96.5% of what you’ve been reading about blogging for business is dead wrong. Ready for a real-world capitalist wake up call? If you’re a small business owner or a professional running a practice, here’s the real lowdown on business blogging.

The last couple of months have brought us dozens of emails from frustrated small business owners, physicians, and even a few sales professionals. These hard working men and women are confused by much of the “business blogging advice” being bandied about. From advice on using Ad sense and other such “ad revenue” streams. To the “rules” handed out by long time bloggers on what business people “must” and “must not” do on their business blogs.

Regrettably business owners are being led down a rabbit trail with advice from many full time (”professional”) bloggers. And almost equally, blogging evangelists who (not being business owners themselves) dole out advice for corporate employees and leaders muddying the waters even further.

With the advice from both these camps often incorporating language and even headlines that are “profit” or “corporate” focused — it’s no wonder small business owners are confused.

What matters most to business owners

This past weekend a particularly distressing email from a small business owner in Maryland was the final straw. With the blogging waters so muddied for business owners, I can’t take it any longer. I feel it’s high time for a common business sense advocate, someone with significant small business ownership experience, to address these points of confusion.

After starting four successful multimillion dollar businesses since the age of 21, I have a dramatically different viewpoint on blogging and the New Media Marketplace than many of the technology-obsessed bloggers and corporate blogging evangelists. I live and breathe the business owners lifestyle, and have done so since the age of 12.

I’m probably not going to be making too many friends with hardcore bloggers or in the blogging evangelist community with what will be said here. But I’m OK with that. I’m not a rubber stamp advocate blindly parroting accolades for any individual technology like blogs, or even the blogosphere as a whole.

I’m an advocate for people. And the people I care most about are small business owners, their clients, and their prospects.

I mean come on…. as a business owner do you really care what some corporate techno-geek who’s been blogging in their free time since the turn of the century has to say about what you should and should not do with your business blog?

Of course not!

As an entrepreneur you’re used to thinking outside the box. It’s what has gotten you to where you are today. In control of your destiny and beholden only to your customers and clients. If you’re like our business coaching clients, instead of hearing about over-zealous rules and made up regulations of the blogosphere, you’d rather learn how to use blogs and New Media to build relationships and boost sales.

As a business owner, your goal is to actively promote your company with the highest impact, lowest cost methods available. And with you interest in business blogging you’re on the right track.

In the New Media Marketplace there’s just one rule — business promotion is about people, participation, and persuasion.

Our business coaching clients understand the distinction and are integrating blogs with their overall marketing. Like Paulie, who using the New Media Marketing and online persuasion techniques we coached him on, got over 400 of his prospects to comment on his business blog in about 48 hours. Then 7-days later had nearly half of those people purchase a $5000+ product!

Or how another one of our clients Sally added 197 people and their physical addresses to her prospect list in less than 24 hours. (Look for case studies on both of these over the next few weeks.)

Alright, now that you’re all primed and ready to learn the real-world skinny on blogging for business, let’s get to it!

Today we’ll get rolling in Part One of this multi part series. We’ll begin by differentiating between Business Blogging vs. Professional Blogging.

Each point we cover together will be presented as a “filter.” By the time you’re done with this series, these filters in combination will have cleared the business blogging waters enough that you’ll feel comfortable to dive right in.

Professional Blogging vs. Business Blogging

Marketing with business blogs is not the same as blogging (professionally) for profit. When you’re the owner of a small business or physician running a practice — your goals are (or should be) distinctly different from what many “for profit” bloggers do.

There are dozens of differences between business blogging and professional blogging, but to keep things simple, there are really three main distinctions that you need to be aware of. Here’s the first one.

Filter #1: blogging for your business does not mean you personally have to create content

Professional bloggers are often great writers themselves (if they’re profitable ). They write fluently, frequently typing away with their own busy little fingers. They search the internet hungry for some news story or other bloggers’ content to comment on.

However, contrary to their own belief — they have not created a business. They have created a job for themselves. (The definition of a business is a structured entity that can run profitably without the owner being present for extended periods of time.) This requires the professional blogger to personally show up at their keyboard each and every day.

That’s NOT the case with real business blogging. When you’re blogging for your business — you DO NOT have to be the one personally doing the blogging!

Heck, the person creating content for you doesn’t even have to be your employee. You can hire an outsource agent to create written posts along with audio or video podcasts.

Now I can hear some of you already saying that you’ve read or been told that YOU must do the blogging for your business. And with that response I can’t help but recall the words of my earliest business mentor.

As a 15 year-old I was frustrated with all the conflicting advice I was getting from well meaning individuals (including some family) on how to handle a new business opportunity. When I talked to my mentor about it he shared with me a principle that will serve you well in this in many other situations.

He said, “Always look at where the person giving advice is at in their life. If their lifestyle and achievements are what you’d like to aspire to, then take their advice in to consideration. If not, then ignore it.”

As a business owner, who cares if some dweeb says that outsourcing or delegating your content creation is not “authentic” blogging. All you care about is providing valuable content and building relationships with your clients and prospects.

When you hear advice being handed out, especially when it comes to who maintains your blog and how that’s done — look at who the advice is coming from. If it’s coming from someone chained to their keyboard personally obligated to create content, then you know that’s advice you’ll need to heavily filter or ignore altogether.

In the next installment of this series we’ll look at another filter that will help you distinguish between professional blogging and blogging for business.

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John-Paul Micek is a Business Acceleration Coach with four multi-million dollar businesses under his belt and over 8000 hours of experience helping entrepreneurs like you get the profits, performance, and lifestyle you want from your business. He’s a published author (Secrets Of Online Persuasion,) a weekly columnist for the Honolulu Star Bulletin, and professional speaker. You can reach J.P. directly via [communicationcommando@gmail.com].

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