January 9th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Welcome to The Blog Consultant
My name is Steven Aitchison and I am, among other things, a Blog Consultant
for small businesses. I run ½ day workshops in Glasgow and Edinburgh
in Scotland.
The aim of this blog is educate the small business owner who is thinking of
using Blogs as a business tool. It is not aimed at the seasoned professional
although, in time, there will be a lot of useful info.
I currently run another blog over at www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog and
have the contract to manage www.rodthomasblog.com and
am part of the Positive Blog Network.
My aim, when consulting, is to educate and get small businesses using blogs
as a way of interacting with their customer base and to attract visitors to
their business.
The blog is in its infancy, only started on the 9th January 2007 so bookmark
this blog and come back often as we will be putting up a lot of material over
the next few months.
If you have any questions regarding the ½ day workshops, please contact
me here.
Technorati Profile
February 25th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
I have been working extremely hard of late working on my blog at www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog and www.rodthomasblog.com and
also I have been working on a blogging course for small Businesses in the UK
and a blogging course for beginners using blogger.com. I now have secured
a part time tutors post at Strathclyde University for the ‘Blogging for beginners’
course.
The course is called, funny enough, ‘Blogging for small businesses’. It
will show how the small business in the UK can benefit from using blogging
as another way to market their products or to create buzz for their company
and show them to be experts in their chosen field.
The course will last from 10am - 4pm and will take place on a Saturday and
is priced at £399. The price includes the setting up of a blog
for each individual company with 1 years hosting and domain name registration.
If you are interested in ‘Blogging for small businesses’ please contact me
February 26th, 2007 at 6:26 am
Blog your way to success
The Independent has an article about business blogging and how UK companies seem reluctant to take blog. It goes on to show that only 2 FTSE 100 comapnies ran a blog.
March 2nd, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Blogging for business part 1
This is the first part of a series of articles taking you from the very beginning
of a blog right through to the end. It will come in about 10 parts and
will delve from beginner to advanced techniques for blogging. By the
end of the course you should have a firm grasp of blogging and will probably
start a blog before the end of the course.
The first question you have to ask yourself before you even start a blog or
look at the various platforms is;
Continue Reading »
March 12th, 2007 at 6:23 am
Blogging platforms
There are a multitude of blogging platforms to choose from and it is a decision
you will have to make carefully. I have my only opinions about business
blogging and the type they should use, I will discuss that later. There
is lots of advice out there about blogging platforms but I will discuss it
here as it is an essential part of any course on blogging.
There are two types of blogging platforms:
Hosted
This is basically a blog that is hosted on a web based server. It’s
like using the web to view your e-mails, there is nothing to download onto
your computer, and everything is hosted by the blogging company. They
are extremely easy to set up and can be done in a matter of minutes. Some
of the best known hosted platforms are;
Continue Reading »
March 13th, 2007 at 7:02 am
China ramps up blog censorship
The Sydney morning herald has a story about controls being introduced on the growing number of bloggers stating their thoughts and political feelongs online.
The Bejing morning post stated that Long Xinmin, The director of China’s General Administration of Press and Publication:
“We must recognise that in an era when the internet is developing at a breakneck pace, government oversight and control measures and means are facing new tests,” Long told members of China’s national parliament on Monday, the report said. Long singled out bloggers as one challenge.
Long said “citizens’ freedom of expression would be fully protected”.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
The Chicago Tribune has published a story by Robert Elder about a nun, Sister
Julie Vieira who has been blogging her way to fame. Robert interviewed
Sister Julie and asked some questions about her blogging habits (yep, the old
ones are the best!). One particular question I liked:
Q. Do you think Christians are behind in using technology to interact
with the world? The Islamic faith has done very well attracting members and
interest with its Web sites.
Continue Reading »
March 13th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
The 7th Annual weblog awards have announced the winners. there are some
great blogs in here. Check out the website at
2007.bloggies.com
Here is a list of the winners
Best Application for Weblogs
YouTube
Best Australian or New Zealand Weblog
The Breakfast
Blog
Best Asian Weblog
Tokyo Girl Down Under
Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog
Secret Dubai Diary
Best European Weblog
My Boyfriend Is
a Twat
Continue Reading »
March 17th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Bradenton.com has posted a story about a soldier from Bradenton who is blogging
from Afghanistan in the heart of the war torn country. Sgt Brandon White’s
blog can be found at www.gwot.com
He states;
“My original intent with the blog was to simply keep my friends and family
informed about my day-to-day routine and, in a less direct way, let them know
I was still alive,'’ he wrote in an e-mail to the Beacon Journal. “I soon
realized that my audience had quickly grown from simply my friends and family
to people all around the U.S. and then people from around the world.'’
March 21st, 2007 at 9:05 pm
You now know why you want a blog and which blogging platform you are going
to use. Its now time to think about choosing a domain name and a name
for your blog.
There are three elements to your blogs name:
Domain name:
Your domain name is something like www.blogconsultant.co.uk you’ll
notice straight away that my domain name tells you everything about what I
do. If you seen that domain name in a list somewhere you would immediately
think I have something to do with blogs and I am a consultant.
I have another blog at www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog which
is not so good as it tells you nothing of what I do. I had the domain
name for a few years and used it for the blog.
Continue Reading »
