Shipping Business Blogs in 2011

For someone like me who offers business blogging assistance, it’s important to keep reading many different blogs, along with the comments on those blogs.  As so many conversation "threads" seem to do, the one about "shipping" began with marketing blogger Seth Godin, who asked his followers a simple question: "What did you ship in 2010?"

Next, local blogger and friend Michael Reynolds took the challenge, blogging about his own accomplishments last year.  You can imagine what came next…As a professional ghost blogger and a trainer in business blog writing, I couldn’t let that challenge pass me by, so I had to compose my own "shipping list" for 2010.  And, just as happened with Michael Reynolds, the exercise helped me see what things I’d wanted to ship but hadn’t, making for some goal setting for the year ahead.

In tallying up all the companies for whom Say It For You had "shipped" SEO marketing blogs, all the online articles, the client newsletters, website page copy, and hundreds of attendees at blog training sessions, I realized – we’d shipped a lot.

At the same time, writing out last year’s "shipping list" reminded me what corporate blog writing IS, and at the same time ISN"T about.  In one sense, it is all about the numbers – pieces of writing posted online and of keyword phrases used by each of my blog content writers. In blogging for business, it’s crucial to maintain frequency in posting content.

But what has to go along with the numbers is the ever-important need to simplify and refine the business marketing message. The blog is, after all, an integral part of each company’s branding and corporate identity.

So, when it comes right down to it, the important question to pose at the end of this next year might not be "How much did you ship in 2011?" but "Of what quality were your shipments in 2011?"