I’ve visited lots of business blogs – most are very interesting, but some are plain awful.

I mean, in my opinion, you can’t use free blogging services such as WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, etc. to post a few search engine optimised, keyword rich, sales articles and tons of affiliate links – and leave the blog out there waiting and hoping for someone to trip over the blog and buy something out of the links provided. That might actually works, but to me, it’s not ethical.

Business bloggers have to be ethical in their posts and articles, to make the blogosphere (the blog universe) a better place to live. The following is your guide to blog for business, the noobpreneur way:

1. Don’t pull feeds from other sites or blogs, and put it in your blog as your source of posts and articles, so that your blog’s content looks ‘fresh’ – start writing, not pulling.
2. Original blog posts, please – even a ‘hello everybody. Nice to meet you…’ is better than a great article that can be found on other 1527 sites on the Net.
3. Should you find interesting news on the Net and decided to put it on your blog, put the except, not the whole news – and, oh, blog on the news, will ya – don’t just copy and paste it. Better yet, put the news as an URL link, and blog on it!
4. Stay on your blog’s topic – I wouldn’t post about my dog’s eating habit in this blog.
5. Tag and categorise your blog posts well, so that your readers can find what they are looking for easily.
6. Reply on comments – not replying will make your future readers think that your blog is not owned by a human being.
7. Cite your article sources well – not doing so is actually considered as plagiarism.
8. When you eventually decide to use articles from article portals, such as eZineArticles.com, read the Term of Services – are you allowed to edit the articles or the resource boxes?
9. Don’t pay someone to fave you in social bookmarkers – and any other similar acts.
10. Watch your lingo! Consider your target audience demographics – sex, age, etc. Also, different cultures will interpret a statement differently from each other.
11. If your blog is for public consumption, blog accordingly – otherwise, set your blog private and don’t index yours in search engines.
12. You blog for your readers and communities – not for the search engines! Writes good blog posts, not ones with weird sentences loaded with your business-related keywords.
13. Your blog is not your sales page – Blog about your product, not making a sales page as your blog.

The most important, ethical, guide to blog the noobpreneur way: Stop looking for what to blog from the Net, log off your blogging account, turn off your PC or laptop, go outside and get a life! You will be amazed knowing how many things in a day you can do and experience – then, blog on it!

Ivan Widjaya
Ethical business blogger

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