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7 Reasons Why Your Business Should Be Blogging
6 Tips For Blocking Out That Writer’s Block
Time To Tweet! Golf Ireland And The #LadiesIrishOpen @KilleenCastle

7 Reasons Why Your Business Should Be Blogging

Posted: 02 Aug 2012 02:23 AM PDT

While Blogs are mainly thought of as being associated to a particular individual, businesses can use them effectively too. As most know by now, a blog is an online journal where articles of a certain niche, interest or discipline are published on a regular basis – and so it is not necessary for it to be all written or associated with an individual – it can be moderated by a group and therefore a business.

A well written Blog has so many benefits. It's a great way of building relationships. It increases readers, Twitter followers and Facebook fans, among others, which effectively creates an online community. It also improves online visibility and promotes the website the blog is housed in.

Branding the business

One of the major benefits is that Blogs are useful in branding one's identity (if it's an individual running it), or branding the business as a whole. Therefore it is very important that the individual or business's personality come out in the blog depending on how they are trying to brand themselves.

For a business to do this effectively it's especially important that the blog contains informative, useful and compelling articles that are related to the business's target market.

Building trust and authority

Many businesses fall into the trap of focusing on just what it does, on its products and operations – however most prospects and customers don't care about that.

They care about only those things that affect them in life. Therefore a business should always have that in mind when it determines its editorial policy, and the range of topics it will allow on its blog.
The key is to create and build trust amongst its visitors, followers and clients, steadily creating a good reputation for the brand and company. This can be done if visitors feel like the company understands what's important to them. Also by discussing topics of interest there is a higher chance of engagement with these customers.
By building trust and authority in the eyes of their visitors, a business earns the right to do some self-promotion. This shouldn't happen on every post, however its generally accepted that this is more than reasonable if the content provided by the business is valued.

This is really where blogging can pay off for a business. They can get their message directly to a captive audience that wants to read what it has to say.

So it does take quite a bit of care and work to build a blog that is valued by the Business's target market, however the benefits can outweigh the effort. While I have touched on some of the benefits above, there are more if a blog is built correctly. Let's go through them one by one..

The Benefits of Blogging for Business

# 1. Creates Good Reputation for the Company

Blogs help build the product, brand and company reputation positively. Informative entries in blogs help build credibility and class. It also helps establish the company as an authority, a cut above the rest and not just another service or product provider. It allows the company to showcase its knowledge and therefore gives its audience and prospects an opportunity to gain a greater appreciation of the company.

# 2. Product and Brand Promotion

Blogs spread the word about the company and its products. As mentioned, if a company is able to build an audience that trusts them through its informative posts then its visitors will understand a little bit of self- promotion. This can help the company launch new products, get feedback on products to improve them and therefore help sales in all sorts of ways.

# 3. Increasing Web Visibility

By writing compelling articles for the target market, there's a higher probability that the blog will also gain more traffic over time. This is because there will be more people who share and recommend articles on the blogs. This will naturally attract back links which ranks the blog high on the search results pages. As long as the Business has set up the blog to be SEO friendly, the off page benefits of building a popular blog can rank the blog well for its major terms.

# 4. Sharing what the Business Believes In

Almost all businesses have mission and vision statements. Some also have their values publicly defined. Most of these are honestly very vague, and meaningless because the way most companies behave, are not in line with what they claim their mission is.

A blog provides an opportunity for the business to reveal its personality, what it really believes in, and what it stands for on more than a page. It gives the opportunity for businesses to tackle major issues with its target audience, allows it to set a tone for the communication between it and its target market. Essentially, it is an opportunity for the business to have its values and statements come to life in real life over time.

# 5. Providing Education and Information

Blogs are effective in educating the public about the impact the business is having in the community, and to its target market, through its products, services, sponsorships, community projects and so on. Again it is an avenue for its target market to gain a better appreciation for all the things the business is involved in.

# 6. Creating a Solid Client Base

Blogs have the power to create a large community of clients and like-minded people. They generate more members through referrals, word of mouth, and other forms of information dissemination and advertising.

# 7. Facilitate efficient communication in its community

As a community of a particular niche, blogs can help facilitate communications between clients, stakeholders, suppliers, and others concerned.

Creating and maintaining a business blog can take a lot of work because the success of it depends on how well the business is able to relate to its target market, engage it and build a community around it. To do this the business will have to go beyond focusing only on its own products and services, but rather be outward focused on how to enrich the lives of its visitors through its content. If it is able to do this, then it can enjoy the numerous benefits from having a successful blog.

Therefore if you are currently running a blog for your business or considering starting one, think about your visitors, think about what's most important to them, think about what problem they are trying to solve by searching for a company like yours, and you will start on the right track to building a blog that is seen as an authority in your industry.

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6 Tips For Blocking Out That Writer’s Block

Posted: 02 Aug 2012 12:30 AM PDT

Writer's block is synonymous with Authors. However as a person who writes a lot of copy for marketing material such as brochures and press releases, I can assure you that you don't have to be a Dickens to suffer a creative mental freeze.

How do you get around it? Well sitting at your desk staring at your screen is not going to work. Shocker! Here's some small tips that work great for me:

# 1. Have a creative safe

Mine is Evernote. If you're on the road and you think of a great phrase write it down! It can be a theme, topic, title or anything, but if you think of it don't overate your ability to recall it from memory later. How many times have you said to yourself, "Oh God, what was that word again I wanted to use?".

# 2. Personal Inspiration

Are you personally interested in what you are writing about? Can you write about it from personal experience? Your writer's block can be related to a lack of personal experience and inspiration. A lot of my marketing copy revolves around the agricultural industry.

I'm not a farmer, but talking with them on an issue or about a product really helps me to get into their psyche.
Ask someone else for their thoughts and perspective on the topic.

# 3. Stop redrafting sentences

Very often we sit pulling sentences apart only to swop around words and move commas. If a sentence is not right and you're spending time on it, scrap it! Think of a completely different way to say it. Don't get stuck on something small. You could just be overrating it's importance!

# 4. Trying too hard to be eloquent?

Are you trying too hard to impress others and prove something to yourself?

Simple, straight forward sentences that get straight to the point are the ultimate. Unless you're writing a Shakespearean masterpiece, keep the syllables to a minimum.
You're not impressing anyone and if it's a marketing piece, you're losing a potential customer or greatly reducing the chances of being covered in a blog or by a journalist.

# 5. How do you write and where do you write?

As strange as it sounds, I know some people who only get writer's block after when using a word processor. They have to put pen to paper first and then type it up. What feels natural? If you're awkward on an iPad, then you have two barriers:

creativity for the words
and the annoyance of not being proficient on technology.

Make sure that the only challenge is what you say not how you punch the letters in.

Also where do you write? Try a different location if you don't like the current one. Even if it's in work, bring down your laptop to the canteen and try writing there. Find your 'happy place'.

# 6. Prioritize Differently

If you have multiple different items to write and your stuck on one, switch!

If a different topic is more interesting to you, start with that one.

Once the words flow on one topic, other less creative items will come together for you.
Prioritize where possible to suit productivity not deadlines. That's the key to planning for creativity.

Have you ever been affected by writer's block? How do you beat the block? Share you tips in the comments section below.

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Time To Tweet! Golf Ireland And The #LadiesIrishOpen @KilleenCastle

Posted: 01 Aug 2012 04:13 AM PDT

Live Tweeting at a Golf Tournament! We will be Tweeting from the following account @TimeToPlay_Golf and on Facebook . As your keen Tweak Your Biz Golfer, I will be live tweeting on behalf of Fáilte Ireland's "Golf Ireland Time to Play" team at this year's Ladies Irish Open.

The event will take place at Killeen Castle in Co. Meath on the Bank Holiday weekend from the 3rd to the 5^th August. By live tweeting, we hope to help raise the profile of the tournament and Irish golf on the Twitter stage. In this blog post, I'll detail what live tweeting from an event should look like.

**So what will we be Live Tweeting about this week?**

During the tournament we will tweet about players, shots they are about to play and shots they have hit.
We will take pictures, some fun and some not so fun and up-load them via Instagram.
We will comment on the beautiful surroundings @KilleenCastle and hopefully some good Irish weather???

Twitter & Golf

Using Twitter as part of the event is a great way to engage our audience:

Give live scoring up-dates from the course.
Watching the leader boards closely, re-act and report on the players making a move.
Twitter is very popular among professional golfers so we will be able to engage with them, as we report on their scoring, @mention them and some may even @reply after their rounds.

Irish Ladies Players Participating

We have three Irish professional golfers in the field, plus two of the most exciting golfers in the world

The Maguire twins arrive at Killeen Castle

The Maguire twins, Leona and Lisa - these 17 years olds are already seasoned amateurs, hail from Ballyconnell, County Cavan and play their golf in the Slieve Russell Golf club. A big future in the professional ranks is predicted for the twins but that is a while off yet.
@RebeccaCoakley, @DelaneyTara and @DanielleMcVeigh. Checking in with them over the last two weeks in the run up to the #LadiesIrishOpen, they are really looking forward to the event.

We hope that you will join in the Live Tweeting fun and you may even be inspired to pick up the clubs and start playing Golf. What better may than to spend your leisure time than shooting #birdies and #pars walking in some of the most picturesque parts of Ireland.

Tips for covering an event on Twitter:

Create Your Own Hashtag: Using an event hashtag gives your audience a twitter search topic that is to easily follow. The hashtag also ensures that your Tweets will be part of the larger conversation.
Research: Make a list of the names, Twitter handles and any websites you will be talking about / routing people to. Pre-event put the website links though a URL shortener.
Get the word out ahead of the event: Alert your followers that you'll be Live-tweeting in the run up to the event - include the event hashtag, for example, #ladiesirishopen, in all of your event promotions such as blog pieces, website features etc. If you have printed material to support the event, you're your event hashtag and your twitter account. Promote off Twitter. You should also notify your Facebook fans, blog readers, LinkedIn connections, etc that you will be live tweeting during the event.
Tweet Using a Twitter Client: Use a platform such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to keep track and to monitor the event - respond and retweet where appropriate.
A picture tells thousand words: Photos and Twitter go together, especially when they show scenes that your followers don't usually get to see. Use a tool like TwitPic or Instagram or to tweet the photo out.
Give people a sense of place: We will feature interesting facts, behind the scenes photos, stories etc – give your audience the insider perspective - information they will not get anywhere else. Tweet important quotes, actions, developments, observations, crowd reactions – not a transcript of the event! It is a bit like Radio commentary really, you have to set the scene and paint/up-load the pictures. Remember that it's not about the number of tweets you get out there – it's about the quality of the ones you produce which will get the most RT's.

Join in the fun! Follow the live tweeting action of this year's Ladies Irish Open #ladiesirishopen

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joi, 2 august 2012