This morning — at the invitation of my friend, Steve — I attended a KU Professional Edge Breakfast Seminar at the Edwards Campus called, Blogging Down to Business: When/Where Mass Communication Gets Personal presented by this guy, Dr. David D. Perlmutter (his blog), a so-called expert on the subject. After all, he did write a book with the word “blog” in the title…

The problem is that Perlmutter’s book was about political blogging, while I actually attended the seminar to hear about business blogging. And Perlmutter spent the first 40 minutes of the hour introducing the group to the history of blogging (heavily focused on its basis in the political realm) rather than spending any extended period of time discussing the practical application of blogging in business.

Now, it’s true, I probably know more about the subject than Perlmutter, I know that many in the audience did not. I attended the seminar because of the invite from Steve as well as out of curiosity. However, Perlmutter’s presentation was littered with self-aggrandizement (he showed video of himself on the Daily Show) and just plain WHA? moments where I failed miserably to see how what he was talking about had ANYTHING to do with the subject. I couldn’t ignore it.

The worst part was that in his attempts at impressing us, he went over his time and left out 8 slides at the end that actually might have saved the presentation — case studies on uses of blogging in different industries. TIME MANAGEMENT FAIL.

So here’s what I’m offering…my simple 9-point plan to blogging for business:

1. Have a purpose. It can be as simple as “to increase the keyword-rich content on our site”, but just make sure that you know what your purpose is and always refer to it when writing.
2. Be compelling and write well. If your content sucks, there’s no point in having a corporate blog. Have something compelling to say or don’t say it at all. And when you do say it, make sure it’s run through a spell-checker. Some browsers have built-in spellcheckers, but they don’t catch everything. It’s not hard to proofread and it’s worth the extra step.
3. Host it yourself. For the love of God, don’t pretend a Blogger or WordPress.com account is actually hosted by your company. People who consume news this way on a regular basis (read: nerds like me) will see right through it. Not only that, but it’s lazy and cheap, two things you typically don’t want to be associated with unless you are Walmart.
4. Integrate it into your overall site. Link to it from the home page. Make it fit. This may require the use of a Web designer, but it’s worth it. Ahem.
5. Encourage dialogue. The format of blogging encourages dialogue (for more on that dialogue and how it relates to design, read Jason Santa Maria’s excellent article). Make sure your customers have the ability to comment. It allows them to feel invested in the conversation. If you are doing a good job with your customer service, your comments shouldn’t be too negative.
6. Do your research. There’s nothing worse than a company that blatantly lies on its official blog. Slightly less bad is being easily proven wrong with a simple Google search. That means you should always cite your sources.
7. Link liberally. And don’t launch a new window. That’s what the back button is for. If your writing is compelling and your information useful, readers will return.
8. Test before launching. If there’s one thing that really grinds my gears, it’s people who only test their sites in their browser of choice. I hate Internet Explorer as much as the next guy, but I always test in it. Internet Explorer still accounts for over 70% of browser usage, so you cannot discount it yet.
9. Stick to the schedule. You don’t have to post daily (although that would be great), but you should post at least once or twice a week. Schedule your posts so your customers know when new content will appear. (Side note: if you don’t publish an RSS feed for your readers to subscribe to, don’t even bother with a blog.)

These are all suggestions. I’d like to hear yours.