Today’s article is a guest post by Paul Wallisan from webprofits.com.au. Paul Wallis is an award winning professional freelance writer, working in the US, Canada, Australia and Belgium. He’s published 13 books on lulu.com and some of some of his other work can be found at Digital Journal.

The business blog is unlike other blogs. Business blogs are valued for different reasons. They’re like an SEO search result, geared to motivated readers who want information value and quality. This is a far higher standard than “hobby” blogs, and it’s also a potentially tricky situation for bloggers.

There’s no sugar to be put on this situation: If the information doesn’t measure up to the audience requirements, you can expect serious consequences.

I’ve put together some Do’s and Don’ts to help people avoid those consequences.

The Don’ts for business blogs

This list is a little long, but you’ll see where it leads:

• Don’t recycle information: Old news is just that, and it’s appreciated accordingly. If you want peace and privacy, recycle business news. If you want readers, stay current.
• Don’t dumb things down: Ever. It’s insulting and it’s lousy writing technique. You’re writing to professionals. If they need information beyond your text and the links, they’ll ask. (Even worse, if you dumb down enough, you’ll get real idiots, not real readers. You’ll be writing kiddies investment news, etc.)
• Don’t touch trashy business opportunities: The great new Get Rich Quick In Your Dressing Gown thing is long dead (like a billion years ago), and it’s staying that way. Steer clear, because your reputation will go with it if you don’t.
• Don’t use spiel if you’re selling a product or service. Business people can spot it a mile off, because they’ve heard it and seen it before and usually didn’t like it then, either. If you’re really trying to sell something, stay original.
• Don’t get naïve or “clever” with sponsored materials: If you’re writing for a sponsor or supplier, say so. “I got this very interesting new (whatever) from (whoever) and…” This means your association with both product and supplier is clear, and you’re staying honest with your readers, which is always appreciated. You’ll be suspected of doing an ad if you don’t, anyway.
• Don’t imitate other business blogs: This is real “planned suicide”. It means you’ve lost the brand battle before you even start. Even if you can do it better than the other guy, you’ve compromised your own brand ID and have gone from unique selling point to joining a crowd of look-alikes. You might as well start looking at funeral plots.
• Don’t defame anyone: This modern audience is chronically, permanently, allergic to businesses that defame other businesses (competitors) just to gain trust. Avoid doing this and other mistakes, and never be purely negative and destructive as if you were writing a political blog.
• Don’t forget case studies: As simple as this may sound, case studies on business blogs are a very good way of earning trust from first time visitors. Case studies in the form of interviews work even better. Works better than regular testimonials. Don’t forget to it.

The Do’s for business blogs

This list is much shorter, but also very direct:

• Do be original and stand out: Following directly from not imitating other blogs, make your blog the one that really shows the way with better material, better media and better ideas. You win, they lose.
• Do check your facts: With this audience, you need to write like a journalist to the extent of checking information and verifying your points. If you don’t, expect to be haunted in very unambiguous ways.
• Do be professional: “Cute” doesn’t cut any mustard at all with the business crowd. Professional, expressive, articulate, insightful, and all the other professional characteristics will.
• Do what others are not doing: Experiment with your business blog. Try new ways of promoting your blog, increasing subscriptions, etc. Try and think of how to make your blog fun and sticky. Include some tutorials here and there, host weird competitions, do what others are not doing.

The bottom line

Emphasize your standout skills and always use your best quality as your benchmark for publishing.

Do you get stuck on articles to write on your blog? Coming up with article ideas for your blog can be very challenging; especially if you publish often. This happens to a lot of people including me. I have found a solution though and I am willing to share them with you. I will teach you 5 ways you can get hundreds (100′s) of blog article ideas.

Let’s get started.

1. Scan through books in your niche:

This is one easy way of getting tons of article ideas. Pick a book or whitepaper or report in your niche and scan through the table of contents for some ideas. You don’t have to copy the title word for word. All you should be doing is to get inspiration for your own article ideas. You can also scan through the real content of the book or report. I use this technique to get lots of article ideas and you can too. It works magic.

2. Q&A sites:

Question and answer sites like Startups.com (for business) and Yahoo answers (general topics), etc. are awesome places to find article ideas. These websites are updated every day with questions that people want answered. If people need answers to their questions, why don’t you write a blog post about what they are asking about. When you’re done with the post, you can go back to the Q&A site and answer the question, leaving a link back to your blog post as reference. That last tip is just a bonus, let’s not lose focus .

3. Online Video Sites:

You can search for a general keyword in your niche. Find videos on Youtube and other video sharing site that talk about this keyword. ‘Steal’ some ideas from the videos and put an article together for your readers.

4. Social Bookmarking Sites:

Visit social bookmarking sites that feature your blogs in your niche. Go through the titles and see if you can come up with your own ideas. Titles that are on the front page are titles that are in demand (in other words, solves a lot of peoples’ problems) but are rather scarce. Write similar articles if you can. You might also get lucky!

5. Blog Comments:

Comments on your blog and other people’s blogs are also places that you can pick blog post ideas quickly. When readers leave comments and raise concerns, that’s an opportunity to write a blog post to address those concerns. When you read other people’s blogs and someone raises issues you have knowledge about, that’s when you should start writing (or drafting an article) for your blog. When you read articles on other blogs in your niche and leave comments, be sure to subscribe to the comments if it is allowed. You will get updates whenever someone comments on that article. Try to find blog posts in those comments.

6. Forums:

Forums are also excellent places to find blog topic ideas. From people’s questions to comments to tutorial entries, you are assured of many sources of writing inspiration.

7. Your own experience:

Nothing beats your own experience when it comes to finding blog post ideas. What can you do that you can teach your readers to do? How did you solve that problem you had when… Share your experience in a story form or just teach other people how you deal certain things in your niche. Solutions are always in demand because people always have problems.

Conclusion:

When you take the tips I have given you seriously, you will not have any trouble coming up with article ideas. If you are too busy, you can hire me to write your articles for you. Contact me to discuss what you want.

Guest blogging helps you spread the word about your business or website. It is one way I get more people to view Sociatic and increase my RSS subscriber counts. It is also definitely one of the ways to become a better content marketer. Have you found any value in guest posting? If you haven’t, then you haven’t been looking in the right places.

Here are 10 places you can find blogs to guest post on. No matter the niche you’re in, I promise you’ll find a blog to guest post on.

• Look on Invesp: This blog ranking directory provides a lot of insight on different blogs in different niches. It was on this site that I learned that Seth Godin has over 450,000 RSS subscribers. I don’t think he accepts guest posts though so don’t rush to contact him. Visit Invesp’s blog rank directory to see if you can find a blog that’ll be interested to accept a guest post from you.

• Alltop: If you think there are no blogs in your niche to guest post on, guess again. AllTop is a news aggregator site that covers a diverse range of niches. I’m sure you’ll find some blogs there to guest post on so check them out.

• Blog Ad networks: Sites such as AdvertiseSpace, BlogAds and BuySellAds (for creative industry) makes it easier for you to identify big blogs by sharing some stats with you. These are great places to look for blogs that accept guest posts.

• Use MyBlogGuest: This is a forum community where bloggers give info about their blogs and then ask for guest posts from other users. You can also request to post an article on a blog whereby you share the terms and conditions of your offer.

• Technorati.com: Look in the Top 100 blogs in the world or top 100 in your niche to submit guest articles to. Better still; look in the top 10 blogs in your niche. Mostly, these are the blogs with lots of subscribers and authority. That’s what you need.

• Blogrolls of popular blogs in your niche: This is an overlooked place when it comes to finding blogs to guest post on. Authority bloggers normally list other authority bloggers in their blogroll. Most of the time, they blog about the same topic so be sure to check these places out too.

• Adage Power 150 blogs: The power 150 is a list of the top marketing blogs. If you want to reach the business community, be sure to request to guest post on one of the Power 150 blogs.

• Junta42 Top Blogs: Junta42 is the authority on content marketing and their list of the Top 42 blogs is a great place to find blogs to guest post on. You’ll find blogs covering topics in the area of content marketing, social media, and marketing in general.

• Check out TopRankBlog’s List of Top Online Marketing blogs: If you want to reach readers interested in business and web technology, try reaching out to the authors of the blogs listed with a guest post.

• Check out the social bookmarking and voting sites: Normally, the blogs on the homepages of sites such as Delicious, Digg, Reddit, etc. , receive lots of traffic and they have many subscribers too due to their success on these sites.

Other Tips to Remember About Guest Blogging:

• It is not every blog that accepts guest posts. Look for a link or page that asks for guest posts to be submitted. If you don’t find any, you can contact the publishers of the blog to find out if they do.
• Guest Posting works best when you write for a blog with many subscribers. If you write for blogs with just a few subscribers, there wouldn’t be any significant increase in your overall traffic and subscriber count (unless you plan to write a guest post every day). When it comes to guest posting, I don’t post on blogs with less than 5,000 subscribers. You can set your own subscriber limits.
• Use Quantcast to check the blog’s RSS subscriber count if not available elsewhere. You can also ask the bloggers about this.
• Hang around on a blog for a while before submitting a guest post. Mingle with its community and provide valuable comments. Leaving 2 or 3 valuable comments is enough to get the publisher’s attention.

Guest blogging is a really great way of marketing your business online on a shoestring and building a community around your brand. What other tips can you share regarding guest posting?

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Do you get stuck when it comes to writing new blog posts or newsletters for your business? Everybody does at a point in time.

I have compiled a list of 25 topics you can use as a basis for writing your next 25 articles.

In this post, I have substituted “community” to replace “customers, clients and subscribers”. So when you see ‘community’, it may mean any of the three words.

Fasten your seat belt and let’s begin ;

1. What we did when customer ‘X’ …; Who is customer X and what did they do or say about your products? Where did they do or say it and why did they do or say it?

2. Product/service updates we’re working on. So your already awesome products are getting even more awesome features. Your community needs to know about this.

3. Why our competitors can’t compete with us. Show your customers your remarkable side. A truly remarkable company is almost like a monopoly. Do you agree?

4. What our customers complain most about and what we are doing about it. Your customers are not happy about … and what you’re doing to make it better.

5. What our customers praise us for and what we think about it. Your customers say you are the best at … Your products helped them to … And you say you …

6. What we wish our customers will help us achieve more of. In other words, you will be telling your customers that you need their help and they will be glad to help. At the end of your message, ask, “will you help us?”

7. About our product’s raw materials. What important roles does each of your raw materials play in your products? Educate your community on what they are using.

8. How our company is using social media. Social media is going to help you do what? Use the right words to build up your content. Instead of saying it will help you sell more, say; it will help you reach more customers. If you say ‘sell’ your message will sound self-centered. It’s cool to see more people will be taking the same actions your community took when they first met you.

9. What features we have on our Facebook fan page. So you have analytics, a cool video, cool design and a newsletter on your Facebook fan page. That’s so cool. Before saying “go and take a look at our fan page”, tell them the cool things you have put on there. Most will go and really take a look.

10. Videos we shared on our Youtube channel this day/week/month/quarter/year. Okay, so you’re on Youtube and you have a channel. Have you told your community about it? Many people don’t. Instead integrating, they disintegrate. Tell your community about your Youtube channel and the videos you share there.

11.What people say @ us on Twitter. Show your community that there are conversations going on with you on Twitter. Some will automatically follow you and say something @ you.

12.Our best selling items and why they sell so well. You have bragging rights. Use them. Want to sell more of your products, brag and sell more.

13. What lessons other businesses can learn from us. Flaunt your strengths and achievements to your community. Add that you couldn’t have done it without them.

14.What our last survey showed us about our customers. You surveyed your customers, now show them the results and let them know what you will be using the results for. As a customer, I hate it when I participate in a survey and don’t get to see the results. Don’t be mean. Please share .

15.Why and how we chose our brand ambassador. What are the responsibilities of your brand ambassador(s)? How did you choose them? Choose your brand ambassador from your own customers please.

16. Who our partners are and why we partnered with them. Tell your community why you need your partners and why it matters to them.

17. How we built our communities on social media and networking sites; Show them how you gathered all your following. Show them how you cheated or failed to cheat . Show them some stats to serve as social proof, if you numbers are high.

18. How and why we got featured in the news or a top blog. Show your community how likable you are. This will let them take you serious and they will see you as an authority in whatever you got in the news for. Link to the news source.

19. New businesses/ services we are building. What’s happening in production? Give just a little detail to build anticipation.

20. When our next contest will be hosted and what we will be giving away. Build anticipation and get your community coming back to see if there are any updates concerning the competition. WildfireApp can help you run a fancy, buzz filled contest campaign.

21. What your company’s customer traditions are; Maybe you give away a bundle of products for cheap during your birthday or you organize meetups during your birthday for your customers to meet each other or you … etc.

22. How to use ‘your product’s name’ to … Show your customers different ways they can use your products. If your products are customizable, show them how they can customize them.

23. How we celebrated our birthday in-house; What did your company’s employees do on your birthday? Share some multimedia will you .

24. How and why we choose our customers for our adverts; Show your customers the reason why you care about them.

25. Customer interview #1; yea, interview customers on your blog, ask them what they think about your products, how they use your products, what they will like to see in your products, etc. This will serve as testimonials and will add some humanness to your website/blog. Reward interviewed customers with a heavy discount or free stuff from your product line. They will send the word out and … you know what will happen . Don’t forget to change “#1″ to “#2″, “#3″ and so on as you interview more customers.

That was fun. Now you have 25 topics to write on. Get started today. Do you see yourself using these post ideas on your blog or newsletter? What do you normally struggle with when it comes to blogging or writing newsletters? Share your views.

Blog auditing can be explained as an examination of all aspects of a blog to measure its effectiveness. It is a way of finding and fixing faults concerning your blog. It is an essential technique for general blog improvement.

You will need to take a pen and paper or open a word editor to take notes and answer the questions in this article.

I have divided each the audit questions into easy to adapt categories so that you will be able to understand the audit better. You should also divide your audits into these categories.

Now that we are all set, let’s start.

Design Audit

• Are my colors well blended? Ask yourself if your brand’s colors is well blended with your website colors. For example, if you have a brown website design and a pink logo, that is “yuck”.

• What can I cut out from my sidebar? So many people put unnecessary widgets on their blog’s sidebar that does nothing but to clutter the design of the blog. Remove the irrelevant widgets and leave only the relevant ones. I consider the calendar widget irrelevant. What widget do you find irrelevant? Remove it from your blog, fast.

• Do I have the essential pages set up? Basic pages you need for your blog aside your homepage are: “About” page and “Contact” page. You can have additional pages you find relevant. Examples are: “Resources” page, “Services” page, and a Customized 404 page. Michael Dunlop from IncomeDiary recently wrote about 20+ Blog Pages Every Blogger Needs To Have.

• Are comments and trackbacks separated? Comments+trackbacks in the same box= Clutter. Separate comments from track backs. Read Separate Trackbacks from Comments on Your WordPress Blog to help you do that if you don’t already have them separated.

• Do I have an author box? An author box gives your readers a brief description about the person who wrote the article they just read. When you have guest post writers, author boxes introduces them to your readers.

Subscriptions Audit

• Are my subscription boxes well placed? Make sure your subscription boxes are well placed. To increase the number of people who subscribe to your blog, place your subscription boxes in multiple areas. Very good places you can place your boxes are: directly after posts (before the comments box), in your sidebar, a “Subscriptions” or “Join Us” page.

• Do I have bait for my subscription boxes? By bait, I mean a freebie or any other valuable offer. Have a reward for people who subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on Twitter and “Like” you on Facebook. Common rewards people give out are eBooks, e-courses, website themes, et cetera.

• Do I have any social proof to show? Apart from baits, sometimes you will need to show visitors to your blog that other people read your content. You can do this by showing your subscription numbers; Facebook fan page subscribers, Twitter followers and RSS subscription numbers. If you don’t have large subscription numbers, don’t show it on your blog. Other ways of showing social proof are: Top commentators, number of times your articles have been read, recent visitors using Mybloglog or Amungus, et cetera. There are plugins that can help you display these info to people.

Content Audit

• Is my content easy to read and understand? Cut out jargon, write concisely and cut out big vocabulary. It turns people off. Make your content as easy to understand as possible. Images and graphics can also be added to make your content easy to digest.

• What calls to action can I use on each page? Make your blog like a book. When someone visits your homepage, where will be the next place you will want them to go to? Perhaps your “Subscribe” or “Join us” page or maybe straight to your pillar article pages. On your article pages, perhaps you will want to “call” people to subscribe by placing your subscription box in your article. Use the appropriate design and calls to action to move your visitor from page 1 to page n.

• How can I increase page views? You can increase page views by installing a “related posts” plugin or by linking to your older articles. Setting up a “resources” page has also been known to increase number of page views.

• Are my headlines catchy? Do your headlines have “read” appeal? Your headlines should grab the attention of the people you are writing the article for. If you are not able to grab their attention with your headline, they may never read your content.

• Do I have link bait content? Contents that have tremendous value are considered link bait. This is because they are more likely to be linked to by other bloggers. Examples of link bait content are “How to” articles and list posts.

• Is my content well formatted? You need to have a formatting style and stick to it. Consider colors you will use as sub-headings, headline tags you will use, your in-post thumbnail positions, et cetera. Once you’ve made your choices, stick to it.

Monetization Audit

• Is my current monetization method working? Do you have banner ads on your sidebar with affiliate links in them? Have you made any sales in the past month or 2? Do you have Adsense on your blog? Are you making enough from it? If your monetization methods are not working, change them, don’t quit your blog. I used to monetize my blog wrongly but now, I have found a better way to monetize it.

• What other monetization methods can I employ? You can choose any monetization you find suitable from the following list:

1) Making and selling digital goods such as eBooks, video tutorials, graphic design, web templates, et cetera.

2) Starting a membership site

3) Providing services like writing, coaching, setting up blogs, or any service related to the niche you blog about.

4) Selling ad spaces privately.

5) Selling other people’s products; a.k.a. affiliate marketing.

Before you start with any of the monetization methods, make sure you have some proof of success. Say,

1) When you are doing affiliate marketing or Adsense, you need to make sure you have enough traffic if you want to get real results.

2) Before you can sell banner ads, you have to be able to show advertisers that people read your site by showing them some stats.

3) Before you start a membership site on your topic, you should have had some success or experience that you can show and tell people about.

4) Before providing coaching services, you should have enough knowledge and experience about the service you are selling.

Marketing Audit

• Do I have guest posts out on other blogs? Guest posting is one cool way of getting your blog noticed. It also helps you get more inbound links and helps increase your page rank and search engine rankings if you optimize your byline.

• Do I have a well branded social media presence? Do your Social media profiles have your logo on them? What about your Fan page names, Youtube channel names and Twitter handles? Do they have your brand name in them? What about your Facebook fan page landing pages, Twitter backgrounds and Youtube backgrounds?

• Is my blog showing up in all the major search engines? You need to submit your blog to the major search engines. Make sure your site is showing up in the search engines. Check your analytics results to see if you are getting any visits from some search engines. Search for your blog in the major search engines. If your blog is not there, submit it.

• Do my comments on other blogs start conversations? Don’t just leave “Thank you” comments. They are boring and so common. Leave insightful comments that generate conversations. This can help you build new relationships with other bloggers.

Measurement Audit:

• Do I have analytics installed?  Are you tracking your blog’s visitors? If you are, that’s great. If you are not tracking, better start now. Set up your analytics system and track your visitors. If you can add heatmap tracking, it will give you more insight about what you visitors do on your blog.

• Do I have brand mention alerts set up? Set up alerts in Google Alerts and SocialMention so that you can get notified of any mentions of your brand online. You will get email notifications when someone mentions your brand on Twitter, on their blog, in forums, on Facebook, and any other online places you can think of.

• Which content of your post types get the most comments? Can you work on more post types like those ones? Which posts get the most search engine visits?

• What keywords do you rank high for? By high ranking, I mean page or 2 in Google. Can you improve that ranking? You can check your rankings out by setting up Google Webmaster Central to track that data for you if you don’t already have a system to check that.

Conclusion Au…(uh-um):

After performing the audit, develop a day to day plan to help you fix the stuff that you have not already worked on. You can develop a 10 day plan, 20 day plan or even 30 day plan to help you fix your blog.

What questions will you add to these when performing a blog audit?