The small business blogger is rightfully concerned about maintaining a constant flow of fresh content. Many start out enthusiastically and then quickly realize the time that it takes to research and write to their blog daily. What are the solutions for the small businessman who wants to keep his SEM and blog content in-house?

SEM: In-house or Out?

Ideally, you will have someone on staff as your head blogger. This person should obviously be enthusiastic about your product and mission, have a thorough knowledge of the workings of your organization and have a good read on your customers. Hopefully, you have a candidate already on staff.

Writing skills are not so much a factor as you might imagine. Business blogging allows for a type of informality that will carry an authentic voice. Sloppy, grammatically incorrect prose is unacceptable. but you aren’t looking for a Hemingway.

You then should enroll your blogger in a blog training course to get the basics of blog optimization as well as, perhaps, require that he or she familiarize themselves with XML/RSS and basic CSS.

Should you also expect this person to handle the analytics, manage your PPC, and search engine optimization? Not really, not if you want your ROI healthy, not to mention your head blogger.

Personnel for In-House SEM

Here is the bottom line, according to a piece in ProfMarketing.com:

“Effective campaigns require a broad range of skills, far more than one single person can offer (although many might say they can). You will need the following personnel:

1. SEO specialist
2. Copywriter to draft effective content
3. PPC specialist to optimally manage your bids
4. Web stats analyst to monitor and analyze web traffic patterns
5. Usability professional to ensure your campaign is engaging the user and increasing conversion rates
6. Web designer to ensure the site landing pages are laid out in an attractive fashion
7. Web programmer to code the site
8. Network administrator to ensure the site remains up and running
9. Project manager to ensure everyone’s efforts are coordinated and to remain on budget and within the timeline.”
(Source)

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Tags: authentic_voice, blogger, business-blogging, in-house, outsource, ppc_specialist, search_engine_optimization, sem, small_businessman

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Blog Training, Business Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.