Want to learn the secrets of good blogging? Need to understand the point of it all (or find the best way to convince your boss of the point of it all)? Want to know how to increase your readership, choose the right things to write and own your media?

Well, that’s why I’m here!

Come along to my Workshop “Building Better Blogs” tomorrow at Weber Shandwick‘s offices on Gray’s Inn Road.

Learn the secrets of good blogging!

The Blogging Workshop has been set up in association with Mediatrust. Any company seeking to explore or enhance their online profile will benefit from some very practical advice — and there will be an opportunity to ask me specific questions about your website or blog. I’ll also be giving some examples of blogging hits and misses and showing you how you can “own your media” online.

As part of the half-day media training workshop I’ll be covering:

• Why blog?
• How (and where) to set up your blog
• Secrets of good blogging — including my rules for how a successful blog should be put together.
• Finding your voice
• Developing readership
• Networking in the blogosphere

Also making an appearance will be Paul Murphy, who will be giving a short presentation about his work at the BBC. Paul and I will be on hand for a blog surgery at the end of the workshop, so you can ask us for specific advice and feedback.

Get tickets now!

I’m told there are still a few spaces left, so if you want to sign up, head over to the Mediatrust website. I look forward to seeing you there!

If you can’t make this one, don’t worry! I’ll also be running workshops in online media training in the coming months, so sign up now to register your interest! Alternatively, I can come to you to coach in-house. If you want a company full of web supremos, get in touch with with me here.

P.S If you’re still not sure if you should come or not, there will be a slide featuring a *hilarious* picture of a horse, which should be reason enough.

What kind of blog do you write?

Last week, I wrote “how to write a company blog” in which I promised that you don’t have to write a corporate news blog or a personal blog if it doesn’t suit you or your business. But just how do you work out what your company blog should be about?

To find out what sort of blog best suits your business and personality, we’ve put together this handy questionnaire:

Answer our handy questionnaire!

Are you happy sharing personal information?

A.  Yes, I’ll share love and laughter, tears and sadness, what I ate for lunch, what I’m wearing to my next networking event — anything!
B. Yes, but only if it’s a personal opinion about some industry news or an event we attended.
C. No, I’m not the sharing kind.
D. I could, but it’s not going to be all that interesting.

Do you have a lot of industry news you can discuss?

A. Yes, but only of the unprintable variety.
B. Yes, but not enough to feed a blog.
C. Yes, loads of industry news, views and events to cover.
D. Yes, but it’s already being done by a heap of other bloggers.

Are you trying to draw in customers based around specific keywords?

A. I’m not entirely sure what you mean? My customers tend to come via word-of-mouth and networking.
B. We don’t have a specific keyword strategy, but we know what things people are searching for to find us.
C. Yes, we have done a lot of search engine optimisation work and we have a list of keywords.
D. We’ve got a firm idea of keywords, but we’re also concerned about building something really great in its own right.

Does this form a part of your brand and PR activity?

A. Everything I do is about raising my profile, which is what my company relies on.
B. Yes, we’re keen to raise our company profile within our industry.
C. Yep, we want to be seen as the market leaders in our field and we want to become better known among consumers too.
D. Yes, and we’d also like to use it for market research and getting people signed up to mailing lists.

So what sort of blog should you write?

Jot down your answers and check out the results below.

Mostly As: Personal blogger

You’re happy to share your personal information, and this means you’re probably a natural, old-school blogger who can share thoughts and feelings in a way that draws readers in. Because you’re naturally good at sharing, you can develop a blog and community simply by being yourself. What’s more, because you write about your interests, it’s easy to talk about your business a lot without your readers feeling like you’re selling constantly: your business is part of who you are!

Tips: You’ll probably find you do very well at using Twitter and Facebook to engage your audience (and clients) but don’t forget about LinkedIn and other social networks that may really suit your particular industry.

Examples: Love Miss Daisy | Rob Hinchcliffe

Mostly Bs: Business and pleasure

You may not find it so easy to write a really personal blog, but that’s OK because you attend enough events and have enough interesting company news to make your blog a vibrant and interesting place for readers. You don’t need to talk about what you had for breakfast in the office board meeting, but you can share some of the insights into running a business that will help get your company name out there.

Tips: You might need to put a bit more effort into giving your blog a personality. Some company blogs can start to sound dry, but by going that extra mile to write some interesting editorial, will be good for your brand as well as your search engine traffic.

Examples: Marriott on the Move | Firebox | Chocoholics

Mostly Cs: Strictly Business

You don’t need to share personal stuff because you work in an industry that has plenty of space for opinion pieces, insights and news. Both B2B and B2C companies can do really well at Industry Insight blogs. If you’re working on getting your company to appear high in search results, this is a great way to make sure your customers can find you and the services you offer online.

Tips: It may not be a personal blog, but there’s still space for some personal touches. Columns and opinion pieces by people inside the company, and some articles bigging up your latest achievements are perfect fodder for a blog.

This is also a great option if you’re prepared to offer free advice to people who may eventually become your customers.

Examples: Tempero, Social Media Moderation | It’sOpen: Social Media Strategy

Mostly Ds: Magazine

If you’re trying to develop community, build your brand, improve your site traffic, and sell more stuff, a magazine is the ultimate goal.

A “magazine” style blog talks around your industry subject, offering advice and tips, opinion and features. It is a great way to talk about your business while still offering readers something worth reading. Just as high street shops produce paper magazines, your website store should offer an online magazine.

Tips: You don’t have to be in fashion to write a magazine-style blog – you can opt for magazine-style in any industry. But you DO need to have good quality editorial if you want people to become avid readers. And you’ll need to commit to a decent number of REGULAR posts in order to keep those readers coming back.

Examples: ASOS Blog | Catwalk Genius |Manifesto | LoveHoney (NOTE: NSFW – Not suitable for all workplaces!)

Recommended reading:

How to write a company blog — The internet is like a horse — it can smell fear!
The growth of business blogging in the US — Nearly half of businesses in the US will be using blogs for marketing by 2012
Blogging and social media marketing. Original content is key to success Why having your social media activity needs to include blogging.

Need training, help, advice, bloggers or content? That’s why we’re here! Outsource your blog content or come to one of our blogging workshops!

Miramus FAQ

Well, blogging on Miramus didn’t last too long and, after Shaa told me off for having such a pitiful personal site, I finally cracked and spent an entire Sunday asking Al how to do things with a fancy WordPress template.

So now, if you’re looking for my personal blog, it’s over on Katielee.co.uk, where you can also find out about various little projects I’m working on. I’ll save the big news for the Miramus blog – though we seem to be working on an awful lot of  TOP SECRET projects at the moment, which makes it quite hard to talk about new things.

The thought of moving the site I currently use as an online portfolio for PRs or print editors to look at if they need find out more about me over to WordPress is too hideous to contemplate right now. So, instead I’m squatting on the Miramus blog to see if I can make myself a home here. If it gets inappropriate, I’ll make like the Littlest Hobo and move on.

I’m quite rubbish at writing a personal blog. I love my crochet blog (due to be updated with the shocking news that recently I have dabbled in KNITTING) but an actual personal blog about what I’ve been doing and what I’ve been thinking has always proved problematic. I’m just not very good at sharing personal information about my latest brain blahs.

Good news for you, at least. I’m not planning on turning this into a blog that liberally sprinkles around words like “musings”, “ramblings”, “random” or similar (though I read and admire many that do). Instead, I’ll pop up the odd column that I can’t post on the Telegraph any more and try to keep it fairly free from angst.

But, who knows? Maybe I’ll get a taste for over-sharing and you’ll all come back in a month to discover that I’m posting up song lyrics, making liberal use of ellipses and tagging people with memes.