Blogging is a great way for companies to connect with their customers, introduce new products to the market, educate prospects about their products and services, and solicit feedback. Blogs can also serve as an outlet for press releases and a means to address customer concerns.
Before your company starts blogging, establish a set of guidelines that company bloggers should follow. Your company blog is part of your company brand - be sure the two are always aligned. Below are five tips that will help you:
Before you begin blogging, have a clear strategy of what you want to achieve. As a firsthand example, we have recently been focusing on inbound marketing prices, budgets and value on our Kuno blog. Ultimately, we want to use our blog to position ourselves as thought leaders in our field while helping people understand the varied activities and data associated with inbound marketing. We have an internal review and vetting team to assure our blog quality and content is consistent with our brand. With our review process, there have been blogs that we have shelved or modified. More importantly, the feedback in the review process has made our published blogs better since we had internal rewrites and iterations to address objections or questions that our readers may have. Finally, blogging consistently will provide a better blogging ROI.
Be sure to incorporate targeted keywords in your articles from your SEO research. You're not blogging to specifically rank on keywords. Incorporating keywords, however, will target readers or subscribers that could more readily be converted into leads and sales opportunities since their searches will include keywords that are within your blog articles.
Blogging in a corporate voice can turn off readers or customers from your blog. Avoid industry jargon and terminologies, if possible. If you can use less words to explain something or make your point, do it. Review your top twenty blog posts to identify key themes and topics that resonate with your audience.
Listen when blogging. Answer your reader's questions insightfully. End posts with a question for your target audience, even if it's purposely rhetorical. For example, I ask inbound marketing decision makers what data they will have to show management in support of the marketing techniques they have (or have not) implemented. Put yourself in the shoes of your readers to better address their pain points.
Not everyone is good at writing. Let employees know you are seeking bloggers. Many times product support specialists can serve as excellent bloggers and ultimately as product evangelists. Consider recruiting millennials to blog for your company. Finally, make blogging a part of job descriptions and a component of your corporate blog team's compensation package.
What success have you had with your company blog? Any unexpected challenges that you have encountered? Have you been able to blog consistently?
Thursday, October 27, 2011 @ 1:00 PM EDT, 10:00 AM PDT
Join Kuno Creative's John McTigue (EVP) and Chad Pollitt (Dir. of Social Media & Search Marketing) as they present Mobile Inbound Marketing.
