Blogging When You’re REALLY Out of Ideas

Every mom has a repertoire of easy dinners she can pull out of her pantry when she’s out of groceries or out of ideas. You know the ones - those easy, never fail, always please family favorites you can throw together with a can of this and a box of that. Great for those busy nights or when you’re feeling tired.

When it comes to blogging, it’s also a good idea to have some blogging “cheats” for those inevitable dry spells. Here are a few ideas that have worked for me and other bloggers:

• Recaps. This might look like a “week in review” roundup of excellent blog posts you’ve written or read in the last week. This one is great for establishing goodwill with other bloggers you admire. You might like this one so much you decide to do it on a regular basis.You can also publish your greatest/most commented on/etc posts on a particular topic. This is particularly valuable to your new readers who may not have read some of your best work. It allows them to see some of your archived content.
• One year ago… Similar to a recap, this one is a list of some of the popular posts you published one year ago. It’s easy to simply search for all the posts you wrote a year ago inside your blog’s control panel. Find the best ones and spotlight them.
• Twitter roundup. Consider copying and pasting some of the best, funniest, or most interesting Tweets that are relevant to your market.You could also ask a question of your followers, and paste their answers into your blog. Lynn Terry, Kelly McCausey and our very own resident Sweetie Alice have all done this with success.
• Ask a question. Oh this has got to be the easiest of all the cheats! Simply ask your readers a thought provoking question and leverage the power of your blog as a survey tool. Let THEM do all the work creating content for a change!You can also publish a question your subscribers or readers have emailed you. Get their permission first or publish it anonymously. People love to feel like they’re helping others. Let them be the experts.
• Memes. Participate in memes like Wordless Wednesday (and Tell Me Thursday), Thankful Thursday, Monday Motivation, and others. If you’re feeling a bit of blogger’s block, these are great for keeping things fresh.
• Interview someone. Have you read a great book lately? Email the author some questions and post the interview on your blog.Is there a reader who leaves great comments on your blog? Introduce them in your post. Publish success stories, case studies, etc… these again create goodwill but also give you interesting content that you don’t have to work really hard for.
• Be an editor. Instead of always being a writer/blogger, consider serving as editor from time to time. Accept content and publish it if that makes sense for your market.For instance, on a parenting blog, you could accept parenting tips and advice, funny stories or photos, embarrassing moments, birth stories, product reviews, etc. For a wahm blog, publish wahm success stories and press releases.

Even the most prolific blogger occasionally runs out of ideas. Keep these ideas in your virtual pantry and pull them out to create something tasty for your readers.

Blog Hosting - Where is Best?

“Where Should You Host Your Blog” from Lynette Chandler, Creator of Blogging Starter Pack & co-teacher at IM Blogging Bootcamp

Should you host your blog yourself or pay someone to host it? It doesn’t matter if you’re a newbie or a veteran this question always comes up when creating a new blog. Usually someone new to blogging would gravitate to hosting a blog themselves or get a free blog and as time goes by with experience they begin to ponder maybe paid blog hosting isn’t so bad after all. So what is better?

To answer this question, let’s first look at how a blog is created. Just like creating web pages, first, you need a software or script that will take your entries, format it and publish it to the web. The second component of a blog, is the web space, where the software should publish to, a home for the blog pages.

Knowing this information, let’s review the different ways to host a blog:

Full blog host
This is where the blogging system or software is provided for you and your blog is also published to a web space provided by the host. Blogger, SquareSpace and Typepad fall into this category. It’s very much like creating a website with a site builder.

Hosted blog software but published elsewhere
This is where the blog software is provided for you but the blog pages are published to another website or web host altogether. By doing this, the software acts as a publishing system like FrontPage except it creates nicely formatted blogs. Blogger is probably the most well known for this. Yes Blogger can do both. Publish to their host or to yours. As a comparison, this is like using FrontPage to publish your website.

Blog software and blog are hosted on your web server
This is where you would install the blog script (software) on your web server – it can be any web hosting account. And when you publish, the blog itself resides on your web server also. To draw a parallel, this technique is like buying web hosting and then installing a content management system on it to help you build web pages.

If you’re new to building web pages or have built sites using site builders then you might want to go with a fully hosted blog. These hosts do all the nitty gritty for you and there’s very little technical stuff you need to know. If you can point and click, you can build a blog with a full blog host.

Editor’s Note: Personally, I wouldn’t recommend using the hosted options where you’ll receive a URL like mysite.blogger.com. You want something with your own name and something that you completely control and own. The learning curve with hosting is minimal and definitely worth the effort. But a word of caution that Lynette mentions below:

Having said that, just because you’re seasoned at building web pages doesn’t mean full blog hosts won’t work for you. In fact, if you have many blogs this becomes very appealing since you won’t have to worry about upgrading the blog script, people exploiting the script, making plug-ins work or what happens when your web host decides to disable part of your blog functions because there is a security hole. All you do is concentrate on blogging. After a while, blogging becomes more important than maintaining your blog and that’s the way it should be.

Editor’s Note: I wouldn’t let the worry of maintaining or upgrading scripts keep you from hosting your own. I haven’t a clue how to do update a script, but I definitely know how to hire people who do!

Next up, hosted software but blog is published to your website.
This seems to be the best of both worlds. At time of writing, Blogger is one of the best ways to do this but because of its popularity often, you find the system too slow to publish or completely down just when you have a hot idea to share. The idea is good but you’ll also be depending on someone else’s availability to publish your blog. It’s much like using a friend’s computer to build your web pages and you know how that can go.

Editor’s Note: This is true. I have been using Blogger and hosting it myself for several years. Although I’m mostly happy, I have experience downtimes, technical glitches, etc.

Finally, you have the option to use scripts. This is also a very popular method. The flexibility it allows is very liberating because you can mould the blog anyway you want. You can even get a programmer to create custom plug-ins or customize the whole blogging system the way you want it. In short, you can do pretty much anything you want.

The down side, you need at the very basic, some knowledge of HTML or publishing web pages. Also the burden of upgrading, troubleshooting and maintaining the script is on you. If you have one or two blogs it’s not so bad but once you start having more, it can be quite tedious. You also have to consider all the other responsibilities of maintaining the script as mentioned earlier.

Armed with this information, you should be able to figure out which one is for you. If you’re still undecided, think of how you would do it if you’re creating a regular website. Chances are your choice method for publishing a website is also the best method for you to create a blog.

About the Author:

Lynette Chandler helps entrepreneurs start blogging and make the most of their blogs. Get a free video how to set up your blog at Blogging Starter Pack.

Want to publish this content? Click here to join the affiliate program.

Make Your RSS Feeds Easy to Find

“Are Your RSS Feeds Auto Discovery Friendly?” from Lynette Chandler, Creator of Blogging Starter Pack & co-teacher at IM Blogging Bootcamp

Just imagine. Every time someone visits your website, their browser notifies them of your RSS feed. No, it’s not as interruptive and no where near as annoying as popup subscription boxes but still a good chance to get people to subscribe to something you have to offer.

In a nutshell, that’s how auto discovery works. There ’s usually a small flag somewhere in the browser telling people your feed is available for them and if the visitor is interested in subscribing, they will simply click subscribe - much like bookmarking a page.

Now you know how it works, why is it so important?

For one, many feed readers and browsers already support auto discovery RSS feeds. But perhaps what’s more important, Microsoft is incorporating this starting with Internet Explorer 7. Internet Explorer still commands a good chunk of browser share out there, especially those who are new to the Internet or non technical Internet users. If your RSS feeds are not auto discovery enabled, it’s a good chance you’ll lose out on a bunch of subscribers.

As it is today, browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari can auto discover feeds. Many use this to subscribe because it’s just so much easier. While this group may not be that large but why should you not take advantage? If just making your feeds auto discovery friendly you get an extra subscriber, even if it’s only one it would be worth it because it costs nothing but maybe 2 minutes of your time.

So how do you find out if your feeds are auto discovery friendly? The good news is, if you’re using a blog to manage your content, many have this feature built in. But it doesn’t hurt to just check it anyway. If you don’t use a
blog, chances are, your feed is not auto discovery enabled.

Before I go, here are two little tips that would help your RSS distribution and subscription using auto discovery.

1. Put the auto discovery tag in other web pages too. Just because it’s not a blog doesn’t mean you can’t have an RSS feed on it. Take advantage of that, put your feed in your main website’s template. Now you have two opportunities to get in touch with people. When you update your website and when you update your blog.

2. If you use a service like FeedBurner to track your subscriptions, remember to update the feed URL in your blog or website template. This way, you’re capturing all your feed traffic statistics.

What’s next? Go make your RSS feeds auto discovery friendly right now. Because RSS is not always visible to us, don’t run the risk of forgetting this.

About the Author:

Lynette Chandler helps entreprenuers leverage readily available technology for their marketing. Learn more about RSS and blogging at Blogging Starter Pack.

Want to publish this content? Click here to join the affiliate program.

Avoid These Business Blogging Mistakes

“Top 5 Mistakes Business Bloggers Make” from Lynette Chandler
Creator of Blogging Starter Pack & co-teacher at IM Blogging Bootcamp

It’s understandable. After all, blogging is still relatively new to the majority of bloggers and many businesses are still trying to make sense of the whole blogging scene. Also things evolve as blogging starts to mature, so a good strategy yesterday may turn into a mistake today. These are some of the most common mistakes a blogger makes.

Not Asking For Comments

Bloggers always agonize over the lack of comments. But the problem is not that people don’t read the blog or don’t want to comment but the blogger hasn’t given the opportunity for readers to comment. Just like asking for people to order a product, you’ve got to coax people to spend their 3 or 4 precious minutes to comment on your blog. Ask for opinions. People love giving it. Ask for reader’s experiences, input or help to accomplish something. Ask people to suggest something to you e.g. You’re getting incorporated, ask people for suggestions, tips and recommendations. Asking is a way of telling people it’s ok to speak their mind and that you’re open to alternatives.

Not Hosting On Their Own Domain
Give thought into your blog. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon. You need to figure out where it’s taking you before you hop on for the ride. Like any web site you may build, think of your blog as a long term marketing communication channel. A Blogspot or Typepad URL is not only unprofessional, you don’t own it. Nothing against these blogging services; they’re excellent tools but for long term marketing purposes, go for your own domain.

This way you control where you want to publish the blog. Tomorrow, if you outgrow these services, you can easily export your blog to another tool, another host without losing too much established traffic. A domain is also easier for people to remember and easier for you to publicize.

Not Maximizing Their Blog Content
Many businesses quit blogging because they feel it’s too much work. True, like everything else, you gotta work on a blog but you don’t have to break your back over it. Sometimes you may have a paragraph here and there about a topic that just isn’t big enough for an article. You know what? You’re going to have many more of these impromptu thoughts and ideas - publish it to your blog. Later, you can come back and gather these paragraphs, compile them into a complete article or even a book.

That’s only one way of maximizing your work. Have you written articles in the past? How about e-courses, audio transcripts or books that aren’t in publication anymore? Recycle. Break them up and post them on your blog. In fact, if you have lot’s of this type of content, you can even get your assistant to post them for you.

Publishing Too Often
I know what you’re thinking. This sounds like complete the opposite of everything you’ve ever learnt about blogging. Truth is, the blogging world changes. What works yesterday may not today. This is one of them. There are countless blogs already jostling with you for your reader’s time. More are being started by the day.

Who has the time to read so many blogs? It’s come to a point people are forced to cherry pick the blogs they read. Even when they do read yours, you’re not safe yet. If they can’t keep up with your blogging pace, they’ll drop you no matter how good your information is. Keep a balance. Feed information to your readers not dump a truckload on them. Every market is different. Some can tolerate higher number of posts a week, some can’t. You should know your market and test accordingly.

Editor’s Note: From my experience, publishing too often is a rarity. You’ll possibly see that on multi-author blogs where they are into power publishing. My take on the subject is that people are bored and always looking for something new online…even if they’re supposed to be working at their job or at their business. A frequently updated blog gives people something to look forward to.

One thing I do think is important is consistency. If you post every day or a couple of times per day and suddenly, you’re down to once per week…many of your regular readers may drop off. They have come to expect you to provide content on an ongoing basis and when you stop, the might stop coming. Just food for thought. I’d worry less about how much, but aim for consistency.

Falling For Short Term Methods
Ah, this is my favorite. If you can have a favorite pet peeve that is. Every week, you hear about people dishing out the newest, coolest blogging tactic, best blogging tool that’s sure to sky rocket your business to success or bull doze your way to the top search engine listings. Consider how any offer will help you advance your business two, five or tens years from now. Is it really in line with your marketing direction? If it isn’t drop it. It also helps a lot if you can have a reliable source whom you can consult and help put things into perspective for you. One of the most powerful qualities of a blog has nothing to do with search engines, tagging or pinging. These things do have a place, but they aren’t as powerful as the relationship opportunities between you and your customers.

Editor’s Note: Amen to that. Most blogging tools that promise miracles are simply tools to create garbage content with regurgitated content. When considering a blogging tool, carefully evaluate exactly what it is they are offering.

Although these mistakes are common, they are also very easily rectified and don’t cost much money. All of these suggestions are born out of my own trial and error and they’ve worked out nicely. Try it yourself.

About the Author:

Passionate about blogging, Lynette Chandler enjoys helping business owners get their blogs started. She also holds their hand through the process, assisting them to cut through all the noise so business owners can stay focused enough to harness the quality of their blogs at Blogging Starter Pack.

Want to publish this content? Click here to join the affiliate program.

How to Get More Comments for Your Blog

“10 Easy Ways For More Blog Comments” from Lynette Chandler
Creator of Blogging Starter Pack & co-teacher at IM Blogging Bootcamp

Is your blog a little too quiet for comfort? Then try these 10 quick and easy ways to get those comments rolling in.

1. Ask and you shall receive. If you don’t ask, you don’t get it. People are funny creatures, when you ask it’s like an invitation it’s OK for them to say something.

Editor’s Note: A “Call to Action” isn’t simply for copywriting.

2. Can they help you? Tell your readers you need help with an issue. For example, help picking out a new hairstyle, color for your home office, new computer, help with a new logo design. You get the idea.

3. People love a little bit of self promotion especially online where link backs are like manna from heaven. Tell people you’re building a resource list, if they know of a resource, post it and if they own a relevant resource, tell them to post their links in the comments.

4. Get them to finish a list for you. For example, you say you’re writing a report about seven most common insurance problems but you’ve found only four. Tell them to come up with the other three and the ones chosen will be included in your report complete with credits as an extra bonus.

5. Encourage reviews about a product or service you blogged about, even if they are negative. Having both positive and negative reviews helps make your blog more believable and sincere.

6. Subscribe to comments. People are used to forums. Whether they contribute to a discussion or not, they like to get notified when someone else has something to say about a post they are interested in. Make it easy for them by offering comment subscription both by email and RSS.

7. Make use of your network, customers or prospect list. Tell people about your blog and to let you know what they think about the topics you’ve blogged about.

8. Giving away a freebie? Include your blog URL. Tell people to share their thoughts about your freebie at your blog.

9. Are you posting too often? Strange as it may sound, maybe you’re posting so often that your readers can’t keep up.

Editor’s Note: Lynette mentioned this in another article, but I’m not sure I’m buying it (sorry, Lynette!). I think it all comes down to traffic. If your blog doesn’t have a lot of traffic, posting a ton won’t likely inspire more comments, but as your traffic grows, posting more can help increase those comments. So grow with your traffic and I’m sure you’ll be fine.

10. Encourage discussion. Blog about something you read on another blog, news, magazine or other media. Then invite readers to share their thoughts. This works very well for topics in the news.

Now you know them, try these suggestions on for size. Sometimes you might get comments right away, sometimes it takes a while to get results but that doesn’t mean it’s not working. Keep plugging. They’ll start to warm up to you before you know it.

About the Author:

Lynette Chandler helps business owners build quality blogs that last for the long haul at Blogging Starter Pack.

How To Keep Your Business Blog Going Through The Holiday Bustle

“Business Blogging Shouldn’t Stop During the Holidays” from Lynette Chandler
Creator of Blogging Starter Pack & co-teacher at IM Blogging Bootcamp

So, you started and kept up with your business blog; people seem to enjoy it, you’re building traffic, comments and even getting more sign ups on your newsletter. It has taken a lot of work to make this successful. Now you have a problem.

The holidays are upon us.

If you sell consumer products you’re probably so busy now you have little time for long term marketing. But, you also know that you want to keep this great thing going. Besides, it’s the long term marketing that will help you over the slower periods of the year. What can you do?

Try pre-scheduling your posts. This is the single most effective method. It can also save you time throughout the rest of the year when you get busy or need a break. You can do this by using your blog’s scheduled post feature or you could blog by email and set your email client to only send the mail at a pre-set date and time. If you’re using Outlook, there are plugins you can purchase to help you send scheduled emails.

Something else you could do is invite some guest bloggers. You can hire someone. Many times people are more than happy to blog on sites for an affordable fee. You could also invite owners of related businesses to post. This is a great idea because you may not need to pay out any cash and you can return the favor when they get busy. Guest writers are a good way to get some time away from your blog, allow you to concentrate on holiday sales and a wonderful way to introduce a fresh perspective.

Here’s another idea. Have an assistant post some holiday articles related to your business for you. Articles about the holidays that people find useful such as shopping and budget tips, recipes and etiquette do very nicely. Everyone can use those ideas and tips to make their holidays less expensive and more enjoyable.

If your assistant can add information to relate those articles with your product, the better. With that holiday feel in the air, you may be surprised to see how much traffic you end up getting. Possibly more than normal.

Editor’s Note: Excellent suggestions by Lynette. There is no reason why you can’t keep the momentum even if you’re busy with family, on vacation or just need a break. Plan ahead by scheduling, having others fill in or even post guest articles. It’s the nature of blogs, people expect updated and fresh content and you can still provide it, even if you’re not actively at the computer all the time.

If you’re posting tips, don’t post them all at once. Publish a series of small and quick tips over a number of days or weeks. Tell people they are reading just one in a series every time you post. Not only does this keep the blog alive, it gives your readers reason to return.

Try audio. Speaking comes more naturally to us than writing and it also requires less effort and time to make a post. Record a short under 5 minute clip about what’s happening during the busy holiday period. Tell people about your sales, share how you helped a customer out of his holiday shopping dilemma. There are many tools you can use for a small cost such as AudioAcrobat and HipCast. You can record it and have it posted to your blog immediately.

Just because it is a busy period, doesn’t mean that you need to abandon your blog completely. By following the tips in this article, you can ensure your blog keeps building that valuable relationship with your prospects.

About the Author:

Blogger, entrepreneur Lynette Chandler enjoys helping small business owners with their blogs. She authored an e-course to help new bloggers start their blog right from the beginning. Grab yours at Blogging Starter Pack.

Article Site vs. Blogs vs. Podcasts

“Blog, Podcast, Article Site - Which is Right for My Business?” from Lynette Chandler
Creator of Blogging Starter Pack & co-teacher at IM Blogging Bootcamp

Editorial Commentary: If you’re trying to generate leads for your business, a site with some kind of content is a cost-effective long-term strategy that can go along way. But not all content sites are the same. Lynette examines whether a blog, podcast or an article site might be right for you.

Just when you think you understand the content publishing trend of the day, here comes another one to mess up your plans. If you’re frustrated, confused and don’t know how to fit everything or if you even should. It’s not easy coming up with a web content publishing management strategy. It’s something I struggle with from time to time as well.

I believe it’s a personal choice. All these are just different methods of publishing your content. There are some key questions you might want to consider.

What is your audience most predisposed to?

The reason we publish web content is so people will find, it, read it, use it and hopefully generate a sale for your products. It doesn’t matter which is the best format but what is best for your audience. Which content format do they respond most to? Are they highly mobile people, always on the road? Do they prefer reading to listening? Are they technically savvy enough to understand how to use an RSS reader? If you don’t know, ask them.

Editor’s Note: To conduct your survey, you can try Lynette’s Easy Internet Survey.

You’ll naturally have a hodgepodge of answers and sometimes even after asking, the result is not always clear. Overall, written content still triumphs over multimedia for several reasons. People cannot scan an audio or video file so if they want just one piece of information from that hour long recording, they are forced to find an hour of their time that they may not be willing to give.

Editor’s Note: Although I agree with Lynette’s reasoning on the downfalls of multimedia like audio and/or video (also add that you prohibit many people with disabilities from enjoying your content), I think you can reach a greater audience if you can do both. Podcasts and videos can be transcribed or you can include notes and even screenshots to illustrate the multimedia content. Of course, that is all extra work and/or expense, but there are ways around the limitations.

Why are you building that site?

How do you envision this site to be, what’s it for? Some sites like product review, launch updates, deal of the day, news and event reporting and FAQ’s are just made for blogs. If you start a site answering “Questions about coaching”.

This type of approach is ideal for a blog because there is some kind of interactivity going on and also it’s easy for you to publish your questions and answers. When you have the occasional long form articles, you can always add them to a page on your blog. Your articles and blog need not stand alone, they can be complimentary.

Other sites especially those built for educating and dispensing information would be better off with a regular article-based site. While you can use a blog as a content management tool for your articles, a regular website offers much more control when you’re trying to optimize each web page individually. True, you can optimize a blog however, overall I find it’s easier to optimize a website.

Relevance

This is where a good long look at your overall business helps. Some people build sites in all kinds of niches, from gadgets to babies. Others, find their niche and build upon it by creating different sites related to that niche. Example, the main business is coaching. They have one site on coaching FAQ’s, one for coaches, one for life and balance articles for a working mother and so on. If your business is structured like the latter, it’s going to be a lot easier for you to figure out which approach you should go for.

This is because all of these sites are working in tandem to support your main business. It doesn’t matter which you use, in the end, the focus is on your business, you are promoting your services no matter where people go and you’ll reap the rewards. Each of these sites also become a network of content. Doing so also means you could keep only one blog and use it to direct people people to new articles, highlight special articles or alert people about a teleseminar call, kind of like a news hub just for your business. Another nice plus to this is you don’t have to build so many blogs you can’t keep up with.

An example is this page you’re on. Some of you are directed here because I mentioned the article on my blog. Some of you come here from my newsletter. Some from reading the blog’s RSS feed (Note: This article is reprinted with permission from Lynette and you probably didn’t find it from her blog!).

When to podcast

Although there are many benefits to podcasting, it can take up an awful lot of time. It’s hard work publishing a show every week or every other week for that matter. So, make sure you can commit that kind of time before doing so. That doesn’t mean you can’t publish audio your blog when you have an audio to publish.

Editor’s Note: If you are considering a podcast, make sure you plan it in a way that you can keep up with. Podcasts needn’t be long…just have great content that people will return for over and over again. Personally, I’ve never been tempted to podcast because audio is not my favorite way of dispensing content. I do produce audios now and then and hold teleseminars, but a podcast isn’t likely in the cards for me. You need to do some self-evaluation before you embark on this type of project too. I like Lynette’s idea of adding audio to your blog when you have audio to share.

Many people misunderstand podcasts, they look at it like they see radio and magazine which are totally different things. Fact is, many podcasts are blogs and vice versa.

If you think podcasts are just a little too much to handle right now, here’s one way you can leverage them without committing yourself to it. Become a guest on someone else’s podcast who reaches the same niche as you. Podcast publishers are always looking for great content and people to interview so, fill their need. Why create your own when you can piggy back.

Lot’s of things to consider. Given my time slot I’m going to make it quick and point out a few key areas.

Some sites are just made for blogs – reviews, FAQs, deals, news and updates.

Look for synergy.

I’ll usually start off with a regular articles-based website. I think you cannot go wrong with it. It’s the basis of the Internet and will be for a long time just like books are still in publication today, it’s not going anywhere. However try to also see if an existing blog can help drive traffic to this site simply by highlighting articles or mentioning certain things about the content. Lastly, if you cannot afford the time to do a podcast, be a guest or contribute recorded segments – it could be an audio version of an article you already wrote so it doesn’t take you that much time or effort to produce and you’re reaching as many people as possible. Goes the same for blogs. You don’t have to do it all yourself. If find you can’t find time or resources to squeeze in another blog, ask around and see if other bloggers in a relevant niche are interested in allowing you to be a contributor to their blog.

About the Author:

Blogger, entrepreneur Lynette Chandler enjoys helping small business owners with their blogs. She authored an e-course to help new bloggers start their blog right from the beginning. Grab yours at Blogging Starter Pack.

Blogging & Your Privacy

“Privacy on Your Blog: How Far Should You Go to Be Personable” from Lynette Chandler
Creator of Blogging Starter Pack & co-teacher at IM Blogging Bootcamp

Let’s face it. The Internet can be a dangerous place. With so many easy avenues for just about anyone to publicly flaunt or display their personal voices like blogs, it’s also easy for people to be callous about what information is posted.

As entrepreneurs, this can be a problem. People say to make your blog personal, share information, build relationship with your readers but what kind of relationship? Where do you draw the line? On one hand, you want to be approachable and open to your customers. On the other hand, you value your privacy. Ah, the dilemma.

There is no right or wrong answer but there are a lot of things you can do to protect your privacy. While much of it is common sense, sometimes they are easy to overlook during our every day course of business. So let’s review what you can do.

Who’s Blog Is This?
For many entrepreneurs, our business is our life. We are so passionate and immersed in our business that we sometimes forget the business is or should be a separate entity. This is not saying you should be cold and talk business all the time; you should more or less bring some personality into the blog. The point here is, if you take time to step outside of “The business is me” mind set, you’re more likely not to let slip personal details.

Business Information Only
Set limits for yourself what information to share besides the obvious like mailing address and telephone numbers which should be different from your personal one. Consider things like:

What pictures are you willing to put up?
If you’re comfortable with putting out your own picture, it can help build your credibility but what about pictures of you and your family?

Would you share your children’s names and ages?

What information about your spouse or other family members are you willing to put out?

What about your past?

When going on vacation should you post it on your blog?
Telling people your offices will be closed should suffice.

Set a sort of agreement with yourself. Generally, it’s a good idea not to discuss your personal life in your business blog. For example, a post about an idea that came to you during Father’s Day barbecue is OK, but if you tell people the barbecue was at Mary’s house who lives out in ABC town and accompany it with a picture. That *may* be a bit too much information. Write just enough to give people a brief background to set your story. Everything else is overkill.

Consider drawing up an employee blogging policy even if you don’t have employees. Think of how you’d advise an employee and apply it to yourself. And when you do have employees, you’ll already have a blogging policy in place.

Review, Review, Review
Because blogging is so easy to do, sometimes we tend to hit the post button too quickly. I’ve been guilty of that. Try to adopt a review-before-publish rule. I sometimes leave my posts overnight so I can see it with a fresh eye the next day.

Review each post to make sure you’re not giving away too much information or information that used collectively with other details you’ve already put forth, could be used against you or jeopardizes your privacy. It would be a good idea to keep a short review checklist you can pull up each time you make a blog post.

Sometimes in blogging you may find a lot of grey areas. The best way I know to deal with what information you should put out is to check yourself each time you post. After a while, you’ll develop a knack of what you can comfortably share and still come across as personable and frank, yet keeps your private life under wraps.

Editor’s Note: Smart advice and something that we sometimes forget. Although I think the likelihood of danger is unlikely on a person-to-person basis, it’s not something you want to mess around with. You never know who is ready and taking notes on the little details of your life. I think personal stories are a great thing to add a blog, but like Lynette mentioned you don’t have to give precise locations of where you are going or things like that.

About the Author:

Blogger, entrepreneur Lynette Chandler enjoys helping small business owners with their blogs. She authored an e-course to help new bloggers start their blog right from the beginning. Grab yours at Blogging Starter Pack.

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