So You Have a Business Blog You Want to Promote on Social Networks

I have heard from some people that looked at my case study and were a little bit hesitant to share content from their business blog. They didn’t want to risk hurting their Google ranking by having the same content on multiple sites, which is a very valid concern.

However you can still promote your business blog using a few different social networking sites and applications.

Tagworld and Facebook both allow you to import RSS feeds into your page directly, so now visitors to your page can see your blogs content and draw them to your site. For other social networking sites you can create a widget that displays your feed as well, using this application from springbox. This widget is highly customizable, from size to color, at times it does take a couple of extra seconds to load but it is a good option to display your content elsewhere.

Another tool you can use is social networking websites built around blogging, blogcatalog.com and mybloglog.com are two different websites centered around building communities for bloggers. Both sites have plug-ins and code for your blog, which will display the last visitors to your blog if your readers have a registered avatar on their site. Also both sites offer messaging capabilities as well, where you have the option to publicly display your comment it or send it privately.

Mybloglog has recently been purchased by yahoo, it allows you to form communities based off of your blog. You can invite a limit of 15 people per day to add as a contact, which I recommend you should do out of habit. Another feature of the site is that it will automatically add people to your community who are frequent visitors, which I find to be a nice feature.

Blogcatalog recently changed ownership and has focused on the community aspect of blogging. Originally a blog directory, blog catalog has expanded on that idea and added features around it. You can join different neighborhoods of blogs much like Mybloglog, however there isn’t a per day limit, which allows you to spend some time and find people that have the same interests as you do without limiting it to a couple at a time. Readers can rate your blog as well, giving you feedback along with a rating. These rankings, along with your participation on the site, create a ranking within the blogging directory, higher ranked blogs show up earlier when people are browsing the catalog. Another difference is that blogcatalog has discussion threads, which I think are an outstanding addition to the site.

These are different forms of social networking and if you have a blog for your business or are just looking to expose what you write to more readers, you should take advantage of these services and sites. Your content is valuable and using these social networking sites to expose your content can only help you draw in new readers.

Technorati Tags: social networking, business blogs, mybloglog, blogcatalog, springbox, facebook, tagworld