Just had a meeting with a client who is getting into blogging as a method of promotion for his site. One of the best customers I’ve worked with in this niche. He understands that since he doesn’t have a lot of money to throw at buying traffic, he’s going to need to put time and effort in, and he’s not afraid of the work.

Once he got familiar with the technical features of his blog, we started getting him into the conversation of blogging, linkbaiting, trackbacks, comments, that kind of thing. He’s taking to it quite well, with a lot of energy.

Although the last few clients we’ve introduced to blogging have raised an interesting point in my mind: The first step to becoming a blogger is to read blogs. Its very easy to start teaching a small business owner how to make a post and send a trackback, but its putting the wagon before the horse to do all this without getting them settled into a feedreader first, and in hindsight, getting the budding blogger to subscribe to and regularly read blogs in their niche is probably the most important step. This is how they get context, and a real grasp on how this whole blogging thing works.

And of course, the most important aspect of blogging for small business bloggers to leverage is the conversation, and you wouldn’t just walk into a crowded room and start shouting. First, you listen and see what everybody is talking about.

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