If you look around the web, there is so much advice about blogging it’s not funny. Still, I’ve learned a few lessons that might help if you’re a beginner blogger and I thought I would give you the inside scoop.   

1) The biggest obstacle to blogging is … not what you think. It’s not writing skill or time or ideas. It’s confidence. People are generally shy about sharing their voice.  If you can tell your kids a story, give nurturing advice to a friend or tell a joke, you can blog.  Just Do It.

2) It takes time to find your voice.  Be patient. The more you write, the more comfortable you will feel. Feedback from the blogosphere will trickle in and help massage your style, tone and topics.  Stay with it and you will improve.  Have faith.

3) “I don’t have time” is not an acceptable excuse any more.   The only people who complain that blogging takes too much time never made it a priority.  Chances are you and your business will benefit from blogging or you wouldn’t be reading this post, right?  If you need to blog for your business, it has to be part of your job now, so approach it that way.  Shoot for one decent post a week. That’s doable, right?

4) In the long run, blogging can SAVE you time!  My posts have become a personal reference library.  I’ll bet not one day passes by when I don’t send somebody a link to an old post as a response to a question or to help them in some way.  This has been an unexpected benefit of blogging.

5) Be brief.  Respect your readers. Respect their time. Spend the extra time it takes to write with brevity.  Cut words ruthlessly. Best practice: Seth Godin.

6) Don’t write an academic thesis.  It’s much more interesting to read blogs that are written in a conversational tone.  Talk with your friends.

7) Write about what interests you.  Your audience will find you.

8) Read more than you write. Much more.  If you’re not an active reader of blogs, get on the stick. To be a successful writer, you have to be a great listener and learner.

9) If you want people to support your blog, support them, too.   I just think it is an act of respect to support blogs written by your readers by commenting, tweeting and highlighting their great work.   If you’re part of my community and you have a blog I will do whatever I can to help you. We’re all in this together. 

10) If you run out of ideas, go to a LinkedIn forum for your industry.  Find an interesting question.  Answer it.  That’s your blog post. Works every time. If you’re really stuck, go to Guy Kawaski’s blog.  Put it on your record turntable. Play it backwards.  That’s where the secret messages are hidden.

Let’s hear your comments, now.  What advice would you pass on?  Who is setting the standard out there for best blogging practices, and why?

• Many executive and corporate blogs/tweets today already come from a team of people behind the scenes. Does that bother you? Make it any less effective?
• If you were regularly reading a blog that you thought was being written by a business leader you admired and then discovered they only “approve” the articles, would it hurt the credibility of the individual or company?
• If I accept ghost-writing assignments, what guidelines should be in place?

If this debate is not relevant to you right now, it will be in the near future as the demand for content explodes. This is the way the world is moving! What do you thnk? Please leave your thoughts and comments on this blog post. Can you out-source authenticity?

Note: After I orginally posted this topic, these articles came to my attention which might help you explore this topic further:

The ethics, of lack thereof, of ghost blogging by Jason Falls    

Would you trust a company that ghost blogs? by Danny Brown

A defense of ghost blogging by Bill Sledzik

Why is this different from ghost-writing a book? by Wintress Odom

You might want to spend a period of time tweeting to nobody, simply to build some “profile collateral” that gives people an understanding of who you are, what your interest or industry is and how your being in their network adds value to their Twitter experience.

Equip your profile with the means to make the right first impression, including a nice photo and an interesting and accurate short bio. Otherwise, potential connections will have no reason to stay with you beyond that initial contact that you have worked so hard to establish. The short bio plays an important role when people are trying to find like-minded people to follow.

Chris Hughes has worked in the contact center and business process outsourcing industry for about 16 years. He would really, really love for you to connect with him on Twitter at @chrishughesuk.

To turn online connections into serious business relationships, you need to surround your cyber-self with useful, interesting content. Difficulty in providing consistent, meaningful content is the NUMBER ONE reason people give up and never achieve social media business benefits. So you just have to find a way to do it! First, let’s get those excuses out of the way:

1. If you’re interesting, entertaining and funny, people will be drawn to you. But if you’re shy and have difficulty being entertaining, you just can’t provide content, so why try?
2. Takes too much time. No person with a full-time job can possibly have time for the incremental effort needed for social media. Who has time to write a blog???
3. Social media is just a stupid fad any way.

We are not going to accept these excuses, right? RIGHT! So, I’ve worked up a strategy for you to efficiently deliver meaningful content even if you’re not a natural writer. All you have to do is be yourself and tenaciously ENGAGE. Ideas to create content for the non-writer, in just a few minutes a day:

• In the last post, I emphasized the importance of joining Linked-In Groups. Now become INVOLVED. Twice a week, respond to a question or comment in the group. You can answer questions can’t you? Of course you can! Time commitment: 20 min/week.
• Once a week, peruse online magazines related to your industry. Find an interesting article. Leave an opinion or your appreciation in the comment section then tweet the article out to your followers on Twitter. You’ve created meaningful content twice. Time = 15 min
• Find five or more blogs related to your industry and put them in an aggregator like Google Reader. Once you have this set up, review blog content at least once a week and comment + tweet out your favorite articles. 15 min
• Find interesting and useful content that has already been created by your company. Are there ways you can reference this content to help others, solve problems, and answer questions?
• In the last post we talked about finding connections through Facebook. Now visit them. Share, engage, comment, react, ask more questions. 20 min
• Tweet AT LEAST three times a day (at different times), AT LEAST three days a week. (45 min/week)

At first, I know it can be difficult to figure out what to tweet, but you have to keep at it! When you get stuck, here are some subject matter ideas to get you going again.

• An entertaining observation you made – it could be a funny bumper sticker, a movie or a commercial you saw on TV.
• Something interesting related to your business or industry. But DO NOT SELL. Here’s an example of something appropriate: “Finally landed a great contract – business has been tough.” Or, “Went to a great training program on social media today – I recommend it”
• Re-tweet a particularly good article or post provided by somebody you follow.
• Comment on an observation made by one of your followers.
• Take a picture from a place you’re visiting and comment on it.
• Express an opinion on a national news story.
• Ask a question and authentically seek help from the community.
• Thank followers who do something nice for you, like mentioning you on a Follow Friday.

To provide meaningful content, you don’t have to write a lot, but you MUST COMMIT. You know that old saying: You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him tweet. I can’t make you engage, but I promise that you can’t be successful without it.

If you were to help a friend get started in social media, what other ideas do you have?

Tomorrow, the final part of the success formula: Authentic Helpfulness.

Other articles in this series:

Part 1: A formula for social media business success

Part 2: Building meaningful business connections

Part 4: Social Media’s Economy of Giving

Steven Soshea

Photo credit: I don’t know. Probably some porn site. This is an actual Twitter follower of the guy mentioned in the article. If this is a picture of you and you’re not in the porn industry, I apologize. I was just trying to make a point. Now go put on a tee shirt.

This is a picture of me building business relationships in Italy during World Cup. Well sort of.

Let me relate three quick stories that took place in the last 24 hours:

• Yesterday morning, I went to a networking meeting and recognized somebody from his Twitter picture — a fellow I had followed for several months. Even though I had never spoken to this person before, he greeted me like an old friend, asking me about a common interest I had discussed on my tweets.
• In the afternoon, I had a conference call with a potential customer from California. She had read some of my posts on Linked-in forums and was interested enough to go to my website (where she read some of my longer articles) and my blog. Based on my web and social media content alone, she was convinced I was the right marketing “voice” for her company and offered me a significant new business opportunity.
• In the afternoon I received a call off my website. This young entrepreneur had also gotten to know me through Linked-in discussion boards and he referred to recent blog articles. We agreed to meet next week and discuss a new business engagement.

I’m not telling these tales to demonstrate my good fortune on this particular day. I’m providing examples of how a social media strategy can be used to attract potential customers and “pre-populate” business relationships.

What do I mean by this? In normal business relationships, it might take weeks or months of discussions and meetings for a new potential client to know and trust you. Through original web-based content and participation in forums related to my profession, these nice people felt they had a personal relationship with me — before they even made a single phone call.

In effect, I was able to pre-populate the business relationship with my life, talents, hobbies, opinions –and probably a few flaws — to significantly expedite the sales cycle.

Here’s an important point. In NONE of these cases did I actually try to sell something to somebody. One pundit likened social media to a dinner party. If you stand there and simply talk about yourself and your product, people will quickly try to get away from you. But if you offer something of interest, they’ll listen, seek you out, and perhaps become a new friend.

What are your experiences with this topic? Does it make sense to you? How is pre-populating sales leads relevant to your business situation?