In today’s current business world, the media is more savvy than ever and so are consumers. This has led many companies to adopt a full disclosure policy on their corporate blogs. Is this policy right for you? Let’s look at a few of the upsides and downsides of full disclosure.

Upsides

1. Public perceives your company as honest.

Everyone loves it when a company owns up to mistakes, takes the high road and is brutally honest about their business deals. It is always refreshing to see a company that is willing to take that risk to be more open with the public and share what is really going on inside.

2. All press is good press.

Blogs that deal with full disclosure typically get lots of traffic and they are able to quickly generate a lot of buzz. This is really only useful if there is a way to turn what they are talking about into a positive light, but overall, when it comes to getting attention, full disclosure usually gets the job done.

Downsides

1. Is brutal honesty always the best policy?

If your company just took a major financial hit, does the public really need to know about it? One of the main problems with adopting a full disclosure stance is that it can really hurt you when things get tough. It’s one thing to say that the company is going through a rough patch, it’s quite another to get into details. This hurts your bottom line, and if you have investors, they may not appreciate your honesty with the public, especially if it affects your stock prices.

2. Bad reputations take only a few seconds to make.

It can take years to build up an image of corporate responsibility, but trashing your company’s image can only take a few seconds. Full disclosure often means talking about things that put your company into a decidedly unflattering light. If you feel your company can rise above that, terrific, but some companies never recover after a blogging disaster.

Weighing All the Options

Now that we’ve gone over the good and bad side of full disclosure, it’s time to get really serious and think about how it could affect your company. Do you have investors? If you do, this is probably not the best policy for your corporate blog. The risks far outweigh any benefits.

Is your company fairly new and so far scandal proof? In this case, then a full disclosure policy can help build a solid reputation around your company and present it in a good light. You may change your mind however the instant the first bad piece of news hits the press.

Lastly, what do you want people to think of when your company name comes up? If you don’t want the latest blogging fiasco to be at the tip of everyone’s tongue, a little mystique is probably a good thing. Blogging is a balance, and it’s up to you to decide how much information you want to reveal.

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Originally posted 2008-08-18 05:09:40. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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As corporate blogging gets a bigger foothold in the business world, more niche instructional books are starting to pop up. One of these that is actually well worth the read no matter what niche you are in is Realty Blogging. Designed to assist realtors in taking advantage of the benefits of corporate blogging, it goes in depth into many topics that all corporate bloggers can appreciate.

The main focus of the book is how to use your blog to build your brand, increase consumer awareness and sales, and all three of these points are crucial for any blog. The first chapter covers how a blog can be used as a strategic tool for realtors, and offers many reasons why this medium can be incredibly powerful, if it is harnessed correctly. It also goes over the changes in how technology is affecting the realty world and how realtors can take advantage of this before everyone else does.

The next few chapters discuss search engine marketing and direct communication. The first goes into how to target keywords for your blog, researching techniques that can increase your effectiveness at reaching your target audience and how to build up your niche. Again, powerful advice for any blogger. We appreciated the chapter on communication since this is another area where many bloggers fall down. It’s one thing to write a blog, it’s another to use it to develop relationships. Many bloggers fall into the trap of not keeping up on their reader correspondence and this can be a death sentence for many blogs.

Chapter four should be read several times and covers how to use your blog to build your brand. Specific tips are given, such as how to handle word of mouth marketing via your blog, as well as how a corporate blog can also be used for recruiting – another rare topic that is covered only sparsely in other books.

Chapters six and seven discuss how to become a trusted expert and then how to parlay that into relationship marketing. This is absolutely an exhaustive resource on both topics and goes much further than average books on this subject do. Chapter ten was another highlight and offers some great tips on blogging for lead generation. Yet again, another topic that is woefully ignored by many authors. This chapter should be read by any blogger, or manager that is looking for new ways to acquire leads.

We recommend this book to anyone interested in corporate blogging, particularly if you are doing so to make money, generate leads and further increase your sales. Although the book is of course geared towards realtors, there are many tips on lead generation that will apply to any industry and can be put to good use by any blogger. By far the best book we’ve read in the realty niche, and incredibly useful for just about anyone. We have high praise for this book and look forward to reviewing other niche corporate blogging books.

Originally posted 2008-10-03 05:49:11. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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