Quickie Definition of a BlogHere’s the plain-language, quickie answer to the “Er, what is a blawg?” question:
A Weblog or blog is an instant publishing tool anyone can use to add fresh content to a Web page.
No technical expertise is required.
Blog is both a noun and a verb. When you blog (verb), you write.
When you blog for business you should write coherently, purposefully and with the goal of establishing your company’s credibility and expertise. No drivel allowed. But an authentic, informal voice is encouraged.
A blog is a new way to market your services or products by positioning you and/or yourcompany as thought leaders in highly competitive markets.
A blog is the new cost-effective way to communicate quickly with — and get feedback from — your audience of readers, whether they are colleagues, competitors, the media, prospects or customers.
A blog is just a tool, albeit a cool one. As with any tool, there is a right way and a wrongway to use it. There is proper blogging etiquette.
Who is blogging for business?
Lots of companies, often technology-oriented. And lots of savvymarketing types.
Individuals (behind companies) blog. Corporations communicate in marketing-speak, whether it’s glossy collateral or their corporate home page. Which do you think is more persuasive to the reader? Who wants to be marketed at or sold to? Wouldn’t you rather have an intelligent conversation and decide later whether to buy?
In this, the Nice 1 introduction to business blogging, we'll keep it short and deal only with the basics at this stage. Plenty of time for us to show you the detail over the coming weeks, if it's of interest to you and your business.
At Nice 1, we have found the Blog to be a great additional form of marketing, both to the consumer and to our intermediary partners. As stated earlier, although just another marketing tool, the fact that Technorati, the major tracking site currently states it is tracking over 112.8 million blogs, (not including 72.82 million Chinese blogs) tells us that it is a rapidly growing business communication tool.
Blogging software is available free, which adds tremendously to its business appeal. The most popular blogging sofware is Blogger (owned by Google), of which this is blog is one example, and wordpress, again free to download and use.
As promised, we'll keep it simple on this introductory post. Each blog comprises of page(s) which are static and posts which are the frequently changing pieces of news and information, such as new product developments, newsworthy items, etc.
In later posts for supporting broker members, we will issue posts on blogging practice to get you started if you haven't yet dipped your toe in the water and would like to have a go!
For now though, here's a couple of FREE downloads for you that you might like to read at your leisure. . . . . Just click the link to open the file, then click save as to save it to your computer.
We're still newbies at blogging ourselves, but we have to say we're delighted with the positive reaction they are creating.
In future posts we will talk about creating your blog, then using google FREE tools amongst others to get your blog out there "syndicated" as it's called, so that your readers will know you're there and want to communicate more with you.
For now though, best of luck with your blog. If we can be of any assistance, don't hesitate to shout up. You'll find as we did, that blog creation is a lot faster, easier and more dynamic than tradional websites.
You can contact us via e mail at
enquiries@nice-1.co.uk or ring the number at the foot of this blog. If you wish, you can post a reply to this post. Just send us your e mail address and we will register you as a member of the site so that you are free to reply and comment at will.
Best Regards
The Nice 1 Team
