Thought leadership effectively means  establishing credibility with an audience to produce extra brand equity for a blogger and by extension of the blogger’s company.

Thought leadership was found to be an important goal by many bloggers in the Backbone Media Corporate Blogging Survey 2005. Respondents to the survey stated that the top three priorities for bloggers starting a blog were 4 “another way to publish content and ideas,” “thought leadership,” and “build a community.” The same respondents were asked what issues continued to be important in their current blogging strategy. Thought leadership and idea sharing were the most important factors. When asked about the impact of their blog on their company, the following factors were identified as bearing the most impact from their blog: “another way to publish content and ideas,” “thought leadership,” and “RSS syndication.”

There are reputation benefits from establishing yourself as a leader in your community, but there are also some practical benefits for search engine rankings. If a blogger establishes himself or herself as a leader in the blogging community with a good following of readers, there is a good chance other bloggers will cite and link to the blogger’s posts and comment on those posts. Those links may help with boosting the ranking of a blog in a search engine for any keywords listed on the blog post. Those higher rankings may translate into more traffic to the blog. A blogger, and by implication, the company that employs him or her, will gain credibility and influence in their community by writing blog posts that establish the blogger as a leader in ideas in their blogging community.

What do you think is important for establishing credibility as a blogger? How did you gain your credibility and what tips would you give for budding bloggers to replicate your success?

Popularity: 93% [?]

Well, i finally got round to the redesign of my weblog. I had been planning to redesign this blog for a long time and also had drawn a rough sketch of how I wanted the new design to look like but it was delayed due to many reasons. After i decided to comit to blogging professionally, i thought id was time that i invest the time in creating a unique design, and saught the advice and recommendations of the people who really mattered. Our Readers.

I took all of the recommendations into consideration, and worked on the new design for about a week and finished with it yesterday. I did extensive testing with it using Firefox, Opera, IE 6 and 7. Everything looks fine so far but I still have a few things to do like optimizing the CSS, removal of useless plugins and some other things to decrease page load time.

Some of the changes made in the new design

• Switched from a 2 column to a 3 column for neater look
• We are now making use of the popular and & recent posts plugin to highlight some of our best content
• We have installed the Do-Follow plugin to reward users for leaving a comment on our posts. This means that when you comment, search engines will recognise your link and give you credit for it in their algorithms.
• Installed MyAvatars plugin which will display an avatar next to your name when leaving comments. This only works if you are a MyBlogLog user and have an avatar uploaded to your account.
• The design as a whole is slightly wider, and has incorporated a ‘web 2.0′ look as this seems to be popular at the moment, and i love the whole web 2.0 look.

I would really appreciate your feedback and what you think about our new design. Are there any areas you think could be further improved? If you spot any errors, please let me know that as well.

Popularity: 19% [?]

For some people, writing is as natural as talking. For others, it takes a little getting used to. If you are new to blogging and you’re not accustomed to writing for an audience, you might feel that your posts are awkward, clunky, and not really what you meant to say. This can result in a kind of writer’s block where you repeatedly start and then delete sentences because they don’t seem right.

Still other first time bloggers are afflicted with a kind of stage fright. Their thoughts, emotions, and opinions are going to be readily available to the entire world at the click of a button. And that can be intimidating. What if I come across as some kind of know-it-all? What if people don’t “get” me and just think I’m a jerk? What if my sixth grade English teacher reads my blog and finds out that I’m still a bad speller? There are a million reasons not to venture forth in your new independent publishing career.

Relax. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay if some people think you’re a jerk, and it’s fine if some people don’t “get” you. There will be others who do. And you’ll be happy once you get in and realize that the water’s warm.

You just need to find your voice. Write to your blog as you would talk with a friend. This is a good way to ensure that your personality comes through in the prose. You can always go back over your work and clean it up a bit, but it’s good to get it down initially in an off-the-cuff manner because that’s when the good stuff comes out.

The more you blog, the more you will discover about yourself. You might be surprised to find that you are linking and commenting about a certain subject that you wouldn’t ordinarily seek out. You might discover, like many people, that blogging is a path to new interests and a way to unlock thoughts otherwise lost in some corner of your brain. Blogging can take on a very intimate “journal” feel or a more “newsy” direction. Either way, the idea is that by putting your thoughts into words on a daily basis, you begin to see over time the kinds of things you gravitate toward. And those things often turn out to be different from what you expected them to be.

Finding your voice also makes for a good blog. Everyone is different, and blogs reflect their authors’ personalities and opinions. That’s why people read them, and that’s why they can be so addictive. Sometimes you just have to tune in to a favorite blog to see what that person has said about the latest news story or to read his or her take on a movie you’re thinking of seeing. Finding your voice is one of the perks of blogging that can really help you become a better writer. Don’t think about it too much; just blog every day, and your voice will develop.

What did you do when you first started out blogging, and how did you feel when you went to create your first blog post? Worried, happy, uncertain? Tell me your views by leaving us a comment.

Popularity: 8% [?]

One of the best ways to increase blog readership is to have other bloggers notice and link back to you. In fact, you can’t have a truly successful blog without having that critical cross-pollination from other bloggers. Luckily, with a little time and effort, you can become a part of the conversation. You just need to take care not to do it in a ham-handed fashion.

If your goal is to get noticed by bloggers, you’re not alone. Corporate clients and PR professionals frequently ask me “how can we pitch the bloggers?” I’m happy that traditional marketers have recognized the influence of the blogosphere, but i cringe every time that question is posed. The quick answer is that you don’t. Pitching is not the proper word for what needs to be done. A far more appropriate question is “how can I engage with the selected bloggers that our market trusts?”

This inappropriate focus on the “pitch” is one of the reasons that bloggers generally distrust the messages PR firms deliver. In a 2006 study conducted by Technorati, 1021 bloggers were asked how much they trust messages sent from PR firms, on a scale of 1 to 10. The average response? A dismal 4.1.

I’ve watched many organizations reach out to the blogosphere in a myriad of ways, and have a pretty good feel for what works and what doesn’t. Whether you’re trying to get bloggers interested in your products, or in your blogging efforts, here are few no-no’s:

• Don’t be indiscriminate. Carefully decide with whom you want to converse. It’s far better to target the top 10 bloggers in your arena for engagement than annoy 1000 bloggers that were on somebody’s email press list.
• Don’t send messages that aren’t tailored specifically to the blogger you’re reaching out to. Do not send a generic email blast. Take the time to refer to a post they’ve made, or mention a common associate or other linkage.
• Don’t send press releases. Most bloggers feel that being sent any marketing-speak whatsoever is an indicator of significant “cluelessness” on the part of the sender.
• Email is okay, but there are better options. Commenting on their blogs and writing your own blog posts that then link back to them creates open dialog, and resonates with bloggers. To do this just Start The Blogging Conversation.

If you take the time to consistently read the blogs that relate to your editorial or market arena, you’ll probably find many opportunities to respond intelligently. Agreeing, disagreeing, and expanding upon what’s been said by those with some influence is a terrific way to get noticed and be a part of the dialog.

A great way to expand on the dialog is to interview a knowledgeable blogger who has said something relevant to your space. For example, assuming that the solar energy market presents an opportunity for Acme Widgets, Acme might want to interview an expert who has blogged about the growth potential of solar energy, and may even probe the blogger to comment on why widgets might be relevant to this emerging power source. Recording and podcasting the interview can be an easy way to get the content up quickly, and you are almost certain to get an inbound link from the interviewee.

Reading, commenting, and blogging are the best ways to get the relevant bloggers to notice and link to you. Being a participant in the conversation and contributing valuable insights can reap rewards that far outweigh those of any calculated “outreach” campaign that the PR pros come up with.

Popularity: 9% [?]