Once you’ve been blogging for a while the inevitable happens; your vacation time arrives.

For those of you who have recently started your own business you may now be saying, "what is this word ‘vacation’ that you use?" Just stick with me.

How do you handle this time off in terms of your blog? Darren Rowse of ProBlogger has amazingly come up with seven different things you can do with your blog while on vacation.

I myself have done both #1 (give it a rest) and #2 (pre-blog.) What’s your choice?

I have a close friend and fellow business blogger who lost her jewelry store to a fire on November 1st, just at the start of the holiday selling season. Her name is Patti Thompson.

Here’s the cool thing, Patti has blogged the entire incident, along with the story of her rebuilding process, on her blog at DiamondDivaOnline.

There are a number of remarks I could make about her willingness to do this, not the least of which is that it represents a vital way blogs can be used to communicate with customers and others — blogging during times of crisis, chronicling the entire process on a blog for all the world to see. She’s done it with genuine openness and transparency too, which in my estimation represents the highest ideals to which we bloggers aspire.

Let me make a simple request. If you’re a business blogger, why not write a post retelling Patti’s story. It is indeed one worth telling. Oh, and don’t pity her. She’s a real trooper, both stalwart and optimistic, determined to "rise from the ashes" and rebuild her business better than before. Knowing her, I have no doubt she’ll do just that. You’ll know too, because she will blog it all.

It’s easy to get started blogging…today’s blogging software is inexpensive, easy-to-learn, and does most of the heavy lifting for you.

However, it’s a lot more difficult to build a successful blog: one that attracts prospects and clients, establishes you as an expert or an industry leader, and helps you attain search engine "findability."

There’s some great advice out there for big companies and CEO’s who want to blog; just check out Debbie Weil’s BlogWrite for CEOs. However, when you’re a small business owner like me, not all the advice is directly transferable.

I wish the "today" me could go back and talk to the "then" me and give him (me?) some good advice on business blogging. It would have saved me a lot of time and frustration over the past year.

If you’re interested in learning from my mistakes, check out The 11 Biggest Mistakes Small Business Bloggers Make. (Email registration required.)

Plus, if you’ve got some of your own mistakes that you’d like to share, please take advantage of our comments and trackbacks below. After all, failure (or a mistake) is a much better teacher than success.

In the spirit of a task the Blog Herald has undertaken in reviewing 100 blogs in 100 days, blogger extraordinaire and small business blogging advocate, Paul Chaney has undergone an ambitious task of reviewing 52 small business blogs in 52 weeks.

Undoubtedly, small business blogs, like small business web sites, represent a significant growth opportunity. Yet most media attention is focused on large company blogging activities. Paul’s project is a great effort at generating visibility towards small business blogs and is sure to uncover innovative and interesting blog implementations.

Paul has received quite a few "nominations" already, however he may have some open yet.  So send any small business blog examples of your own or of your small business clients to him via email.

BTW, Paul did not ask me to post this, I asked him. We’re both blogging at AllBusiness.com and I think the small biz blog review is a great project.

Fast Company blogs about an interesting blogging experiment that does a twist on reality TV shows like The Restaurant.

With the help of the firm Transformist and a team of experts, Alane Ebner sets out to develop an architecture business in 10 weeks. Best of all, she and her team blog about their progress at Alane By Day.

While most of us who start a business don’t have the benefit of having
a team of experts mentoring us gratis, there’s still a lot to learn
from the day-to-day activities chronicled at Alane By Day.

Things like 13 strategies to start your own firm, how to develop an identity, or finding your customers
can be beneficial to any one who’s just beginning a business…or
anyone who’s running an established business, for that matter.

With
80% of new businesses failing in the first year, this blog makes for
interesting reading. Although other blogs have chronicled the start-up
phase, often there wasn’t a team of experts working to make the company
a success. Anyone who learns business lessons from The Apprentice might
be interested in picking up the thread in Alane By Day.

As of this writing, the blog is already at day 13 of 82, so there’s a number of posts to catch up on.

The anti-blogging blogs (or the reality-check blogs–take your pick) continue. This one is from Jim Logan and his post The Temptation and Reality of Business Blogs.

Jim rightly points out that blogs are probably not the tool a small business and solopreneurs should use to immediately grow your revenue. He also gives a list of some marketing endeavors that might have a more immediate impact on your company.

However, I would argue that business blogging should fall into Stephen Covey’s second quadrant: important but not urgent.

I don’t think many people would argue that a business blog alone is
enough marketing for any company…even a business blog consultant.
However, it can be a great, long-term investment for companies and
businesses looking to have a conversation with their prospects and
clients.

Where do you rank business blogs in importance when it comes to your company’s marketing?

 

Certainly
the dangers are massive, for both blogging and the companies concerned.
One hopes that blogging is developed and entrenched enough to withstand
an assault from corporates looking to exploit another ‘open source’
medium? But the market is powerful and I have a feeling it will be the
corporates who do it badly that will, in the end, feel the pain. “Don’t
go toward fake blogs. Don’t launch character blogs. Use a blog for what
it’s for, transparency,� said Steve Rubel, vice president of client
services at CooperKatz & Co., a New York PR firm.

The August 15, 2005 issue of BusinessWeek has an article on podcasts going mainstream and the impact Apple’s iTunes is having on indie shows and media giants in Podcast: David vs. Goliath.

As podcasts become a more common tool in small businesses’ Web
marketing toolbox, (as business blogs already have,) how will they
compete against media giants who can just reuse or re-purpose existing
content?

The article suggests a few things such as joining more informal networks (away from iTunes) such as Techpodcasts, the Association of Music Podcasting or Podcastoutlaws.

Small businesses may need to focus on their niche rather than a broad audience to begin. If Seth Godin is right in All Marketers Are Liars, finding an untapped niche that shares your world view might lead to something bigger…like a top 100 ranking on iTunes.

Good article in Inc.com last week runs down the "Top Ten" things you should know before starting a small business blog. Author Carole Matthews did her homework. I had a great conversation with her and she also quotes Paul Chaney (now contributing to this blog) and Anita Campbell. She lists the usual cautions:

– Understand that a blog is a two-way conversation
– Know what topics are off limits
– Use keywords in your titles and posts so your blog will get found by the search engines

She also mentions a pet peeve of mine: "Yes, you do need to be able to write." That’s not to say you need to be a published author before starting a blog. Far from it. But you do need to write coherently, succinctly, interestingly. And that’s a skill you can learn by blogging, er writing, a lot. Your thoughts?? Leave us a comment below.

P.S. I learned from Carole that Inc.com has maintained a blog, Fresh Inc., since August 2003. Funny… I had never run across it.

SignsNeverSleep.com is the blog of the Lincoln Sign Company, based in Lincoln, New Hampshire. It’s a charming blog, nicely designed (better, frankly, than the company’s main web site, if you ask me), and a neat mix of recently completed examples of the company’s work, a glimpse of the process of sign making in progress and personal news (a weekend hike, what J.D. is reading, a bear sighting, photos of the kids, etc.). J.D. Illes writes me:

We just recently started a weblog as the first stage in a whole redesign of our web-presence.  We are a small, custom-commercial signshop in a small resort community.

I think our blog will be a terrific tool to show our customers what it is we do.  Usually a customer comes by to visit just after we have spilled paint all over their sign by accident, not when we have just completed a beautiful project.  I am hoping giving them a peek inside our doors on a daily basis will help them get to know us.

…

Thanks

J.D. Iles

Thanks for the note, J.D., and best of luck!

UPDATE:
Paul Chaney of Radiant Marketing Group read this post and was apparently so interested that he tracked down J.D. of Lincoln Signs for an interview about why he’s blogging.

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Kirsten Osolind

Kirsten Osolind writes:

Hi Rick: I don’t make your blogroll. Darn. If I told you it was my birthday, would you add me for a gift? Perhaps not ‚Äì you don’t know me.

Oh, heck, I’m a sucker for a pretty face. Happy Birthday, Kirsten! (Unless, of course, you’re just yanking my chain and it’s not really your birthday, in which case I refer you to the gist of this post.) Kirsten’s blog statement of purpose (I love those):

RE:THIS BLOG…a fun, flippant BLOG with points of interest about women & small business, from re:invention’s founder, Kirsten Osolind. Dedicated to all good women & men (and those sorely deserving a good thunk on the head).

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Okay, okay, we get it, Microsoft loves blogs. Yet another advice piece from them for small businesses for blogs.

So, where is Bill’s blog, anyway?

Microsoft Business Solutions: The Four-Letter Word That Can Get People Excited About Your Products

Jill Fallon

Having a good niche is the secret the success of many businesses, and blogs are a great way to market to that niche. Jill Fallon has embodied that with her business Estate Vaults and its companion blogs, Legacy Matters and The Business of Life. I’m not entirely clear what the difference is between the two blogs (in general, I’m not a fan of multiple blogs for a single business author, but maybe there’s some good reason for it), but her “About the Author” page clearly describes the business proposition:

When she was essentially widowed for the second time, Jill Fallon was inspired to create EstateVaults‚Ñ¢ to help people take care of the business of their lives more easily and securely and at the same time keep their affairs in order for their families.
She believes that boomers – her target users of EstateVaults™ Рare the bridge between their non-digital parents and their totally digital children and grand-children. Boomers are at the time of life when questions about mortality loom larger even as life gets sweeter. With the proliferation of tools, they can create digital personal and family legacy archives to connect generations past, present and future, if only they get their act together.

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John Jantsch

Running a small business myself, I think “Duct Tape Marketing” says it all. John Jantsch has been running this blog for almost a year in support of his consulting service aimed at marketing services for small businesses. He recently was recognized by MarketingSherpa Readers’ Choice Best Blog Awards for the small business category.

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Dane Carlson

Dane Carlson, an entrepreneur, has started this blog seemingly just as a resource to other aspiring entrepreneurs, not as a promotion for his own business (in fact, it’s not even clear from his About page what his business is). He explains more of the blog’s mission:

Business Opportunities is a moderated list of legitimate of business opportunities for entrepreneurs. Its presented like a weblog with chronological archives and extensive outbound links.

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This blog (by an anonymous author, as far as I can see) appears to have a media revenue model (i.e., ad support), as opposed to consulting. It just celebrated its one year birthday last week (Happy Birthday!). Various useful resources for business bloggers, which I will monitor regularly.

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Debbie Weil

Consultant Debbie Weil has been publishing an email newsletter called WordBiz about business copywriting online for more than two years (as of this writing). She makes money by running seminars, consulting and selling reports, as well as ads in her newsletter and on her blog. Her blog features the same kind of breezy writing and straight-forward advice that has made her newsletter so popular among small and large businesses.

Her blog also includes a category on Blogging for Business, which I’ll be sure to scrape for all interesting entries to plug into this directory in the coming weeks.

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CEO Henry Copeland launched this do-it-yourself ad network for blogs nearly two years ago, and at that time there was a fair bit of skepticism that the business would ever pan out. Well, it has. The service now has more than 200 blogs using the system, each of which has at least 3,000 ad impressions each week. Some, such as InstaPundit and DailyKos, have millions of readers per month. The service has proven particularly popular with political advertisers — more than two dozen candidates in the presidental and other races have used it to reach political junkies through blogs. But many smaller and medium-sized companies are also find blogs a great way to advertise niche products. Blogs are ideal “for products that have a sensibility, not commodities, those looking to find audiences with a particular mindset,” Copeland said. Some of the biggest bloggers using the system are now earning thousands of dollars a month in advertising.

I have counseled BlogAds about its overall business strategy.

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Israel-based flower wholeseller. The business owner is cousin to Dan Bricklin, a well-known blogger and CEO of Software Garden, a software applications developer. He tells me, as we sat next to each other at the BloggerCon II conference, that the blog is really helping drive business for this company.

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Clip-n-Seal is an innovative consumer product, a plastic rod and clamp device, in various sizes, that seals bags securely. The company behind it has embraced blogs whole-heartedly. Not only do they maintain their own blog, under the News section of the site, which is a mix of customer news, marketing initiatives, PR coverage and other miscellaneous customer information, but they also have embraced blogs as a marketing outlet. Notably, they were one of the first advertisers for Blogstakes, a sweepstake program that drafts other bloggers in its promotions, which, they attest, was very successful for them in raising their awareness around the Net and lifting their Google rank.

In a recent post, founder D.L. Byron describes what it’s like to get BoingBoinged (we can only imagine).

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