There’s a (long!) blog written by Amanda Lewis on the Yale Herald site regarding self-promotion as it relates to blogs. Although she takes her time, she does a decent job of covering the basics of self-promotion and the benefits that come from doing it well.

The piece is written from a student perspective, but don’t discard it on that basis. It shows the ease with which college students and recent graduates blog. Most of the blogging described in the article is personal blogging, but the students use it as a tool to develop voice, style and skill in their respective niches. Campus bloggers are minor celebrities, and use their blogs to open otherwise closed doors.

Lewis explains the virtues of being on another blogger’s blogroll, as she describes the experience of fellow student Josh Duboff and what happened when his blog was added to the blogroll of a much more popular blog: his readership went from 30 to 700 overnight.

Lewis also discusses what happens when blog comments overshadow the blog posts. Commenters can indeed change the blogging experience, and she discusses different blogger approaches to comments. – including allowing, moderating and disallowing them.

The article covers the decision to include or exclude personal information in a blog, and why bloggers of her acquaintance have chosen the routes they’re on. While personal information may enhance the blog and deepen the relationship between blogger and reader, many bloggers prefer to draw a line around certain types of information.

The article also discusses the personal relationships that develop between bloggers, and what comes out of them. The value of the social circle is unmistakable, and while it doesn’t always lead to a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, it does help cement a community of interested bloggers and readers together.

All of these points are applicable to business blogging. Even though none of the blogs featured in the article are business blogs, the bloggers’ experiences are valuable nonetheless.
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Photo Credit: Harrison Keely

Tags: benefits, blog, blogger, bloggers, blogging, blogroll, blogs, Business, comments, community, content, HP, hr, im, IT, PR, Promotion, reader, readers, RSS, sse, XP

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Blog Promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.