Perhaps your company is considering a blog as part of theirmarketing strategy for customer acquisition or retention or maybe it'sas simple as your management thinks it's the "in" thing to have one.Or, perhaps your existing corporate blog has stalled due to thetime-demand of generating content.
Today at the Online Media Bootcamp, I will talk about how to getstarted with a corporate blog and how to keep it from stalling.
The key take aways from the workshop will be
- Why start a blog and who the best corporate bloggers are
- Best practices for blogging
- 3-easy steps to set up a corporate blog and optimize it
- How to make sure your content pipeline is always filled with reader-centric material
A corporate blog can be a challenge to write. In order to write something that matters, you need to have editorial freedom over what you write. That means no lengthy approval processes, no committees looking over your shoulder, no competing agendas.
We're used to thinking about corporate as bad - the home office, thebrand police, the people making and enforcing the rules. Vs. the field,which is where we think things really get done - more entrepreneurial.
When passion for and knowledge of what you write are easier to find in the field, a technical or specialized blog may work better than a general corporate blog. They may work better also for search. There's a higher likelihood that you might refresh a blog than a Web page.
The challenge with writing a blog that matters at work is also that you need to write for the inspiration, benefit, and interest of your readers. Say what you will, but rarely a corporate brochure is written with a point of view and the reader square in the middle. And so is a Web page.
Is writing a corporate blog that matters also a decision? We do know that there are many advantages to a blog vs. a Web page. It allows you to have:
- many more keywords - because you will write more
- older content that stays with the site - the reverse chronological format and the fact that you don't replace content with a blog but you keep adding
- new content added frequently
- inbound links, potentially from high-ranking sites
- potential value from specific content
The greater consideration for writing a corporate blog that matters is engagement. When I talk to customers, I hear that the three main reasons why they read something are - (1) education; (2) engagement; (3) entertainment. Bottom line, people like people.
Blogs are places for social interaction. When it comes to understanding and utilizing the online media for building relationships, we're still in the infancy. Many marketers look at the online medium as a new channel for the off line tactics. That's primarily what is preventing organizations from having a blog that matters.
What if you provided a space for people to interact and connect with other people? What if you went out there with the intention to be helpful and provide useful information, connections, and ideas? As Zig Ziglar said, "If you go looking for a friend, you're going to find they're very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you'll find them everywhere."
[Image hat tip Pavel Senko]