Welcome to Lesson 3 of our starting a business blog course.  If you haven’t already, make sure you get caught up on lesson1 and lesson 2 of the series.

During lesson 1 we defined the purpose of our blog as it relates to the wants and needs of our ideal audience.  Then, as part of lesson 2, we had to work on refining our blog’s unique value proposition.  These two steps guide us as we think of who we’re trying to write for and why in the world they’d ever want to read it anyway.  Good stuff.  Now it’s time to look outside ourselves, to the competition.  The best part is, one of the best tools to help you do the job is probably sitting on your desktop right now.  Enter Google!

So, just who is your competition? Who’s that guy doing exactly what you want to be doing at this moment?  Who do you admire?  Who’s tweets do you look out for, who’s in your RSS reader?

Reading other blogs is only the first step.  You should also be commenting on those blogs and learning why other people like them.  Then make sure you incorporate all those best practices into your own blog.   But you’re still not finished, because so far you’re only as good as your competition, you’re still not better.  To get ahead, you need to figure out how to be better.

The key to being better is to circumvent a head-to-head competition.  Find that one thing where you dominate, exploit the hell out of it, and in the process – blow your competition away.  Maybe you have more insider information, or you’re more entertaining, or you’re funnier… whatever.  Figure out your niche, and a group of readers will think your blog is just plain better.  Why?  Because yours has more of what they like – and so starts the domino effect.

Comb through the blogs of your “idols” and figure out how they could be better — then make those improvements on your own blog.  But be careful, this isn’t about adding features or functionality just for the sake of checking a box.  Invest resources and time in things that actually improve  the experience for your readers.  Think about what would make a potential reader prefer your competition’s blog over yours.  More importantly,  think about what you can do to persuade readers to stick around with you instead of  someone else.

Here are a few ideas to help guide your research.  Keep your audience in mind as you brainstorm about ways to make your blog stickier.

1. If the competition blog doesn’t allow comments, maybe you can offer a forum for your readers and encourage community.
2. Does the topic you cover lend itself to merchandise?  Could you / should you offer merchandise on your blog?
3. Can you incorporate design elements into your blog to make it more appealing to your audience?
4. How about usability, can you make improvements to navigation or your site search engine?
5. If the competition’s blog has a closed format, can you link out to other cool stuff where your competition doesn’t?
6. If your competition relies heavily on external sources, can you increase your blog’s value by beefing up your own writing?

Get the one-up on your competition by increasing the value of your blog in the minds of your readers.  I’d love to add to this list, so if you think of additional questions I can add to help guide others, let me know in the comments.

So you’ve written a compelling press release about something happening at your company.  Awesome!  Now what?  Since it does you no good if your news doesn’t actually get read by the folks you’re targeting, It’s useful to understand the options for press release distribution available to you.

You have your news, but without getting it into the appropriate media channels, it’s not worth much.  You need to get it to journalists, editors, bloggers and websites to make a splash:

Traditional Media. Newspapers, magazines and journals are always in need of fodder to publish.  Sending a release to an editor or journalist is easy, but getting results can be difficult, especially the more popular the publication.  Editors at Fortune Magazine, for example, are inundated by press releases every day, so chances are slim they’ll actually be interested in yours.  If, however, you send it to the Dog Walker Association Journal (completely fictitious as far as I know), they probably don’t get nearly the number of releases, so your chance of getting coverage in your niche is much better.

Blogs. Bloggers are as much journalists as the folks working at a “real” publication these days.   You stand a good chance of a blogger being interested in your release than a busy magazine editor, if you do it right (see tips at the end).

For both traditional media and blogs, you need to research the appropriate contact (the editor or blogger who covers your industry) and reach out to them personally (email usually works nicely).  Be polite, introduce yourself and your product and explain how readers will benefit by using it.  Make this first contact (and every contact for that matter) about them, not you.

Websites. Press release distribution services like that of PRWeb.com are able to reach a network of websites within a niche to automatically publish your release to the industries you designate and news sites like Google and Yahoo! in an automated fashion.  The service can be costly with prices starting at $80 per press release.

Check out this video by PRWeb.com illustrating how their press release distribution works:

Which do I recommend?

All of the above. Work on developing a network of contacts both within traditional media channels (to benefit from their reach) and popular blogs in your category (to benefit from their influence).

A pleasant side effect of your PR efforts is the boost in search traffic.  Creating relevant backlinks to your website increases page rank and gets you on Google’s good side.  Track your website referrals through your analytics program to figure out what’s working.

Tips:

• Make sure you contact the editor or journalist that covers your topic – don’t bother with the general inbox.
• Please check your spelling – especially of their name!
• Make the introduction personable – No “Dear Sir”
• Read the publication (blog, magazine, or newspaper) you’re pitching to – make sure it’s a good fit.
• Proofread.  Proofread.  Proofread your press release.
• Include contact information including web address, phone and email.