Scrutinize Potential Business Blogs Prior to Launch

There are too many blogs.

Not that the one you’ve thought up and are about to launch isn’t a valuable addition to the several trillion that already exist.

But someday the boss will stumble across the business page of your paper’s Web site and have an epiphany: Our reporters collect information that we don’t print. The Web has a virtually limitless newshole. Problem, solution!

Using the Web to expand the information available is a good thing. But so is chocolate. To avoid death by fudge, here are four reasons not to start another business blog.

1. You don’t have a purpose.

“We would like to add other biz blogs, and we have reporters willing to participate,” says Chuck Melvin, business editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but “the trick is finding the time to hammer out the concepts.”

Admirable restraint. Melvin’s right: If you don’t have a concept for a blog – a concept that goes beyond “problem, solution!” – you shouldn’t bother. It’s harder to get online visitors to go beyond your home page than it is to get them to flip past the paper’s front page. To get them to consistently click to a blog – or better yet, bookmark it or add it to the electronic subscription service called an RSS feed – you have to deliver something that has a consistent, clear identity.

“The go-to resource for retail news in the area” – as Melvin describes his hope for the one JS biz blog now – is a clear identity. “The stuff we can’t fit in print” isn’t. Worst of all: Random musings. Blogs are made for niche audiences, but the reporter’s mom is a niche too small. Scratch it.

2. You don’t treat online as an equal with print.

I’m not arguing about whether you should. But if you don’t, you’ll let the blog go dark for days while the reporter works on that much more important Sunday story. You’ll accept boring items, sloppy copy, long-winded rants, glop you’d never waste ink on.

Blog readers will notice.

Blog only if you can give the writer time to do it, if you’re willing to enforce quality standards on the reporting and writing and if you’re committed enough to find a way to keep the blog going even when the reporter takes time off.

Not every blog has to be updated every day. Those that concentrate on niche topics can probably survive on a few posts a week. Says Andre Jackson, business editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “I’d say even a non-daily update has value, if there (are) real news and tidbits contained therein.” But the larger the audience you seek, the more active you must be.

3. You are too shy.

With a business blog, you’re targeting a select audience. Narrow it down to a particular industry or company and you’ve sliced the potential audience even thinner.

The smaller the potential audience, the harder you have to work to attract them.

First, use what you’ve got: the print product. Blurb your blog – use it as a tagline on columns, as a refer with stories. Build attractive packages of items promoting your online content. Repackage some of the blog items into a weekly feature.

Go beyond that: Make sure your blogs can be tracked by search engines like Technorati and Google’s Blogsearch. Allot time for the blogger to network other bloggers; word of mouse is a powerful audience builder.

4. You labor under the illusion that most print readers actually read your business stories.

Web software allows you to count, down to the eyelash, every person who looks at every individual page on your site.

Your blog will start small and, unless the gods and Google smile on you, grow slowly. It will never reach the kinds of numbers you’re used to batting around, the tens of thousands who buy the paper, the theoretical masses who read it every month.

Blogs are for niches. Use one to establish your credibility, to serve a hard core of news junkies. Gauge its success by how well it meets those goals, not by sheer numbers alone.

John Kroll is the Deputy Business Editor for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.

BIZ BLOGS DONE RIGHT

Houston Chronicle
http://blogs.chron.com
Great use of blogging in general. In biz, look particularly at Loren Steffy, who translates his columnist voice well into shorter blog chunks.

The Oregonian
http://www.oregonlive.com/weblogs/atwork/
As an editor at another Newhouse paper, I lust after the workplace blog that Brent Hunsperger writes. Active enough to keep readers coming back, but not so hyperactive that you feel you can’t keep up.

Orange County Register
http://blogs.ocregister.com/lansner/
Jonathan Lansner’s real estate blog can pull in comments by the bushel. No doubt the startling – for a blog – reliance on facts contributes to that.

-John Kroll