The Four P’s Of Business Blogging

Fellow blogger Rick Short, Indium Corporation’s Director of Marketing Communications, says that, before beginning a business blog, it’s important to have a goal and then work backwards. When Rick started his corporate blog, he began with no fewer than four goals in mind:

• Gain market share
• Improve the company brand
• Learn from the customer base
• Let customers talk to the company

Rick Short lists the four P’s of blogging:

Point
If your blog doesn’t have a specific point, don’t even start.

Passion
If you don’t have a burning passion about the topic, don’t even bother.

Personality
A blog needs opinion, likes and dislikes, not just a dry, dull review of the facts.

Perseverance
If you can’t keep up the discipline of posting frequently, find a new hobby!

Rick Short’s company, Indium Corporation, provides materials to the electronics assembly materials industry.  He explains that the executives have many opportunities to speak and to present good content.  Since sometimes the events don’t draw a big enough crowd to justify a personal appearance, he says, blogging has become an alternative method for Indium to stay in touch with its customers. 

One unique factor about the Indium blogs has to do with the fact that the electronics industry uses lead in its soldering products. There is constant discussion from customers on legislation having to do with lead. The customers typically don’t want to let their competitors know what they’re doing, so rather than posting comments on the Indium blog site, they send direct emails to the blog authors.

A professional ghost blogger must epitomize all four of Rick Short’s P’s.  Before becoming the "voice" of the business, I must be crystal clear on the business purpose to be expressed in the blog posts (the point).

A ghost, I’m fond of saying, must use her "third ear’ hearing not only what the business owners want to say (their passion),

but picking up on their unique style of expressing the corporate "personality".

Since frequency of posting new content is important in web rankings, perseverance comes into play through the ghost blogger’s "drill sergeant discipline".

Point + passion + personality + perseverance = profit!