The biggest battle for most small business owners is getting enough people to see your work. Often that battle is won or lost online, without you even knowing it’s happening. Not very encouraging news. Here’s the solution: Build a blog and learn how to use it to zero in on your audience and market your services effectively. We know what some of you are thinking. Blogging, blogging, blogging—this topic just won’t go away. No matter how much you fight or try to ignore it, it continues to show up everywhere you look. It’s time to face facts: Blogging is here to stay. But despite what you may think, entering the blogosphere to build your business doesn’t have to be painful or time-consuming.

If you haven’t already done so, read our April 2007 article, Building Your Business with Blogging, that covered the basics of blogging for videographers. In this issue’s article, we’re going to take it several steps further by coaching you in how you can use a blog to establish yourself as an expert, while at the same time driving more traffic to your website and business.

What Is The Blogosphere?
It may sound like something you’d hear in a Star Trek episode, but the blogosphere is just a fancy way of describing the mass of 70 million-plus blogs floating around the World Wide Web. (Is it any wonder this topic can seem overwhelming?) The truth is that only a fraction of those 70 million blogs are being updated frequently. And an even smaller portion is being used effectively as a marketing tool. By simply reading articles like this and doing a bit of research, you will have the tools necessary to set yourself apart from the pack.

Part of effective blogging is participating in the blogosphere and being a good blog citizen. The good news is that you don’t have to worry about reaching or reading all 70 million blogs. Depending on your business goals, you may only need to focus on a handful of highly trafficked and effective communities of blogs. (See, life is getting easier already.)

It’s All About The Audience
One challenge every small business faces is getting prospective clients in the door. Whether it’s a product or service, reaching critical mass is an elusive and seemingly impossible feat. However, this is where businesses succeed or fail. For a videographer, it is critical that people see what you can do. In an industry that is competitive and visual, you must define, find, and connect with your audience.

Blogging is one of your keys to that opening that door.

Audience Found
Once you have a clear audience defined, find them online through blogs, forums, carnivals, and other social networking sites. Listen to the words they use, their unique catchphrases, and the needs they express. Begin providing a solution to those needs. If all the engaged women in a blog carnival are talking about cheesy or boring wedding videos, you can respond with a blog post highlighting your most compelling video clips and bill it as the antidote to cheesy wedding videos.

Audience Connection
With a blog, you have the advantage of dealing directly with your clients and potential customers. Direct customer contact provides increased opportunities to showcase your work, build trust, and eventually make the sale or book the gig. That interactivity is core to the popularity and success of blogging as a marketing platform.

Rules Of The Road
The best way to participate in the blogosphere is to read other blogs and comment often. That’s it. Think of the blogosphere as one giant forum, where every blog is a different post. Find the posts you like to read the most, read them, read the comments people make on them, then post yourself. We know you’re good at that. We see the video boards. You already have the time and the talent it takes. You just have to apply that time and talent to blogging. "But why?" you may ask.

Name Recognition
Just like with forums, when you frequent a blog and comment often, your name becomes recognized. This builds community and trust among other readers of the blogs. By hanging around blogs that share common interests, you’ll build a readership and learn the language of that group. This is particularly helpful if you are a teacher or sell training materials. You can find groups by looking in blog directories or Technorati (see below).

Increased Traffic and Visitation
Most blogs will allow you to link back to your blog (or any website you like) when you leave a comment. That increases the number of URLs linking back to your website and subsequently the number of visitors. For example, if you visit the top photographers or wedding coordinators in your area, become well-known on the blog, and link back to your site, you will be reaching the clients of those ideal vendors. There aren’t many other avenues for reaching your target market that quickly and efficiently.

Reciprocity
The more you comment on others’ blogs, the more they’ll comment on yours (it’s part of blog etiquette). The more comments you get on your blog, the more visitors will be intrigued to stay and read, which in turn will help you gain traffic and readership. When people see you have a lot of comments, they assume you must have something good to say. Also, as you participate in the blogosphere and comment often, other bloggers may add you to their blog roll, thereby increasing exposure and page views for your website. Remember to announce your new blog content, including videos, to people you meet in person and online, in your email signature, and in your comments.

Many of you who are most inclined to blog on a regular basis are wedding videographers. Your blog is a perfect platform to share your work with your clients and potential clients. Because of that, your assumption may be that, ultimately, brides and potential brides will be your biggest audience.

However, you may find that your biggest audience is actually other videographers. Ron often frequents the blogs of wedding photographers. Particularly in California, the wedding photographer blogosphere is outrageously active. However, without a doubt, other photographers make up the largest percentage of readers of each other’s blogs. This benefits those photographers who market to other photographers, but there is another benefit. For the rest of us, it becomes a social networking tool for getting out of our industry and making solid connections with "movers and shakers" in other related industries. As you know, this is also a good business tool as networking with other colleagues can and does lead to referrals.

Technorati is a massive search engine that exists to index all blogs in existence. Your first task after starting a blog is to claim it on Technorati so they can start ranking you. Your Technorati ranking is one more tool for determining the popularity and effectiveness of your blog. The more sites that link to your blog, the higher your authority and level of trust established in the blogosphere.

When bloggers want to find other people talking about an area of interest, they go to Technorati first. There is a sense of community and trust in blogs that doesn’t exist for websites. The reason is that websites are considered "corporate" or biased, whereas blogs are generally regarded as more friendly, real, and honest. The validity of these assumptions isn’t important for our discussion, simply the reality of the perception. You want your page to show up in Technorati when someone searches for your niche, whether it is weddings, events, or corporate or commercial work. Tag your posts, include keywords in your writing, and ping Technorati. Here’s how.

Add Technorati Tags
Tags are keywords that label the contents of your post to make it visible to search engines. Tagging your posts identifies the most relevant terms for search engines. This increases your visibility and rankings for those specific keywords. An automatic HTML code for adding tags can be found with a quick online search on "how to add Technorati tags."

Include Keywords
Each post you write and create should be keyword-rich. Even if you’re just posting the latest video you’ve completed and didn’t plan on writing anything. Think again. Just a few brief sentences with the right keywords can multiply your return on time invested. Try to include words that are being searched for by your target audience. One way to find out what people are searching for is to use a search engine watch site like Google Trends, Yahoo! Buzz Index, or AOL Hot Searches.

Ping Technorati
The concept of pinging often confuses new bloggers. Do they have to do it? How often? Is it important? The answers are "no," "any time you update your blog," and "yes," respectively. You don’t have to do it, but it helps build traffic. It’s like raising the red flag on your mailbox when you put something in it. The mailman knows he needs to pick it up and deliver it. The ping notifies sites like Technorati that you’ve updated your blog and they can deliver that information to the blogosphere. Every time you post something new, it helps to ping. You wouldn’t leave the red flag down and just hope the mailman stopped by, so why take such a passive approach with your blog?

WordPress blogs automatically ping Technorati and other major blog trackers when updated. If you have a different blog provider, Pingoat is a great place to register your blog and select all the tracking engines you want pinged.

If You Write It, They Will Digg You
No, we didn’t spell that wrong. Digg is a website that is democratizing digital media. (That’s a quote directly from their site, so it must be true). Digg is essentially a worldwide popularity contest for online media. If you come across a blog post, video, podcast, or news item you like, you can "digg" it. The more diggs an item gets, the higher it ranks on the Digg website. Once it reaches a critical mass, it’ll be on the homepage of its respective category. If it becomes one of the top 10, it then makes the Digg homepage where there are literally millions of viewers.

You can help readers of your blog digg you by adding the Digg link at the end of the post. Even if you never make it to the top of your category, Digg is another way you can track how many people are visiting and reading your blog. If you’re creating compelling videos and interesting content, people will digg it and traffic will increase.

Common Mistakes To Avoid
You’ve started blogging and even claimed your blog at Technorati. You’re ready to start driving that traffic straight to your website and business. But are you really ready? Below are the five most common mistakes to fix before you begin marketing and promoting your blog.

Using a Hosted Domain
Whether you host the blog yourself or use domain mapping, you’ll want to have your own URL for your blog (e.g., www.cinematicstudios.com/blog, www.weddingflix.com, etc.). It gives you more control and customization. If you don’t have the expertise or experience to make that happen, start with a hosted site and prepare to change once you get more familiar with blogging. (Domain mapping is when you have the URL you plan to use point to a blog of yours that otherwise would have the blog provider’s domain. For instance, our TypePad blog, cinematicweddings.typepad.com, is mapped to the URL www.weddingflix.com. Either URL will take you to our wedding video blog.)

Being a Wallflower
Blogging is powerful because of the community and interaction it provides. Just because you build it, it doesn’t mean they’ll come. You need to be proactive in finding readers and inviting them to your site.

Writing Without Personality
Blog posts shouldn’t read like newspaper articles. The writing on your blog needs to have personality and an individual style. Think of it like talking out loud—more casual, less formal, conversational.

Acting Stingy With Links
Link love is sharing and linking to other blogs from your own. Whether it’s in a post or in your blogroll, be generous with link love. One way to increase traffic is to have people link to you, but if you refuse to ever link back, the love will stop. When you post a video, link to the vendor’s blog or website. If you write an informational article, link to other resources. It will come back to you.

Getting Addicted
It may be hard to believe when you first start out, but it’s one of the first things we hear from blogging clients that we coach: they’re addicted. Once they get it and start seeing traffic and buzz build around their blog, they want to start posting every day. Keep your boundaries and a clear schedule with blogging time in place. Three to four posts a week is enough to maintain interest. Spend one afternoon a week creating your posts, schedule them evenly throughout the week, and let them go.

Continuing Education
It’s always good to stay current and knowledgeable about new media, marketing, and effective ways to promote your business. When you’re ready to learn more about effective blogging, we strongly suggest visiting Copyblogger and ProBlogger. These sites won’t merely help you to get into blogging; they’ll teach you how to use your blog to grow your business.

Adding a blog to your marketing mix and maximizing its effectiveness will help you reach your target market in ways you never imagined.

Ron and Tasra Dawson (ron at cinematicstudios.com) are co-owners of Cinematic Studios, a 2005 Diamond Artistic Achievement Awards winner for the concept video Bridal Boot Camp. Both were speakers at the 4EVER Group's Video 07 and WEVA Expo 2007.