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.

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

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Many corporate blogs fail simply because they strike a wrong chord with readers. If you want to use your blog to increase traffic and sales and improve your relations with the public, it is vital to develop a technique that will allow you to talk to your readers, not at them. This is a very delicate balance for many companies and it can be tough to find the right voice for your writing. Often, corporate blogging can be a bit dull, but there are some techniques that you can use to engage your audience.

1. Allow comments.

One of the best ways to talk to your readers is to allow them the opportunity to talk to you. By encouraging them to leave a comment, you are opening a dialogue with them. Even if they don’t leave a comment, you’ve opened that door and shown that you are not afraid to interact with the public. Many companies make the mistake of not allowing their readers to comment and the result is a blog that is very cold and very static. More often than not, these blogs fail because they do not engage the reader.

On the upside, allowing comments can also help increase your pageviews. Many readers like to keep coming back throughout the day to see what is going on in a comment section. They become mini discussion forums for many and it is fun to keep up with events throughout the day.

2. Ask the reader questions.

One of the best ways to avoid talking at your readers is simply – don’t do it. Ask them questions in your posts, encourage them to interact with you and discuss what is on their mind. By asking them questions, your readers will not get the impression that your corporate blog exists only to drum up more business (even if this is the case.) Impressions are so important in blogging and you want to make sure you are giving the right one.

3. Include polls.

One of the easiest ways to involve your readers is to ask them to vote in a poll. Find a topic that matches well with your industry and create a poll around it. For example, if your site sells apparel for women, you can write a post about the fashion industry and the latest news about how many countries are no longer allowing size 0 models. As your readers what they think about this decision. This is a very easy technique that will engage your readers and it will help increase your search engine ranking since your keywords for that post will be included in searches about models.

These are very easy techniques that can be used in any corporate blog. If you’re having trouble with yours and you want to make sure you are hitting the right note with your readers, consider hiring a blog management company. They can help you craft the right kind of posts and build a strong foundation for your new venture.

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Originally posted 2008-07-04 05:49:28. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Corporate blogging is not the kind of thing that comes easily and generates immediate success. When it come to social media efforts like blogging, there are upsides and downsides and both must be addressed in order to adequately prepare for a new project like a corporate blog. Here are some of the challenges that corporate bloggers are facing.

- Many do not receive the traffic numbers they desire.

There are not massive increases in the number of viewers on the web, and there are only so many hours available in the day to read blogs. While there are millions of blogs out there, only a few are able to rise to the top and really stand out.

- Blogs often require more time than the bloggers initially realize.

Blogging’s biggest concern is not actually money, but rather is time. When it comes to executives, the cost per hour can radically increase. Blogging is costly when it comes to time, and managing a corporate blog can easily take up 1-2 hours a day if not more of an important executive’s time if there is no social media manager in place.

- Being conversational is not always natural.

Traditional marketing is not quite the same as having a conversation at the corner coffee shop, so many writers who work on corporate blogs have trouble being conversational because they are more used to “carpet bombing” marketing rather than social media marketing.

- Blogs are not marketing campaigns, per say, so there is no ending date.

Bad blogs can easily whimper along for a long time, without anyone knowing when to call it quits. The same can go just as easily for great blogs, however. At what point is a blog supposed to stop?

- Some corporate blogs have legal issues and other hang ups.

The legal facet of your business may have trouble with the two way dialogue that is created, allowing objective content and negative content to exist within your blog. How do we react when our dirty laundry is aired in our blog, or when our readers post content or questions that we are not ready to handle? How open and honest should we allow our blog to be?

- Employee blogs do not necessarily represent the brand.

Just because your employees are working for your company, it does not mean they have the best interest of the brand at heart. Good employees are not necessarily good bloggers. Who do you really want to represent your blog? Some employees may inadvertently cast your brand in the completely wrong light.

- Success is difficult to measure.

Marketers can measure the success of their campaigns through registrations and visits, but with blogs, success is much more difficult to measure. The problem with blogs is that the social success can have different forms, including trackbacks, comments and other forms of conversation. Without raw numbers, how does anyone know whether or not success has been reached?

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Originally posted 2008-12-26 05:42:40. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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If you’ve decided that you are going to allow readers to comment on your blog, there are a lot of benefits that you can reap. In addition to increased page views, comments allow you to build up a strong relationship with your readers. They can be very beneficial, but it may take a little while before you start seeing comments. Although writing engaging material is the best way to encourage reader participation, there are a few other tips that can be very useful.

1. Ask your readers a question.

This is one of the easiest ways to encourage more comments on your blog. Ask your readers a question that is pertinent to your post and ask them to leave their responses in the comment section. This can be a double edged sword, but when properly managed, you can do quite well. Just remember, if you don’t want to hear the answers, don’t ask the question. Go for questions that are not vitriolic to avoid excess controversy that could harm your company.

2. Run a contest.

This is probably the most blatant method, but it does work. Try running a contest for something that you sell, or a really great gift that will get a lot of attention. You’ll want to extend the contest for at least a week for the best results. Let your readers know that you’ll be picking a winner from among those that leave comments on your blog. The key is finding a gift that people will really want, since that will increase the likelihood of getting better comments and more participation.

3. Leave your own comments.

If you get a comment on your blog, it’s very important to respond to that person in the comments section. You can start a whole dialogue there and your visitors will go away with a brand new impression of you. By taking the time to answer a question or thank someone for their opinion, you are letting them know that you care about your readers. This helps them develop a stronger relationship with you and it will benefit your business in many different ways. Take the time to get personal and you’ll definitely see an increase in readership.

4. Make commenting easy for your readers.

Most of today’s blogging platforms have made it relatively easy for people to leave comments, but there are still some issues that may keep your readers from using the system. You need to make sure that it is incredibly easy to leave a comment. While asking users to register before they are allowed to leave comments can be helpful, it generally makes it more difficult and time consuming. It’s best to do away with this step. Your readers will be more likely to leave comments since they won’t feel as though they are giving you too much personal information. Today’s internet users are savvy and they care about the information they share, and if you don’t require this step, they will feel much more comfortable leaving a comment.

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Originally posted 2008-09-10 05:22:03. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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