What is a Blog & Why You Should Have One

I've talked a little about why a business should blog but since then we've experienced even more from the blog we publish so I thought we'd give more ideas.

What is a Blog?

Wikipedia has a great definition of a corporate blog:

"...a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services (or the end of old products), to explain and clarify policies, or to react on public criticism on certain issues. It also allows a window to the company culture and is often treated more informally than traditional press releases...in some corporate blogs, all posts go through a review before they're posted. Some corporate blogs, but not all, allow comments to be made to the posts."

A blog is simply a website you publish in conjunction with your corporate website where you become the expert in your field and provide important information about your industry or your product/service that your readers or customers might find useful. It also provides a "voice" of the company as well as a way for your readers to comment back on what you provide. It works in conjunction with your company website

Blog providers: TypePad, WordPress, Blogger

Why Blog?

Search Engine Rankings

Backlinking - The more you link back to your corporate domain you could get ranked higher in the search engines. Search engines like "backlinks" (for now anyway). Make sure you link from keywords that are meaningful in your posts. For instance if one of your keywords is "red lipstick" then link back to a page on your site from that keyword.

Categories - Flag each post or "tag" them with a popular keyword(s) or categories for the search engines to key on as well. Notice the (s) above? Put your posts in multiple categories so they can have multiple tags. The more the merrier.

Customer Feedback

Polling - If you need a quick answer to questions, throw up a poll on your blog. Through polling we not only found that our users would attend events we throw, but Vizu, the polling provider we use actually tells us where in the world (on a Google map) these people actually are. Great for event planning.

Comments - Moderating comments in general is a good idea because of spam commentors who just want to get their link on a well-trafficked blog. You will get many great comments either supporting or disagreeing with your POV. It's wonderful to get customer opinions on certain topics, but better yet, have them comment on each other's comments. It facilitates a really great dialog, plus you're on the pulse of how they feel about you.

Content

Selling vs. Not Selling - Avoid too much "shameless self-promotion" if you can, unless that's what you want your blog to be. People are less likely to link to your blog if it's more about you and less informational. So although a blog should be used as a marketing tool, it should be more information than marketing.

Search Engines - The more content you have on your blog about your specific topics, the more the search engines will pick up keywords on your blog. It's both a quantity/quality game.

PR

Establish Yourself as an Expert - Whenever our PR folks gets a request from a publication about a topic to write about, they consult the blog first to see if there's anything already there. This proves to be a great time saver. If they do find something, they forward the blog post to the publication writer. In some cases that's all the publication needs for a reference, in others it's used as an example of the types of topics we can be interviewed, quoted and published on.

Reusable Content - From time to time our PR folks will use our content as the idea for a story that a publisher might find interesting.

RSS

Use RSS to publish feeds of your last few blog posts strategically on your site. It can support what you sell if your readers think you're the industry expert. This can also drive traffic back to the blog so that your readers can get more information.

Try using email marketing to drive traffic directly to the blog giving your users helpful information. Then use Google Analytics on the blog to find out which posts most readers are interested in.

For good examples of blogs check "Blogs I Read" in the left column here.

One more very important thing, try to blog regularly since the search engines favor timely posts. I'd recommend no less than 2x a month. Write down topics you want to blog about as soon as you think about them (they don't have to be this long) then sit down and start typing. Get ahead of the game and do 3-4 at once!

Comments

[Jerry Kemp]

Great information! My webmaster sent this site to me to consider for our new nationwide grassroots text voting poll. A blog may be the perfect solution for us. If anyone has suggestions, please go to www.textvotingnetwork.com and contact us. Thanks for your insights!

[Rita Lambertini]

Hi, it is very interesting what yo say about blogs, I have done one to hispanicgroup, where I work..
I´ll learn a lot with your comments! Thanks. Appologyse my english, my first language is Spanish.
Rita

[Bob McClain]

This is the same advice I try to tell all my clients. I'm a web copy writer and I also offer SEO. For my clients that feel they can't afford SEO right now, I tell them the best thing they can do for themselves is to create regular content with a blog. And I tell that to my SEO clients as well.
You are welcome to read more on my blog at http://www.wordsmithbob.com/blog/

[Fred Diamond]

Great points. We are blogging for all of our B2B clients and are at various stages of maturity for them all. We have noticed an uptick in search engine ratings for all, which is great.

[Kush]

In our case, we've integrated our blog into the company site. Have a look here:

http://www.monocase.com/mono-studio.asp

[Leigh Anne Wallace]

As a relative newbie to the blogosphere, this is a great basics course for those that are considering starting their own corporate blog. I am a firm believer that a blog should not be used as simply a sales tool. Instead, it is an opportunity to communicate with customers and prospects through a more informal vehicle and showcase your staff as true thought leaders.

I try to give my own perspective of starting a corporate blog at www.theb2blead.com. Blog master I am not, but I hope to share what I have learned about starting a blog along with some great sales and marketing tips.

[Steven Long]

I have used a blog since March '07 and found it another invaluable tool to communicate with customers and hopefully potential customers. Providing our foot care products web site with the blog enabled me to discuss topical health items that I felt perhaps couldn't be easily fitted into the normal selling side of the site. I was also able to publish some answers to foot care questions for everyone. In all, useful for any business.
Blog: www.yourfootcare.co.uk

[Dan]

Couldn't agree with you more! Blogs are becoming a great way to get noticed by consumers, businesses and the search engines. More and more people begin to believe that you are an expert in the given field because you have proven as such.

Visit www.UtahLuxury.com to see our blog