OPE daily

The creation of weblogs has allowed businesses and customers to connect more intimately than websites alone ever have. Below are some ideas to get you started on journaling your industry and experiences.

What is a Blog? 

Blog, short for web-log, is a website that has journalistic entries commonly posted in reverse chronological order. It can be a diary, news aggregator, commentary, or industry informant. A typical blog combines text, images, links and even sound to engage readers and solicit responses. It is important for blogs to encourage readers to leave comments and build a community of dialogue.

Where to start?

Like any other website, you have to find a host for the site. You can register your own domain and build a blog using any of a number of free programs such as WordPress (which is what OPE daily is built with), Moveable Type, or Textpattern. This will require some knowledge of client and server coding, or at least, how to interact with your hosting server and installing software. This will give you the most control over the look and feel of your blog, but will require more knowledge of scripting and coding languages.

For the less inclined, there are many sites that will take the technical aspect out of the way and offer many tools and choices for you to build your blog (often for free.) Sites such as Blogger, LiveJournal, and TypePad will handle the technical maintenance of your blog so that you can focus on content. These sites are extremely easy to understand and help you from beginning to end. They are limited on the control they offer you however, and your site will be affiliated with the hosting company. That is, your blog will be a sub-domain of the company. For example, instead of www.opedaily.com it would be something like opedaily.blogspot.com. You will also be limited to their respective templates and software.

Both options will lead you to the ultimate goal of blog building. It just depends on what you want your final product to do.

Got a blog, now what?

Content, content, content. Like 99.9% of the sites I see on the internet, 99.9% of weblogs are useless and some are unmanned, computerized aggregators (borderline content thieves), built to lure searchers to click advertising links. This drives me insane because it (the supposed blog) utilizes key words and distracts me from whatever I was searching for by posing as a relevant site.

Your job is to communicate with customers and prospects and the world wide wibe at large. There is profit in blogging, however those sites take time and sincere content that builds readership and a fanatic following. Your job right now is to decide what the purpose, or rather, voice of your blog is going to be. Nurseries can focus on plant and flower care or climate zone landscaping. Tree care companies can discuss tree damage or technical aspects of arboriculture. The point is to figure out what you are going to be able to communicate to readers.

Who’s going to read it?

Here in lies the ultimate question for bloggers. Having a blog doesn’t guarantee readers. Writing post after post doesn’t guarantee readers. It takes time, quality content, and self promotion. There are blog directories that you can get listed on as well as exchange links with other relevant blogs. It is also important to participate in forums and other people’s bogs. This helps develop your credibility, and readers will react to that. There are a ton of sites devoted to building readership so I won’t go into it here except to say that you will have to find out what works for your readers in order to develop that following.

A blog is another tool to help you communicate with your prospective clients and builds a dialogue that will even teach you a thing or two. If you combine your business website, blog, and opt-in newsletter, to build your electronic landscape you can create a supportive community that cross promotes eachother and adds value to your goods and services while helping your clients.