Guy Kawasaki Dishes It out on the Art of Blogging!!!

"I was late to blogging because I thought it was arrogant: “My thoughts are so important that you’ll want to know what I think every day about everything.” It’s taken three years but now I’m a believer, and I’ll tell you why. On a personal level, blogs are an outlet for expression and creativity. Truly, if no one but your dog reads your blog, it’s still worth doing. On a business level, blogs are a marketing and communications weapon. They’re fast, free and under your control. You can use a blog to reach potential customers, establish a brand, provide support, and build a community. You can also use it to do favors for people by promoting their books and products, so that they’ll do favors for you. As in other arts, there are techniques and practices that guide my blogging."-Guy Kawasaki 2008

- Think “book,” not diary. First, a bit of philosophy. Think of your blog as a product. A good analogy is the difference between a diary and a book. When you write a diary, it contains your spontaneous thoughts and feelings. You have no plans for others to read it. By contrast, if you write a book, from day one you should be thinking about spreading the word about it.

- Answer the little man. Now that you’re thinking of your blog as a product, ask yourself if it’s a good product. A useful test is to imagine that there’s a little man sitting on your shoulder reading what you’re writing. Every time you write a blog entry, he asks, “So what? Who gives a shiitake?” If you can’t answer the little man, then you don’t have a good blog/product. Take it from someone who’s tried: It’s tough to market crap, so make sure you have something worth saying. Or write a diary and keep it to yourself.

- Collect links for blog rolling. This is something I wish I had done on day one, but I was totally ignorant of this linking thing. If I had to do it over again, I would look for all the interesting blogs that cover similar topics. Then, I would blog-roll them all and ensure that Technorati pings my blog, so that the bloggers might find out that I exist.

- Scoop stuff. There’s a very interesting honor system in blogging. Suppose blogger A finds an obscure article and posts it to his blog. Blogger B reads about it on A’s blog and links to it. However, blogger B doesn’t link only to the article, she also links to blogger A to give him credit for finding the article. This means that if you hustle and scoop stuff, other bloggers will link to you.

- Supplement other bloggers with follow-up entries. Read the blogs of the top fifty or so bloggers and see if you have in-depth knowledge about their topics. Then instead of leaving useless drivel, craft a real comment that complements the blogger’s entry. When someone does this for my entries, I want to get down on my knees and thank God, because it’s less stuff that I have to write. I don’t know about other bloggers but one of the biggest challenges that I face is feeding the content beast. If you can help me feed it, I’ll gladly link to you and give you publicity.

- Acknowledge and respond to commenters. Only good things can happen when you read all the comments in your blog and respond to them. It makes commenters return to your blog. This, in turn, makes commenters feel they are part of a community, and that encourages them to tell more people to read your blog.

- Ask for help. If you provide value in your blog, don’t hesitate to ask your readers to help. In a perfect world, you provide something valuable in your blog and your readership will want to pay you back by helping you spread the word.

- Be bold. I’m not saying that you should intentionally piss other bloggers off, but if you can’t speak your mind on your own blog, you might as well give up and stay on the porch. This is a fascinating thing about blogging: Even when people torch you, they link to your site.

- Make it easy to join up. Enable people to get to your blog in multiple ways like RSS feeds and e-mail subscriptions. This is no different from distributing physical products through multiple channels.

"Two years ago my wife saw me typing away on my Macintosh late at night. She asked me what I was doing, and I answered, “Changing the world, 10,000 readers at a time.” Without missing a beat, she deadpanned back, “Oh, you’re blogging.” If you do it properly, she’s absolutely right." -Guy Kawasaki 2008

SOURCE: "Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition" ISBN:978-1-59184-223-1 Pages 237-239