As the world of Internet business grows, so it seems does the pace of communications. The advent of real-time services such as Twitter have sped conversations up, creating the perception that companies have to engage with their customers at the speed of noise.

While it is tempting to buy into this perception, racing to engage with potential customers quicker and more efficiently than ever, doing so actually flies in the face of years of established principles of communication: relationships take time and continual effort to build.

Friendships are not built in one day. Successful marriages are not formed in a single month. Nike has been communicating with customers with its ’swoosh’ consistently since 1971. And successful presidential campaigns are now starting 2-3 years before the actual election, using more time (instead of less) to get a candidate’s message across to voters.

For organizations large and small, successful communication strategies are built for the long-term. They are established on your website or in your storefront, reinforced in your in-person, email and phone conversations with customers, and emphasized through advertising or social media. Clear, friendly and personal interactions have a continued impact over time that establishes strong and lasting relationships.

My favorite current example of this approach in action is Pro Photo Rental*, a company that rents photo equipment to aspiriing or traveling photographers. Not only is the PPR website designed and written to be inviting and friendly, but each interaction after that is consistent with this message. Whether you DM, email or call, the staff or owner will personally take the time to answer your questions or solve your problem in a caring and direct way.

The residual effect of all these interactions is the formation of a strong and lasting relationship between customer and company. While PPR faces stiff competition, almost all of whom offer comparable prices and shipping offers, they have been able to become one of the top dogs of the industry. While a competing website may run a special promotion or appealing ad campaign, their repeat customers will continue to do business with the people they know and trust.

If the theoretical principles and real-life example teaches us anything, it is that there is nothing wrong with engaging in the high-speed arena of social media tools. You may find them immensely helpful to your brand and bottom-line. Whenever proceeding in these mediums, however, remember the lessons of communicators before you. Great relationships are built methodically. Not instantly.

Disclaimer: Pro Photo Rental has been a paying client of SpeakWell Communications in the past. However, there is no formal relationship currently in place and we have not been compensated in any way for this mention.

Disclaimer #2: The owner of Pro Photo Rental bought me a coffee for my birthday. This still does not constitute a formal relationship, and no other compensation has been received for this mention.

Personal blogs, developed for personal branding outside a company or organization, are becoming increasingly popular. The people who develop them are finding that the increased name-recognition, online popularity, and search engine optimization benefits can actually be helpful for their business goals. Notable examples include: www.tammycamp.com, www.gwenbell.com, and www.andrewhy.de.

This article covers 5 things you should do if you’re considering building a personal blog, or want to improve the one you already have. It’s not intended to be a step-by-step guide — there’s much I won’t cover here — and other points will be covered in later posts.

1. Find a design that suits you

It’s important that personal blogs be well-designed, both for aesthetics and to make it easy for visitors to find and use the content you produce. It’s important also for your design to reflect you the person, as it’s the first impression many people will get of your personal brand.

I prefer Wordpress as a blogging platform, and with a eaily-customizable theme like Thesis, it’s relatively simple to modify your blog with your own pictures, colors, and layouts. Only moderate skill in HTML/CSS is required.

2. Make your contact info accessible

In ideal cases, visitors to your personal blog will want to reach out, and extend their contact with you — whether it’s to propose a project, exchange an idea, or just to say hello.

By making your contact info invisible, or nearly impossible to find, you make it hard for them to take this step, and lose out on the benefits of a possible connection. Instead, feature your contact info in an accessible place, and make it as easy to find as possible.

I usually recommend that contact info be put somewhere on the front page of a personal blog, as well as be put in a separate ‘CONTACT’ page.

3. Be consistent with your posting

It goes without saying that a personal blog needs great content in order to thrive. What people often overlook, however, is the consistency with which content is published. It’s important to establish clear patterns of posting so visitors know what to expect, and have a reason to check back on a regular basis.

The actual timing and amount of posts will vary from blog to blog, and should be determined with what best fits your schedule and goals. Though some bloggers recommend up to 2-3 posts/week, I think 1 post/week is sufficient in most cases.

4. Integrate your social media profiles

Personal blogs work best when they act as portals to your other personalities and profiles online. A personal blog should be linked with your social media presence(s), receiving traffic from places like Twitter and Facebook, and directing traffic out to the same places. The interactions that happen around your blog, thus, can carry over and grow in other places.

The easiest way to integrate your social media profiles on your blog is with customizeable ‘buttons,’ that lead back to your profiles. A wide variety of these buttons can be found at www.mysocialbuttons.com.

5. Interact with other blogs

Personal blogs work best not as singular points of information in a vast Internet universe — these usually come off as narcissistic — but rather as pieces that contribute to a whole. Personal blogs work best when the author plugs themselves into other blogging communities, and regularly puts energy into building outside relationships.

This can be done by guest posting on other blogs, writing posts that are part of a series with other authors, commenting on other blogs, or linking to content from your blog and social media profiles. Mix up these approaches for the best results.

Conclusion

There is no silver-bullet to building a great personal blog. The most successful approaches integrate blog building and posting best practices, and allow ample time for the blog to grow slowly over time. Remember that the biggest benefits might come months, if not years, down the road.

Many businesses are realizing the benefits of creating and maintaining a profile on the popular networking site, Twitter. For a relatively small time-input, business owners are able to interact directly with their target customers, exhibiting their personality while simultaneously enhancing their credibility. Twitter is currently regarded as the best place to build online communities, allowing you to grow brand loyalty among a sea of competition.

While posting and interacting on twitter is relatively simple, it may be intimidating to build your own account. Here is a step-by-step guide for establishing your own twitter profile, and customizing it for business use.

Step 1. Establishing your profile

Navigate your browser (Safari, Firefox, etc.) to http://www.twitter.com. On the righthand side of the page, highlighted in neon green, is the SIGN UP NOW button. Click it.

Now enter your information as asked. Enter your first and last name in the first field. This can be the actual name of the person running the account, or it can be your business name.

Next, pick and enter a USERNAME. It should be something unique to you, preferably a variation of your name (for personal-focused accounts), or your business name (for professional accounts). In general, it’s recommended that your username be between 5-12 characters.

Next, enter a PASSWORD that’s unique to you. It’s recommended that you don’t use any dictionary words, and that you include either a capital letter, a number, or both. These measures ensure your account stays secure — don’t share your password with anybody.

If you don’t want to receive promotional or informational emails from twitter (recommended), uncheck the box that reads: I want the inside scoop–please send me email updates!

Lastly, enter the security-code words you see in the box below (click get two new words if you can’t understand the original ones), and hit CREATE MY ACCOUNT.

If you entered all your information correctly, you’ll be forwarded to the SEE IF YOUR FRIENDS ARE ON TWITTER page. If you’d like twitter to search your email contact lists, click on the appropriate icon, and enter your information. If you’d just like to do this later, click on SKIP THIS STEP (at the bottom of page).

That will take you to a page with suggestions of people to follow. You can add more manually later, but for now, check 3 or 4 profiles that interest you. Following a few people to start will help you ‘get’ how twitter works. When you make your selections, press FOLLOW.

You now should be forwarded to your new homepage. And voila… you have yourself a twitter profile.

Congratulations! Have a lollipop, take a quick walk, or just raise your arms in celebration.

Step 2. Adding a profile picture

Adding a profile picture is the most important and easiest way to personalize your new account. Your profile picture is the first thing most people will look at deciding whether to “follow” you, and will be displayed next to each one of your updates.

For accounts with a primary person updating it, it’s alright to use a personal picture. It’s even encouraged. Just make sure it’s a closeup, because twitter only displays a small thumbnail. Strict business accounts can use your logo.

To add your profile picture, first click the PROFILE button, located in menu to the upper righthand side of the page.

Now, to the left of your username, there’s a space for a profile picture. To add one of your own, click on the green PLUS sign.

Once you’re on the add a picture page, click the CHOOSE FILE button. Select an image from somewhere on your computer — I use a Mac, and have all my photos stored in iPhoto. Once you’ve found a photo, click on it to select, and click CHOOSE (in the bottom righthand corner).

If your image is too big — the maximum allowed size is 700k — you have to resize it. You can do that in PhotoShop, if you have it, or online at http://mypictr.com.

Once you see that your picture has uploaded, click SAVE, and you should see it displayed next to your username.

If that worked, go back to HOME, and you should see your new profile pic. Sit back and admire it.

Step 3. Writing your bio

After a profile picture, your bio is the profile element that communicates the most about your business. For person-centered profiles, your bio might give readers an idea of what you do for work, what you do for fun, and what your personality is like. For business profiles, the bio should tell readers about your services, your identity, and perhaps one fun fact about your company.

Twitter bios should be written in sentence form (resist the urge just to make a list), and are only a few sentences long — the max is 160 characters. They can be challenging to write, so do so first in a word processing document.

When you have your bio finished, click on SETTINGS, and enter your text into the box that says: ONE LINE BIO.

While you’re at it, also include your website address (URL), and your business location. Even for Internet businesses that lack a true brick-and-mortar location, it’s advisable to enter something here. Saying you exist ‘on the Internet’ doesn’t give people much to connect to. Try to place yourself somewhere.

After you enter this information, hit SAVE. Then click on PROFILE, which will take you back to your page. Here, you can see the (awesome) results. It should look something like this:

Step 4. Customizing your profile

Just like each website has its own identity, you can now customize the look and feel of your twitter profile (recommended). Go to SETTINGS –> DESIGN, where you can choose a twitter background theme. The theme will be displayed on your homepage, behind the updates from your network, as well as behind your twitter profile page.

If you can’t find something you like, or just want a more-intricate background theme, visit http://www.tweetygotback.com, and pick out your own design. The website is linked directly to your twitter account, to make upgrades as easy as possible.

Because we’re from Boulder, we picked a mountain-themed background, and applied it to our account. It’s looking good. At this point, your page should look something like this:

Step 5. Start tweeting!

If you’ve completed steps 1-4, you now have a fully functional, personalized and customized twitter business profile. Now you’re ready to start using the service. You can post tweets, follow your friends or network contacts, respond to their updates, send direct messages, and more.

If you want information about how to use the features on twitter, or about how to maximize the brand awareness you get from twitter, I recommend you start with this YouTube video, this blog post, or the many more you can find all over the Internet.

Also, I’ll be writing more-detailed posts about the use of twitter as a marketing tool soon. So if you’re interested, make sure to stop back by this blog!

Please leave any questions you have in the comments section.

Happy Tweeting!