A corporate blog can be an incredibly powerful sales tool and many people begin this practice simply to sell more products. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but before you start, it is vital to learn the art of product placement. Blogging is similar in many ways to television and other media, but when it comes to product placement, there a few very big differences.

Have you ever stayed up late and watched an annoying infomercial? Most have, and even if you are vaguely interested in the product, it’s still pretty tough to get past the hype. Now, let’s put this in terms of a blog. If your blog is one long infomercial with no actual content of any value, chances are your efforts will be in vain. No one likes to read an infomercial – especially one that stretches on ad infinitum.

So, how do you still sell products on your blog, but avoid this trap? The answer is actually pretty simple. You need to develop a ratio of informative posts versus posts that contain product placement. You also need to work on inventive ways to integrate product placement into informative posts. Let’s cover the first one and then move to the second.

A good ratio to have to avoid sounding like the world’s longest infomercial is three informative posts for every post that contains a product placement. Yes, this only gives you about one chance a week to sell a specific product if you only blog once a day. However, the chances of that one post being effective are much higher than if you post nothing but product spam all week.

The key is to give your readers what they want. That would be informative content that they can use, enjoy, or relate to. No one can really relate to a commercial. Most blog readers are savvy enough to know that companies need to promote their products, and they are okay with the fact that occasionally there may be a post about a specific product. They are not okay with endless promotional posts that offer no value to them as a reader.

Now, let’s cover inventive ways to handle product placement. These are not overt sales pitches, but they can be even more powerful than a direct product placement post. The key here is to find a way to incorporate your product into your informative post that:

1. The flow of the post is not disturbed.
2. The product provides an answer to a problem.
3. The reader is interested in learning more about the product.

This is not as hard as it sounds. A simple well placed link to one of your products and a brief sentence about how the reader will benefit from it can be incredibly powerful. Test out a few techniques to see how well your audience responds to different variants of this technique until you find the one that is right for your blog.

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Originally posted 2008-10-31 05:45:47. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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This book claims to be the definitive guide to corporate blogging, so we were pretty interested to see what it had to offer. Right off the bat, the forward, which was written by Bob Lutz of GM (a corporate blogger) got our attention. It’s always nice to see books written by and for the intended audience, since this tends to produce a book that gets right to the point and manages to hit all the right notes.

Weil’s writing style is very conversational, which is very well suited for smaller companies that may not be all that up to date on the technical jargon or for those that are simply looking for a quick explanation that cuts through the hype. Readers expecting a highly technical tome would probably be disappointed, since the intended audience is really those who are not already into blogging, but looking for ways to help their company.

The author has been quite a celebrity in the corporate blogging world and has been credited with really explaining to the masses what this is all about. Her numerous television appearances and her own site have served as great education and the book really takes it to that next step. Inside, she answers all of the questions that a beginning corporate blogger may have, making it seem quite easy to get started.

By breaking down the entry barriers, Weil is making it much easier for anyone to start their own corporate blog. We appreciated the up-beat tone of the book and the way that she really presented her information without talking down to the reader. As the experts that got advance copies of the book stated, this can easily save you five to six months of heartache and get you started off on the right foot.

That is what really matters in the world of corporate blogging and for that, we give Weil high praise. She could have gone a little more in depth on a few topics, but overall, we found that the book was an easy read that got the job done. It isn’t probably a good book for those that already have a pretty good grasp of the technicalities of running their own blog, but it is very useful for those just starting out.

By getting through all of the stuff that can doom a corporate blog to failure and showing small and big companies how to go about corporate blogging the right way, Weil has performed a very important service. We highly recommend this book to anyone that is just starting out, especially if they are completely new to corporate blogging as a concept and as a means of reaching out to your customers. It was a quick read, and did exactly what it said it would. Anymore, that is a rare combination, especially when it comes to business advice books. It is well worth the time and is certainly a good reference book that you can go back to time and time again.

Originally posted 2008-08-15 05:47:50. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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