Consider this to be your quick and painless guide to starting a corporate blog both effectively and practically.

1 – Begin by defining your purpose.

This may sound obvious, but many bloggers do not think of their editorial purpose until well into the life of their blog. Exploring social media simply is not reason enough to start a corporate blog. You need a concept that is better defined. Rather than just saying that your blog’s intention is to engage your customers, you want to have a polished editorial purpose, like “Share inside information about the day to day operations within our company in order to better enrich the experience of our customers, engaging them in a dialogue with our business.” This may be a wordy way to put things, but it gives you a real solid idea of what it is that you are trying to accomplish with your blog. This way, if you ever find yourself wondering why you started this project in the first place, your editorial purpose can serve as an excellent reminder. “Oh, right, my goal was to reach out to my customers and share something of myself in the process.”

2 – Determine who responsibility will be given to, next.

Most people do not consider this, despite the fact that it is fairly obvious as part of a practical start up guide for corporate blogging. If you are smart, you will form a team of hardworking individuals that will work on the blog, or at least that will collaborate to come up with good subjects and topics for the blog. However, no matter how many people you have working on your corporate blog, you do need to have one single person in charge who can say yes or no to an idea or a blog post. Having a group is an excellent tool when putting a blog together, but someone absolutely needs to be in charge, otherwise you may have difficulty actually getting things on the page.

3 – Determine who your writers are going to be.

Sure, by now you have a social media manager who is in charge of the final say, but he or she should not be the only writer or the only person in charge of coming up with the content ideas. Depending on the size of your company and its scope, there are probably different departments within; each with a different area of focus. Because your audience is probably interested in all of these different areas, it would benefit your company and your corporate blog to have bloggers from different disciplines. Develop a list of capable writers, and then have each of them agree to writing a little bit every month on a variety of different subject matters in order to get the most out of your corporate blog. Then you can space these assignments out and post their blogs throughout the month easily.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2008-12-30 05:58:19. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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One of the biggest problems facing corporate bloggers is whether or not they can communicate effectively through their blog. There are a few steps that you can take to determine just how well you are reaching your audience, and it is not terribly difficult to come up with a plan on how to accomplish this. Let’s get started with the basics.

What do you hope to achieve through your corporate blog?

By focusing on the end result that you would like to have, you can better determine how to write your posts to reach that end. For example, let’s say that you want to increase consumer awareness of your company. This would mean that your posts would need to focus on community efforts that your company is hosting, more information about how your company operates as well as posts that give a more human side to your company.

If your goal is to sell products, you will need to work on a different approach. In order to effectively sell via a blog, you have to follow the basic tenets of copywriting, and find a way to incorporate them into a blog post. For example, you have to have a problem, discuss how that problem effects the consumer and then supply them with a resolution to that problem. This may sound difficult, but there is a way to work this into a blog post.

Let’s say that you sell auto parts and you are trying to increase your sales. One blog post that you could write could focus on the problems of dealing with salvage yards for parts. In this instance, it can be difficult to find parts that are in good condition. There is your problem. Now, you can elaborate on what bad auto parts can do to a vehicle, ie: discussing how this issue affects the consumer. Then, you can offer them a solution, ie: your auto parts that are in perfect working condition and come with a warranty.

This can easily be adapted to any industry, and as long as you are following the basic Problem/How it Affects Consumers/Solution formula, you should not have any problems writing effective blog posts that will sell product. But you can’t just stop there, you also need to focus on why a consumer should trust you. This can be accomplished through other means, such as testimonials, as well as by providing your readers with useful information, not too many sales pitches and a good rapport with you, the blogger.

If your goal is simply to get more visitors to your site and the blog will be used to feed them into your main site, you can take a different tactic. This will require finding interesting ways to induce people to visit your site, such as news that will integrate well with a specific division in your company. For example, let’s say that you run a sales training firm. You are trying to get new clients, and finding it difficult. Your blog could cover recent statistics about a drop in trained sales people, and that would feed into your training division. Again – problem and solution.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2008-11-05 05:54:47. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Business blogging is rife with benefits for anyone who is able to utilize it properly, as it adds a significant amount of value to a company’s web presence, increasing search engine visibility and encouraging excellent and meaningful interaction from readers, driving an increase of traffic to your website in the process. However it is important to keep in mind that blogging for business is not always easy, because writer’s block does happen, especially when you do not want it to. This is a continuation to our list on ideas for creating blogging content for your corporate blog.

6 – Theme.

Create a series of blog entries that focuses on some kind of theme that is relevant to your business. For example, write about the “Top 10 Reasons…” or “15 Steps To…” or “10 Things You Should…” and make each of these items a separate post in your blog. This is also the kind of blog entry that will get a lot of links from other bloggers all over the internet, which will send extra traffic in your direction if you let it.

7 -Put it on paper.

When you really need to brainstorm for ideas, take out a piece of paper and start putting ideas down on paper. Write down information on your products and your services, and then write down different ways that those products and services can potentially solve the problems of your readers. Jot down some of the best features and benefits for your services and products, writing freely rather than necessarily editing yourself, and by the time you are done you will have a bunch of new blog entry ideas.

8 -Interviews.

Conduct an interview of someone in your company or industry in Q & A format on your blog. Reach out to experts in some field that is related to your company, inviting them to do an online interview through e-mail. When you get answers back from the interviewee, you can publish the entire interview into a blog entry.

9 -What are they doing?

Consider looking to other bloggers in your industry in search of blog content ideas and blog content inspiration. What are other bloggers talking about in your niche or industry? What topics seem to be the most popular or the most talked about in your niche or industry? Read other blogs, visit forums and conduct as much research as you can in order to stay current on what is hot and happening in your industry.

10 – Google News.

Head to Google News (http://news.google.com) and do a search for the keywords and key phrases that are related to your business. This will bring up all kinds of interesting new content including news articles, press releases and other content that will provide an excellent resource for blog entry ideas and guidance for content writing.

With these tips for content creation, you will find it difficult to run out of blog topics to write about in your corporate blog.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2009-01-28 05:06:44. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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This is a review of The Lobby, a blog by the Starwood Hotel company.

The first thing that you notice upon arriving to this blog is that it is visually appealing, and this company has clearly captured a good look and is running with it. The Lobby is a blog that is devoted to the preferred guest loyalty program that Starwood Hotel offers. There are two different ways to focus on the blog content is this specific instance, with the first being on the customers that the program is aiming to reach out to, and the second being focusing on the program itself.

This blog is a rich content environment, with blog posts on a wide variety of subjects including local attractions that locals can experience all over the globe. This blog also gives advice not only on popular dining spots, but also offbeat attractions in many local spots as well. The blog also brings promotions into the mix by talking about some of the specials that are run at hotels operated by the company. This is all content that people will be interested in reading in because it will help them plan their next trip or vacation.

As a whole, this is a pretty solid blog that is devoted to popular destinations, though there are some suggestions that can be made. By looking at this blog and then paying particular attention to the suggestions, you can learn a thing or two about your own blogging effort.

- It would be nice to see more how to and tips articles, such as ‘what to pack when traveling to …” or “Preparations to make before visiting …” with some of the most popular destinations in mind. There are some posts like this, but more just like them would be preferred.

- Despite being a blog that is rich in content, there are no real comments to speak of. This means that the bloggers with this particular blog need to spend more time interacting with their visitors. For example, Starwood would benefit from joining and utilizing Twitter, which they currently do not do.

- Another thing worth noting is the posting schedule. This blog is putting out between 3 and 5 posts every weekday, and that is a lot to contend with. As nice as this blog can be to read, they seem to be putting out too many posts, because unless readers are coming every day or several times daily, they are likely missing a lot of the content because it’s being bumped onto the next page. Posting only once a day is usually more than enough when it comes to posting in a blog.

Overall, the Lobby is a better than average blogging effort with a great deal of potential. In terms of Content, The Lobby by Starwood is worth a 4 out of a possible 5. As for comments, the Starwood blog is worth a 1.5 out of a possible 10. Based on posting schedule, Starwood’s blog is worth a 10 out of a possible 15. As for sidebars, a 11 out of a possible of 15 seems sufficient. This leaves the Starwood “The Lobby” blog with a fairly respectable 53 out of a possible 100, and with some room for improvement.

Originally posted 2009-02-05 05:44:01. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Unless you went out and purchased an already established blogs, the chances are that you just recently launched your blog with only a single loyal reader, your own self. Maybe you received a few hits a couple of days later when you began to tell the people you knew about the blog, but that’s probably as far as readership has been able to go so far. All is not lost, however, as there are some pretty awesome techniques that you can employ when you are ready to increase loyalty and readership numbers. These tips are especially useful for brand new bloggers who do not have much readership to speak of. If you want to get the ball rolling, these tips can be especially useful.

As each of these tips builds on the last, it would be especially wise for you to begin at number one, and slowly move down the list accordingly. Each technique will build upon the last in some way, allowing for you to create some momentum in building your membership base. Eventually you will establish enough of a level of momentum that you will gain some sort of traction. You can easily build up a readership of 500 people or more per day, meaning that you will no longer be required to boost your readership as diligently as before. Instead, your loyal readers will do a lot of the work for you, getting the word out about your blog via word of mouth.

Without further ado, here are the techniques that will help you build readership for your blog in no time at all:

1 – First and foremost, you should begin by writing at least five major or “pillar” articles.

Pillar articles are most commonly tutorial style articles that are designed to teach something to your audience that they can use in their everyday lives. Generally these pillar articles are longer than the average 500-word article, and they are generally full of practical advice and other tips. Pillar articles are regarded as excellent, practical how-to lessons or articles. Articles like this stay current and over real insight and value to the reader. The more pillar articles you are able to produce for your blog, the better off you will be because these types of blog posts never go out of style, and provide value to every single new reader that visit your blog.

2 – At a bare minimum you should be writing one new blog post every single day.

Not every single one of your blog posts needs to be a pillar blog post, but you should still work on having at least five pillar posts at any time so you can continue to keep your blog fresh with new content. You should also implement news pieces and other short article style blog posts. The important thing to consider when it comes to posting in your blog is that you need to demonstrate to all first time visitors that you do take the time to post in your blog every single day.

Photo Credit: 1

Originally posted 2009-02-02 05:28:23. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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In this day and age, the hottest media and the hottest method for communicating with customers, employees, business partners and competitors are through corporate blogging. If you create a corporate blog for your business, and you follow some basic strategies for improving communication through this popular online media, you will make waves not only in your company, but in your industry, and the entire market as well. More and more companies and corporations are turning to blogging as a means of communicating within the industry. Do you want to start corporate blogging now, while there is still time to make waves, or do you want to wait until you’re stranded with the old forms of communication, when your competitors are reaching out to your customers via their corporate blog?

Face the facts:

If you want to improve communication in your company, you need to start blogging. Corporate blogging will allow you to create new lines of communication between employees, business partners, customers and company and competitors as well. By creating a corporate blog at this point, you are simply opening your company up to the same lines of communication that other companies, possibly within your industry, are already utilizing to reach out to new customers and target markets.

The level of communication that you can create by corporate blogging is better than every other form of communication available between businesses and their customers. If you do not already have a corporate blog, or if you have a corporate blog but you are not properly utilizing it, then you need to make a change right now. If you do not have time to write in a corporate blog as the owner of a company, you need to find someone who can keep up with your corporate blog for you. There are plenty of corporate communication consultants and professional bloggers out there that are more than capable of writing a corporate blog for you. The best corporate blog is one that is written by the company itself, but if you cannot find a way to maintain your own corporate blog, you need to seek help rather than scrapping the idea all together.

Corporate blogging opens up new lines of communication between everyone that your business could ever come in contact with. If you want to create new ways for your customers to reach out to your company, or for your employees to communicate with you and within the business, then you need to create a corporate blog. Once you understand how a corporate blog works and how it can benefit you, you will better understand the importance behind keeping a blog for your company. Try it out for a couple of weeks, open up new lines of corporate communication, and then make the decision of whether you want to keep it up on your own or hire in a corporate communication consultant that can help you get the job done.

Photo Credit: 1

Originally posted 2008-12-19 05:19:45. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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For those thinking about starting a corporate blog, there are a few caveats that should be considered before you ever throw your hat in the arena. The blogosphere can be a scary place if you are not prepared and it is easy to have a disaster of epic proportions on your hands without even realizing it. There are numerous stories of corporate blogging disasters and while they can be amusing, the owners of the companies affected probably would not agree.

A corporate blog is a unique tool that allows you to reach out to the public, increase brand awareness and build up your customer base. It is also a tool that has the potential to cause irreparable damage. You don’t want your blog to go down in flames, and you certainly don’t want it to take your company with it. Here are some tips to help you avoid the most common blogging disasters.

1. Pick your bloggers well.

If you will not be doing your own blogging, this usually means that the task falls to an employee. You will need to make sure that they are well balanced, can handle criticism and can post in an articulate and friendly manner. Think of this blogger as a public speaker – would they present the right face for your company to the public?

You also need to make sure that the employee is a stable individual that is not prone to bursts of anger or being disgruntled. You don’t want your company’s dirty laundry aired to the world and it only takes one angry blogger to turn the tide against you. If you end up firing a blogger, make sure that you remove their posting capabilities BEFORE you do so that they don’t have a chance to post one last burning missive.

2. Be consistent.

If you decide to allow comments on your blog, great. Just don’t change your mind. This gives an incredibly bad image of your company and makes it seem as though you have something to hide. Likewise, refusing to allow comments on your blog can give the same impression. Find the balance by using comment moderation tools to weed out bad comments and let the good ones through.

3. Always remain professional.

Your corporate blog is not the place to get overly personal. You may be having a bad day, you may hate your job, you may want to stick it to your spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend but your corporate blog is not the place to air these subjects. Always keep your private thoughts private – they just don’t belong on your blog. Keep your posts friendly and open, but make sure that you never cross that line.

By utilizing these three simple rules, you can avoid becoming a blogging disaster for the history books. If you have never blogged before, or you prefer not to leave your company’s future in the hands of an employee, it is a good idea to get some help with your blog. There are blog management services that specialize in helping you present the right image and get your message across.

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Originally posted 2008-07-15 05:25:42. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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It is basically what allows your blog to notify other blogs that they have been mentioned elsewhere on the internet. Track backs most commonly appear as blog comments, creating another link back to your blog in other blogs on the internet. Not only will this create new links to your blog from elsewhere on the internet, but it will also attract those bloggers that you have mentioned to come and check your blog out as well.

6 – Encourage people to comment in your own blog.

One of the most powerful ways that you can convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show them that other loyal readers are already following your blog as well as participating in it. If new readers see that other people are commenting in your blog, then they will infer from it that your content is worthwhile. Make sure to respond to comments that are placed in your blog as well to show your readers that you are willing to keep the conversation alive.

7 – Submit your latest pillar article to another blog that is summarizing a collection of articles from numerous sources that fit in to the same subject.

The idea here is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week in a specific place. Most “blog carnivals” as these are often called will link back to each of the participants, creating new links for your blog and giving you an increased chance of exposure online.

8 – Submit your blog to sites like http://www.blogtopsites.com and other similar sites.

This may not necessarily bring about a flood of brand new readers, but it is quick and easy to do so it is well worth the effort no matter what comes of it. Find the appropriate category that your blog fits into and submit it. You should attract between one and ten brand new readers every day, and this can significantly build up over a period of time.

9 – Another excellent way to benefit is through your resource box, which is essentially like a signature file for the content that you write.

You can post articles and blog entries online and create a link back to your blog in the process. Then, any time one of your content pieces is published, your resource box will create new incoming links to your blog, and will attract new traffic as well. If you can get newsletters to publish your content, you will benefit even more.

10 – Write more pillar articles as time goes by.

Everything above will help you to attract new blog readers, but one of the most important techniques is to put strong pillar articles in place. Without your pillar articles, you may be able to bring new readers in but you will have difficulty keeping them. Your solidly written pillar articles will help you create not only a database of useful content, but also a great amount of loyal readers as well.

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Originally posted 2009-02-06 05:10:07. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Do you know what qualities your corporate blog should incorporate in order to get the most out of it? Do you know what people are looking at when they determine whether or not they want to keep reading a specific business blog? The following is a look at some of the most important positive qualifies for a corporate blog to display.

- Corporate blogs must be accountable, so the author needs to be willing to own the commentary that he or she makes. Corporate blogs also need to be believable, in order to gain the trust of its visitors and frequent readers.

- Corporate blogs should be enthusiastic, and only enthusiastic bloggers should be allowed to represent the company behind the blog. Corporate blogs are direct and candid, so they should take on the heartfelt voice of whoever is writing them, and their messages need to be direct and to the point.

- Corporate blogs must be search engine friendly. This means they must increase your search engine visibility. They should also be flexible and versatile in what you offer. Use them internally, use them externally, use them for customers and employees, and use them for as many different purposes as you can come up with to get the most out of them.

- Corporate blogs should be up to date, informative and knowledgeable. They should be more “happening” than the website they belong to, and they should keep everyone reading apprised of new products and services, happenings within the company and other important information.

- Corporate blogs should be easy to read and completely free of jargon. They are not the place for corporate speaking, but rather should be easy to read and understand, because you do not know who is reading, and you want to appeal to everyone.

- Corporate blogs should be operational and manageable in all facets of their operation. They are more than simple communication tools, but can serve a variety of operational roles. They should also be easy to manage on the technical side, which is what blogging is intended to be all about in the first place: Reducing the technical side associated with publishing on the web.

- Corporate blogs should have a purpose. Don’t figure your purpose out as you go, but start with a solid purpose and run with it. If you change directions later, that’s your prerogative, but don’t do any corporate blogging without a clear focus to begin with.

- Corporate blogging content should be reusable. Expand on blog posts and create articles for syndication online. Grow your web presence with series blog posts. Include blog posts in your corporate newsletter, or compile them into a book that your customers can acquire from your company for added usefulness.

If your corporate blog follows all of these basic principles, then you have a winner, and your readers will recognize this.

Photo Credit: 1

Originally posted 2008-12-22 05:26:37. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Whether you are new to corporate blogging, or trying to find ways to blog more effectively, there are some great tools out there that can truly enhance your blog. Most are free to use, while others do have a small fee. However, this is definitely time and money well spent, since many of these tools can mean the difference between failure and success. Let’s look at some of the best tools that you should be using.

1. Google Analytics –

This is a free stat program that delivers a powerful punch. Not only will you get to see where your visitors are coming from, or how they found your site, but you can also track campaign effectiveness, set traffic goals and measure the ROI of your advertising campaigns. This is truly one of the most efficient and effective stat programs in existence.

2. Google Keyword Suggestions/Popularity –

Google recently released these two tools that are commonly associated with AdWords, to the general public. You can use these tools to determine how to target your niche more effectively and to get ideas of what keywords you should be using. This is also a great tool for breaking through writer’s block and the keyword suggestions are very helpful.

3. Submit Express Link Popularity Checker –

This is a vital tool for corporate bloggers that is also free to use and very powerful. Ever wonder how popular your links are? Want to know which sites you should be targeting for links back to your own site? This tool can tell you that and a lot more. This is a great resource for any webmaster, but it can be particularly effective for corporate bloggers.

4. Wordtracker –

This is a paid service, but they do offer a limited version that can be used for free. While this is a little more expensive than some of their competitor’s offerings, you can use these services to really get more out of your blog. Whether you need to see what people are searching for, or how you can expect your keywords to perform, this is a very helpful tool.

5. Multi-Pinging Tool –

There are several of these services out there, so it is difficult to pick the ideal one. However, if you are not pinging your blog, you are missing out on a lot of potential traffic. These services can be used right after you add a new post to your blog and they will automatically notify many popular blog listing sites that you have new content. You can actually pick up quite a lot of new visitors with the right pinging strategy.

6. Technorati –

This is often overlooked in corporate blogs, but it can be helpful when used properly. While the main focus is of course technical topics, there are plenty of other topics that are still popular. We also recommend visiting Technorati for topic ideas since their tag clouds can give you an idea of what people are interested in right then and there.

The proper toolbox will help you build your corporate blog up and make it more popular.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2008-10-08 05:45:08. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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