to make a purchasing decision. That's what makes a blog valuable: it keeps interested people thinking about your business.

Scheduling blog posting: sometimes timing isn't everything
There are more people convinced that blogs are valuable than there are blogs which get updated regularly. Why?

• Time
• Writer's block
• Procrastination
• More important matters
• Key employee left
• This quarter's sales quota

The fact of the matter is that not everybody enjoys writing, no matter how important it is, and finding the time to change that habit can itself be challenging. Businesses large and small outsource important jobs which they don't do well, and writing should be no exception. Using keyword-centered strategies we can develop a series of posts that highlight your business strengths, educate your target clients, and keep your website fresh in Google results.

The Little Website that Could

There's nothing quite so exciting to see as a newly-designed web site for your business. The graphics are so shiny, all the links are still blue, Google doesn't even know it exists yet so nobody dirtying up the place with muddy virtual feet . . . of course, like cars, we want our web sites to get some miles under their wheels, don't we? We want to show that shiny new machine to the world and get everyone to "oooh" and "aaah" over how pretty it is . . . and yes, we want our new machine to help us sell, don't we?

The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? So why don't we see if we can find some advice for the new website on our collective childhood bookshelf? I'm talking about that heroic train, The Little Engine That Could. Through tenacity and dedication, that little engine pulled a very long train over the top of a gigantic hill, to the amazement of all!

The "Little Engine that Could" of the internet: the blog
Blogs, sometimes still called "weblogs," are just like that little engine that we enjoyed reading about as a child. Using tiny-but-powerful steps, blogs make a website more visible, more popular, and more interesting. Each post in a blog is like a powerful puff of the steam engine, inexorably driving your site towards its goals.

By itself, a single blog post probably can't get your website over that giant hill to its goal - popularity in the biggest search engines. To make that happen, the blog has to work as a single unit, with each post pulling its own weight. Collectively, the posts of a blog can have a powerful effect on search engine optimization. If it's not updated regularly, though, it's like what would have happened to the little engine if it had given up - it would have slid right back down that hill.

In other words, if you have a blog, use it or lose it.
Most web designers recommend including a blog, and it's really easy to find a free blogging service, but actually updating a blog? That can be a pain if your business isn't entirely in front of a computer screen, or you don't like to write, or you just don't have much to say!

One way to leverage the power of blogs without making the commitment to update with is by hiring a ghost blogger - someone who will create those updates for you. This can be controversial - some people think it's unethical to pay people to do things that you don't have the time or skills to do yourself - but that's hogwash. A competent ghost blogger won't put words in your mouth so much as pull words out of your head. It's a way to leverage your time. If the thoughts are yours, nobody's going to fault you for having someone with better spelling skills or a greater passion for writing put together your posts.