Today I’m thinking about business blogs.  The question in mind is this:  who should you be writing for?  Your customers, the industry at large, or anyone who happens to drift by on the winds of the internet?

I’m going to admit that I’m a prime offender here.  Although this is generally a business blog, I spend most of my time writing about the engine room stuff of marketing, web design/development and traffic analysis.  Much of it is not only stuff that my customer base wouldn’t read, it’s stuff that would probably send them scurrying off to some other site.  I do try to have a substantive post once or twice a week with a list that will benefit the small business community, but I suspect me boldest efforts tend to go into talking to my peers, not my customers.

I was reading the blogs of some of the people that have come in via  MyBlogLog.com over the past day or so and checked out Art Dinkin’s blog, “MomentonMoney.com.”  Art is a financial planner in Des Moines, Iowa, and his blog is a prime example of how to do a business blog properly.  Now I’m from New England, and as such, I’m probably not a potential customer.  But as a blog maven, I see some things that we should all consider for our blogs:

• He’s providing information his customers can put to work for them.
• His posts are short, easy to read and use an excellent mix of bold and regular text to pull the casual reader into the important points. 
• He uses images to make what could be dry subject matter more lively.
• Financial planning is exciting to him, and he conveys that to his readers.
• In my first read, in the first post, I learned something I did not know before. That’s real value, and if I were in his area, I’d be talking to him about my financial planning.

So what are your thoughts? Should business blogs speak primarily to customers, or should there be an “Inside Baseball” component of adding to the industries body of knowledge?