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This was a question asked at a VA forum I belong to and below is my response.

I’m a blogging advocate and own 10 blogs today. There was a time when I couldn’t understand why anyone would want more than two – one for business and one for personal. I began a blog for a client 2 years ago as she’d read about them and wanted one. But to really understand what I was doing, I started one for my own business and did some exploring. I still didn’t really get it till about 8 months later, Christmas 2005 I decided to start up a family blog, instead of the annual Christmas newsletter and had fun with it. Then one of our cats went missing and then when he turned up injured 4 days later I posted photos of him on my blog. Well, I could have been knocked over with a feather! People started posting comments from all around the world asking about our cat. I suddenly got hooked – people were interested in what I was writing so I kept writing more, both for my business blog and my family blog. Although I changed the style of writing for the business blog so that it was more personal and invited interactive comment.

I decided to make my business blog a bridge for the gap between these forums for VAs and information for clients outside of the forums. The VA blog is now well established with lots of information for VAs and clients alike and I get comments fairly regularly – although still not as many as I’d like. But I get somewhere around 3,500 visitors a month and have many subscribers.

Early 2006 I wanted to try out the Wordpress software – I’d been using blogger before then. So I found another topic of interest to me to try it out and did a personal study of the Proverbs 31 Woman. What I didn’t realise was that there was going to be a global interest in that topic and a journalist in the US actually pointed to my blog when commenting about a senator’s drinking problem. These days that blog gets well over 4,000 hits a month and I’m now turning the blog into a book as I know there is interest in what I’ve written.

Blogs work best when they’re themed – if you wander all over the place with it you won’t retain an audience. And they’re great for people who love to write, as I do (can you tell from this post? )

My client who started this STILL does not get it although I’ve explained how it works several times but it hasn’t clicked and only the occasional post is put up on their blog. Blogs need to have fresh regular content.

I also manage a blogging chat forum via yahoogroups.com and the blog that lists the URL submissions has lots of ‘how tos’ about blogging on it and links to thousands of free templates. So, a simple client request has turned into a passion for me and I’ve learnt heaps through it. It also meant I had a new service to offer clients – I now host several blogs and help clients set up blogs, and am a co-contributor on a few blogs. It is a great way to get exposure for your business because everywhere I’m listed as an author there are direct links back to my website.

In answer to the question – if you feel you have something to say and enjoy writing, then certainly set up a blog for your business. It’s an additional tool that helps personalise ‘you’ – makes you more real to people online. But if you don’t enjoy writing and don’t feel you could regularly submit new content, then it wouldn’t be a good idea. There are heaps of ‘dead’ blogs all over the web, people who started off with a great idea but one year down the track it still has only 2 or 3 posts and really is a waste of space.

So, there you have it – I hope this helps you make your decision about whether or not to blog. KMT

Wordpress, blogging, blog templates, learn to blog, blogging, business blogs, blogging for business

Tags: About Blogging, Business Operations by Kathie Thomas
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In business we’re all keen to grow our lists and have a larger audience to promote to and demonstrate our abilities to, but I feel there is some etiquette involved in developing these lists and I find people time and again, not taking what I consider to be an appropriate approach.

I am on lots and lots and lots of lists – many are not of my choosing. I’ve had my email address for a long time, long before spam became a problem, and long before many businesses were on the web, so I’m reluctant to change my email address or domain and have put filters in place, which at least keeps the majority of spammers at bay.

But it’s those who want to genuinely promote a business service or product that tend to annoy me at times and I’ll tell you why. Over the past couple of days I’ve had Australian businesses send me emails that indicate I’ve been put on a list. No introduction, no ‘are you interested’, just straight out emails sent to their lists. I’ve emailed one of them twice now making it quite clear that I am not interested and that they are contravening the spam legislation – as yet I’ve had no response. The other one emailed me back quickly to say that she thought I’d be interested in what she had to offer and that a mutual acquaintance gave her my details.

Now, I get lots of people giving me other people’s cotntact details but I don’t add them to my list – although they might be added to my database so I can contact them if I want to find out more about what they do. What I do though, is make an initial contact, often via email, and introduce myself, explain how I came to know of them and then let them know why I’m contacting them, i.e. “Joe Smith told me you’d be interested in my services so I’d like to know if that is the case, and how may I help you?” Something of that nature. If they don’t respond I don’t chase and if they do respond but say they’re not intersted, I don’t pursue it. I do get back to the mutual contact and advise the outcome of that contact attempt so they’re kept in the loop.

Perhaps this has something to do with the training I’ve had over the years in various networking organisations, but I feel there is an etiquette involved, and especially with the spam legislation in place, I don’t feel it appropriate to just add people to a list if I have not met them personally in the first place or if they haven’t personally self-subscribed to my online list. How do others feel about this? KMT

professionalism, email etiquette, email subscription, email lists, subscription lists, spam legislation

Tags: Author's Thoughts, Business Operations, Email Etiquette, Networking by Kathie Thomas
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I’ve added an extra page to this blog. I’ve spent some time looking for blog submission sites where you don’t have to fill out copious forms or fields just to get your blog submitted. The simpler the better for me. I don’t want to have to keep remembering user names and passwords just to make a submission for one of my (many) blogs. And I’m sure there are many of you who feel that way too, so the list I’ve put together mainly just requires the blog URL, Title, sometimes a description and email and I think there’s only one there that requires a password but there’s little involved for that. If you come across others you’d like added to the list, please place it in the comments for this post and I’ll add it to the page. And at the end of the submission list is a link to a ping list that you can copy and paste into your Wordpress blog so that everytime you do a new post it automatically pings that list. Easy! KMT

blog submissions, blog directories, ping lists, pinging your blog

Tags: About Blogging by Kathie Thomas
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This weekend is a long weekend in Melbourne, Australia, and I decided I’d do some things I’d been planning on for quite some time – this year got busy without notice! And so I’ve spent the past 3 days on and off, browsing through themes at Wordpress’s Theme Viewer. I’d been there heaps of times before but had only looked at the thumbnails doing quick searches for particular styles or colours. But the thumbnails can be deceiving and it’s not until you click on the test run that you truly get an appreciation for the theme you’re viewing.

It is really, really worthwhile going through them, but be warned and be prepared to spend several hours going through them – my maths tells me there are 1469 of them to go through! Have fun exploring!

Tags: Themes, Wordpress by Kathie Thomas
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