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If you are writing a blog for your business, you need to stay focused on the goals you set when you decided to begin. Was it to demonstrate your firm’s experience and capabilities or was it to help search engine results by providing keyword rich posts that also demonstrate your businesses’ knowledge?

Hopefully the later is your goal. So here you are, committed or not to the blog and you are short of ideas. These ten ideas will help you write interesting blog posts even when your creative muse has gone on vacation.

1. Look to the news of the day; are there any major news items that impact some aspect of your businesses core competencies? If so, write about how and why. Google News has a robust search feature which allows you to hone in on your most significant keywords.
2. Look to your interactions with your clients. Did you have any “teachable moments” or interactions in the past few days that you feel are common and which, when shared, can provide learning opportunities? If yes, write about those moments; be sure to keep the names of those you mention and identifying comments discrete. You don’t want to embarrass your clients or yourself.
3. Write about some of the “basics” of your business. It is always good to refresh yourself on core competencies and share fresh insights as to why these basics are so important.
4. Write about management issues affecting your business. Each business has issues that are common to them all and often generalize to others in the industry.
5. Look to trends in your industry and analyze how one of them may affect clients in your industry.
6. If your blog is client facing, write about new developments that are sure to produce results for them. Tell why.
7. Invite another industry / sector expert to be a guest blogger. They can write about their insights into key issues in your industry.
8. Share a client success story (with permission of course.) Tell why they succeeded and if you were a part of that success, help readers see how and why the client succeeded.
9. Share a major learning experience; an Ah-ha moment. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be bullet proof…just healed. So say how and why you got insight that helped you redirect.
10. Share information about your colleagues or employees or even new staff member news, awards and competencies. I would even suggest having one of your employees write a guest post. Invite them to share some of their personality and talents they bring to working with you.

I do a fair amount of public relations consulting for advertising agencies. This helps them save money. They have a senior PR person on call, but not on the payroll. Because of this arrangement, I have the delight of working with a number of agencies in the greater Charleston area, as well as some outside the area.

Bloggers are not a target. They are a source. Listen to them.

This morning one of my ad agency colleagues phoned to ask (on behalf of a client who posed this question to the ad agency) how best to create a list of bloggers so the client could “shoot out a release to them.” At which point, I said, “Ummm, I wouldn’t encourage that if I were you.” My colleague said the client wants to send a release, implying that they just wanted to shout out the message into the ether and hope that someone hears it.

He doubted that they would heed my advice; the best way to get the attention of bloggers is to have a relationship with them. You can’t just fire off a release to a blogger and expect that they’ll show interest unless it’s a world-class, earth shattering story. Bloggers have their own voice and editorial calendar.

In case you haven’t been around in the past few years, professional bloggers have developed compelling content rich blogs that many readers subscribe to. Each bloggers’ voice is the equivalent of a direct line to people very interested in the topic of the blog or the bloggers thoughts/ideas.

Being able to successfully pitch bloggers requires that you subscribe to and read their blogs. That you follow them on Twitter. That you comment on their posts and understand their editorial tone. Not too much different than what one should have been doing with print publications; advice which is often ignored. Don’t wait around to create relationships. Do it because it is the right thing to do. You can learn a lot from reading the same information your customers are interested in. And if you can’t take time to do this yourself, consult with a public relations professional who is familiar with bloggers in your industry.

If you want to have bloggers interested in the story that your company has to share, plan ahead. Read the top bloggers in your industry or for the customers you serve. You can find them by looking at which blogs are top ranked on Technorati, or most frequently bookmarked on Delicio.us.

Don’t wait until you just want to “shoot out a release” to develop relationships with bloggers and understand what their audiences care about. Do it now because they offer invaluable insight into the mind of your consumer.

As Twitter has matured, many small business owners have joined the conversation. However, there are those out there who have tried it and don’t understand how it works. Or they have “looked into it” and are not sure where to begin.

Recently I’ve discussed social media with several groups. There are so many who feel that the whole Twitter world is going to swamp them. And there are those who are afraid of appearing silly. My number one tip is to remember that this is social media. Your goal is to be social. Your task is to engage, learn about your neighbors and develop community.

If you’re having issues trying to determine how to tweet, what to tweet or when, this post from Mark Hayward on Twitip will help you understand some of the fundamentals.

Forrester Research publishers of one of my favorite business books, Groundswell, released research that quantifies a new category of those active in social media. Dubbed conversationalists, these users are active and influential.

According to Forrester, Conversationalists are,

56% female, more than any other group in the ladder. While they’re among the youngest of the groups, 70% are still 30 and up.”

Recently I was a presenter with Shauna Heathman of Makenzie Image Consulting at the Columbia, SC National Association of Women Business Owners discussing personal branding whenone of the attendees asked others at the meeting, “Do you read blogs?” Her question stimulated discussion about of who reads and publishes blogs. Only a few did not regularly read and comment on blogs. However only 2 attendees maintain and write a blog. Earlier in the presentation the majority of the women recounted using their Facebook profiles to support their businesses’ marketing.  Forrester’s more scientific research confirms my “woman on the street” first-hand knowledge.

If you want to reach the customers (and I mean women) who make 85% of brand purchasing decisions, you need to be active in social media. Eight-six percent US women now have a profile on at least 1 social networking site a 48% increase. (Up from 58% in 2008.)

Women are conversationalists. Our brains are wired that way and data show how we have leveraged our innate ability into a powerful force.

Have you ever noticed that as you listen to the radio during your morning commute that Brooke Ryan might refer to a news item and later when you are out to lunch you see the same story headline in the newspaper that was lying on your table? This phenomenon of local news being driven by the research and reporting of local newspapers is documented in a report from Pew Research.

…But a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, …suggests that while the news landscape has rapidly expanded, most of what the public learns is still overwhelmingly driven by traditional media—particularly newspapers.

The study, which examined all the outlets that produced local news in Baltimore, Md., for one week, surveyed their output and then did a closer examination of six major narratives during the week, finds that much of the “news” people receive contains no original reporting. Fully eight out of ten stories studied simply repeated or repackaged previously published information. more

Last year as ad revenue declined, we saw our area newspapers shift to more local content. The shift was happening all across the country.

The research from the Pew Foundation tells us that we are right to have some concern about the changes.

Pew notes, “The local papers, however, are also offering less than they once did.” That is because there is less ad revenue. Newspapers can only print what they can pay for. As one area editor shared with me his publisher said, “That’s a great story idea, but if we don’t have ad revenue to support an additional page, we can’t print it.” However, in the meantime, random column inches here and there contain uninteresting blurbs like the one in today’s Post and Courier, “Shed damaged by fire, no one injured.” That’s a news story?

The Pew study also confirms that the web is the first place of publication and an alert system. In addition there is another interesting tidbit in the study that we PR people have known, media releases are often the source of much of the information contained in the newspaper.

The takeaway from this is:

• Newspaper journalism is important as the foundational source for most local news
• Original stories have declined
• Well crafted media releases may be used to place news because there are fewer journalists with less time and column inches to give to originally sourced stories.

So, it is the job of public relations professionals to craft news worthy well written items for our media colleagues use and consumption. There is an even greater chance that your firm’s news will end up right where you want it to be.