January 5th, 2009 — engaging ideas, guest bloggers, interviews, keywords, promotion, social bookmarking sites, web traffic
The whole point of creating a corporate blog is to be able to reach out to your customers, build up an audience and market your company. It takes time to build up an audience but there are many things that you can do to ensure that more people will start reading your corporate blog. Let’s take a look at just a few hints that will get you started.
1. Promote your blog on your own site and in company material.
Take yourself back to a few years ago when more companies started building an online presence. Back then, you had to put your URL on everything (and you still should be) to get noticed. The same is true to today. It is important to actively and heavily promote your corporate blog in any way that you can. Adding it to your site should only take a few minutes and you’ll be capitalizing on people that are already interested in your company.
2. Use social networking sites.
Submitting your blog posts to places such as Reddit.com and Digg.com are great ways to increase your traffic and discover new customers. Keep in mind however that generic posts that are not very interesting are probably not going to get voted up on to the front pages. Pay attention to the posts that make the front page on social networking sites and find a way to do something similar on your own blog. Top ten lists are always popular and there is usually a way that you can create one for your own business. Let’s say that you run a corporate blog for a shoe store. You could do a top ten list on common foot injuries and how they could be prevented. Get creative!
3. Schedule interviews or invite guest bloggers.
Let’s face it, unless you are an incredibly engaging person, your blog might get a little bit dull from time to time. Inviting a high profile blogger in your industry to guest post on your blog is a great way to get cross traffic. If they won’t do that, schedule an interview with them and post it on your blog. By including someone who is more popular, you’ll be leveraging their success and putting it to work for your site.
4. Use keywords.
Smart bloggers use keywords that will ensure that their blogs are discovered. Read up on search engine optimization and then put those same techniques to work on your blog. You’ll be ranked higher in search engines, your discoverability will go up and you’ll be promoting your company the easy way. SEO is not that difficult and its benefits are numerous. Find keywords that are popular and integrate them into your blog posts.
5. Comment on other blogs in your industry.
Whenever you leave a comment on a blog, include your own URL. Many people underestimate just how powerful a comment can be. Just make sure that the comment won’t count against you or your company!
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Originally posted 2008-09-02 05:08:37. Republished by Old Post Promoter
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December 16th, 2008 — advertisment, audience, publicity, search engine
Sometimes it can be pretty tough to get inspiration for a new corporate blog. You may understand that you need one, but you’re not quite sure where to start. There’s an easy way that you can put together a plan for your own blog and it will only take a few minutes of your time. Anyone can do this and it can make a big difference in how well your blog does.
First, start by making a list of all of your competitors. Find the ones that have blogs and make an effort to go to their sites and read every single post they have made. You’ll be getting some pretty powerful information and you’ll be getting some ideas on what you should be doing and what you should be avoiding. Once you’ve compared all of them, you’ll have the groundwork to start building your own blog.
1. Look at how they write their blog.
Although everyone has to find their own voice, sometimes it helps if you can see what other people are doing. Look to see which blogs are quite personable and which ones are stiff. Chances are the personable ones are the most popular. Learn from these techniques and study to see how your competitors manage to be engaging without crossing the line into unprofessionalism.
2. Find out how they promote their blog.
Are your competitors relying on organic results, or are they actively promoting their blog? Look to see the types of advertising they may be using and which social bookmarking sites that are using to drum up new readers. You can then adapt these methods to your own needs. It may take a little trial and error but you can learn a lot from what they are doing.
3. Find out how they rank in search engines.
Pick one post and see if you can get it to come up by searching for the keywords contained in it. If you can’t then that blogger is not doing a good job with their corporate blog. If you can easily find them, emulate the techniques that they are using to help increase your chances of getting listed in the top 10 for search results.
4. Look at what you could do better.
Take an honest and hard look at your competitors. See which ones are using techniques that work and then come up with a plan that will improve those results. Look at sites that may not be as strong and learn from them – avoid what they are doing since it is not working for them and chances are it won’t work for you either.
A blog management company can help you craft a plan that will ensure your blogging success. Sometimes, it is better to get help from a professional so that you can ensure you’ll be able to meet your goals with a lot less effort and you won’t have to spend as much time.
Photo Credits: 1
Originally posted 2008-07-07 05:31:15. Republished by Old Post Promoter
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December 9th, 2008 — blog design, content, goals, planning, post design, publicity, search engine
Running a corporate blog can be quite time consuming, especially if you are new to blogging. Here’s a brief idea of what you can expect in terms of actual work and the time it will take to build a successful blog. The initial stages will be much more time consuming than the maintenance stages, but this should give you a good idea of what you can expect.
Setting up a Blog Site.
This can take a few days or longer, depending on the type of software you will be using and your design customization needs. Most people prefer to hire a designer to handle this, especially if they don’t have their own IT department. There will need to be a few days set aside for bug testing as well, to make sure that everything goes smoothly. Certain features for RSS and social bookmarking will need to be added, but these should not take too long to implement.
Writing Posts.
Depending on how fast you type and how well you’ve thought out your posts, writing each one may take a few minutes or a few hours. It’s a good idea to get a topic list together ahead of time to make it a lot easier when you have to write. This is very useful if you find that you have occasional writer’s block. You’ll just be able to refer to your topic list for some inspiration.
You will also need to decide how many posts you want to make per day as well as per week. Posting at least once daily can greatly increase your chances of a top search engine ranking and the more you post, the better off you will be. However, you will need to take into account the time for each post when scheduling this.
Managing Comments.
If you are allowing comments, but you need to moderate them, you will need to set aside some additional time for their approval. Again, this can take a few minutes or a few hours, depending on how popular your blog is. If you’re dealing with a lot of spam comments that need to be deleted, this can further stretch out how much time you’re spending.
Promotion.
Lastly, you will need to take some time to promote your blog, either on your site or by submitting stories to social bookmarking sites. This shouldn’t take very long, but it will add a few minutes on each day.
As you can see, a blog can be labor intensive and it can be a full time job. If you don’t have the kind of resources to devote this much time to a blog, it is a good idea to hire a blog management service. They can assist you in allowing you to spend time working on your own business while they manage your blog for you. This is almost essential as your blog becomes more popular and requires more of your time.
Photo Credit: 1
Originally posted 2008-08-06 05:05:41. Republished by Old Post Promoter
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November 21st, 2008 — audience, bloggers, public relations, reputation, writing style
The first two part of this series discussed a semi-recent post made by Matt Cutts, that covered a few things that corporate bloggers need to know. The last point that we’ll cover in this series is what Matt had to say about blogging angry. There is some very powerful information and insight in his post, and we felt it deserved to be expanded upon in greater detail.
Business owners and corporate bloggers are human, and as such, we are subject to emotions. It is easy to get angry and fire off a few heated blog posts. What is not easy is to undo the damage that has been done. While you may be able to delete a bad post off of your blog, you’ll never be able to delete it from your reader’s minds. Posting angry is something that many of us have been guilty of in the past, but few stop to think about how this can affect them in the future.
The urge to vent to your audience and receive a few pats on the back can be very strong, especially when you’ve had a bad day. Whether you feel you have been treated unfairly, or a competitor is giving you a hard time, it is all too easy to lash out on your blog. This rarely works out the way that you plan however, and unless you want your blog to be associated with your rants, there are a few things that you need to do first.
1. Think before hitting the publish button.
As Matt suggests, never fire off a post and hit publish right away. You need to walk away from the situation for a few minutes to get a better perspective. In fact, after you cool down, you may wonder why you got so upset in the first place. If you haven’t hit post, no one will be the wiser to your problem or your outburst.
2. Think about how your readers will react to your post now - and how future readers will react to it.
You’d be surprised at what gets indexed by search engines. Let’s say that you fire off an angry post, and then forget about it. Six months from now, someone searching for information about your company stumbles across this post in a search. The first thing they see about your company is an ugly rant - what impression do you think that will give? You’ve got to look at the big picture, which isn’t easy when you are upset. That’s where the first point comes in.
3. Will the post tarnish your image, or the image of your company.
It’s one thing if readers think you are a blowhard, but how will that trickle down to your company? You are representing the face of your company through your corporate blog. Do you really want the public to see that face when it’s angry? Think about the consequences before you post, and remember that you are responsible for how others view you in many cases.
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October 5th, 2008 — Buildify, blogosphere, roundup
Hello and good evening. This is Buildify’s first roundup of the how-to blog and blogging blogosphere. Sounds like a tongue twister - can you say it five times fast? The following links are several good posts on improving your blog and will add some great skills to your blogging toolbox. Take a few minutes to browse through them.
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September 29th, 2008 — audience, content, engaging ideas, goals, planning
When you first start your corporate blog, it can be pretty exciting. You’re all charged up about the benefits you’re going to be reaping and the sales you’ll be making. After a few weeks of this however, this newness tends to wear off. If you didn’t luck out and gain instant success with your blog, it can feel like it’s just you and the crickets. While no one wants to waste time and resources, it is important to give your corporate blog enough of a chance to make it, and that means sticking with it, even though you may be completely fed up. Here are some tips to keep you going.
1. Set up a posting schedule and stick to it every day.
Once it becomes routine, and you realize that posting really only takes a few minutes, it is easier to keep the habit. Try making your morning coffee time your corporate blog time too, or find ways to combine your posting time with something that you enjoy. If necessary, set up a reward system so that you treat yourself for every post you make. Your blog won’t stand a chance if you abandon it, so you’ve got to keep at it until something happens.
2. Set realistic expectations.
Very few blogs make it overnight, and less than 2% of all blogs are actually runaway hits. It is vital to go into this project knowing that the returns may be smaller than you expect. You will need to give your blog at least six months to develop a steady audience. If after that time you have not seen any measurable results, it will be time to reevaluate your options. Until then however, stick with it.
3. Find new ways to get excited about posting.
Every single post you make on your corporate blog does not need to be a well thought out missive. Try putting up polls instead, or reference an interesting article that you saw. By finding new things to talk about that are related to your industry, you can keep that forward momentum going.
4. Put a face on your audience.
Corporate blogging is all about putting a personal face on your business, but this works both ways. It can be pretty difficult to get excited about posting when you feel like you are talking to a brick wall. To keep your energy up, imagine that you are writing to a friend. Envision this person and write your posts as though you were having a conversation with them.
This has the added benefit of making your posts more reader-friendly and more engaging. Try it and see if you don’t notice a difference in your attitude.
5. Don’t set yourself up to fail.
If you find yourself grumbling about “no one is going to read it anyway,” stop right there. Defeatist talk will only get you defeat. You’ll need to keep a positive approach going and give yourself time to succeed. It will happen, if you apply yourself.
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