A blog or website is essential for business.

What is a blog?

Here is a definition that Darren Rowse of Problogger used from Wikipedia “A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”.

Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links to other web pages, video, audio or other files….”

All businesses and many individuals have them.

Should you have a blog for your business? 

YES. As a startup business, check several of them out even before you build a website.

QUESTION: If a blog is defined as a website and I want to have a website for my business, what’s the difference between a blog and a website?

 MY ANSWER: That’s the subject of another blog post.

How do you find them ?

There are directories of blogs that you can go to. Go to google and type in “blog directories” and lists will come up. Each blog directory is good but choose the ones which publish to your target market.

How do you choose which blogs to follow?

Remember when I wrote about reading books I talked about how to choose them? Do the same thing for blogs.

• Study blogs about your topic. It’s professional development or Research and Development and it should be ongoing.
• Go beyond your topic. Stay at the leading edge. That’s how I learned about “neuromarketing”.
• Find blogs about how to start a business and how to market. Remember that you can’t know too much.

What to do when you find them

Take a “helicopter” approach. Then “shadow” some.

• Read them.
• Study the content.
• Learn from the “look and feel” of them. Does it attract you or not? What do you or don’t you like?
• Sign up for and follow a few. You can always unsubscribe.
• Look at their titles and what the author writes about.

Don’t start a blog yet. 

Just observe to learn about them. Choose a niche, write a business plan and a marketing plan. When you have done your own website and become a guest blogger (I’ll write more about this in a future blog post) then have your own blog.

Comment here whether you’ve found blogs you like or whether this post is helpful to you. Let me know!

Originally posted February 27, 2012  Tagged with: blog, social media,startup