The Power of Corporate Blogging

Digital technology is opening up an increasing number of ways in which marketers can communicate with their customers. Corporate blogging enables you to create a human side to your company or brand and to demonstrate your expertise in a particular subject. It provides an opportunity not only to engage in meaningful on-line conversations with your target market but also to show your passion for a subject in a way that a straightforward service description on a web site simply cannot. If it is done well, it will raise the profile of the blogger as an industry or sectoral expert.

The interactive nature of blogging means that it is possible to develop your business by building a network of potential clients, or to keep in touch with existing clients. Reading and adding comments to other subject-related blogs will also help to raise your profile – provided you add to the debate – and links between your blog and your web site, along with the links you leave on other blogs, will help to drive traffic to your web site. Tracking the number of visitors to the blog will help you to understand why and when it spikes or falls and to drive up the overall numbers.

Blogs can work both ways, and it is important to understand what is being said about your company by other bloggers. They are on-line opinion leaders and often used by journalists to find stories. Reading other corporate blogs will also help you to understand how you might use blogging within your own marketing strategy.

To be successful, you must adopt the blogging culture. That means being open and honest and showing the human side of your company – corporate speak will alienate readers. You need to decide what your objectives are – e.g. driving traffic to your web site, demonstrating expertise, creating a network - and post articles with an appropriate level of frequency. A clearly thought out strategy will help where companies are reluctant to give an employee permission to publish a blog.

As always, start with some research if you think there are opportunities here for your company. Start reading corporate blogs and talk to your customers to see what they might be interested in reading about and discussing on line. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of information about this on the web, and the following sites will help you to start your research.

How to Blog for Business: www.suw.org.uk/files/MSN%20Blogging%20Report.pdf

Creating an Effective Corporate Blog: www.cib.uk.com/artman/publish/article_171.shtml

Quick Tips on Corporate Blogging: www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3593036

....and many more!

A good example is the communications sector blog Commswatch - www.rogerdarlington.co.uk/commswatch where visitors can read about and comment on developments in the sector.

Fiona Ballantyne would be delighted to discuss her ideas with you and can be contacted at Fiona.Ballantyne@4-consulting.com

Fiona is a co-founder of 4-consulting, click here to view her profile.