No two blogs are created equally, and for that reason, corporate blogs all touch on different subjects and different stories. Some people who write in corporate blogs wonder if covering external stories is a good idea or a bad idea. Some people shy away from the idea simply because they are not clear on the matter, while others attempt it even if they do not know if it is a good thing to do or not. The truth about covering external stories is that as long as the story is relevant to the subject of the blog, and the content is rewritten to suit your blog or credited back to the original writer, there is nothing wrong with covering external stories in your corporate blog.

There is only so much corporate blog content that you can create based on your own company. You can talk about a lot of company related information, or focus on information relating to the industry that your company sits in, but still you will eventually run out of content to write about, because as much information as there is out there, there is not an infinite amount of ideas to capitalize on. This is why it is important for many corporate bloggers to explore the idea of covering external stories in their blogs. External stories may be drawn from other blogs, from websites, from newspapers and from numerous other sources.

The trick when it comes to external stories is giving credit where credit is due in your corporate blog. If you want to write about stories that have already been released on the internet, then what you need to do is give credit to the original writer, even if you post a completely unique version of the same story online in your very own words. When touching on external stories in your corporate blog, you should choose to write a unique version because it will make you stand out in search engine results, but you should also provide a link or a track back to the original writer to give them credit for the content, the news story, the idea, or whatever else you drew from in order to get your blog entry.

Coming up with unique content for your corporate blog is not always going to be easy. There is nothing wrong with looking for inspiration in other blogs and on other websites, as long as you meet a couple of conditions. First of all, you need to make sure that you are writing unique content so that search engines do not penalize you for duplicating content that was found elsewhere on the internet. If you found the content you are referencing through a search engine, then they will surely notice that yours is a copy. You also want to make sure to reference the original writer with a link or a track back to give credit for the content that you used. Finally, you should make sure only to cover external stories that are actually relevant to your corporate blog and the subjects that you write about in it. If you find content elsewhere on the net that is relevant to your blog, feel free to talk about it in your blog, just do so in a unique way if you want to garner traffic from your post.

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Originally posted 2008-11-27 05:23:17. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Creating a marketing message is a lot like building a house of cards: The building process can take a long, painstaking amount of time, however it can take mere moments to send everything tumbling. Sometimes all it takes is a single piece of thoughtless communication to completely contradict your marketing message and the effort that has been put into building it up. Before you know it, your company is being slandered on the internet, in newspapers and through other forms of media, completely destroying your hard work. Unfortunately, with the ease of blogging also comes a great amount of responsibility.

Corporate blogging can do magical things when it comes to spreading your company’s marketing message in new and exciting ways. The important thing to keep in mind, however, is that little things matter, and they add up, and as a corporate blogger, you will be held highly accountable for the messages that you spread in your blog. Your underlings can probably pass a lot of information in a blog without the comments carrying that much weight, but if you are blogging for a company that you own or hold a high amount of stock in, you could do quite a bit of damage without intending to, simply by letting something slip that could destroy the marketing message that you have worked so hard to build with your corporate blog.

When working to spread your company’s marketing message through a corporate blogging effort, it is important that you know what message you are trying to portray, and you stick to that. If you say something offhanded, too friendly, snooty, too formal, illiterate or otherwise off base, you can turn your hardworking marketing message into something that appears quite embarrassingly one dimensional and even fatuous in nature.

For this reason, it is important that you can ensure a certain level of consistently throughout your organization when it comes to writing a corporate blog, avoiding in the process the natural propensity for people to interpret and sell your marketing message in the wrong light. Here are some suggestions that are well worth considering if you want to protect your hard earned name in big business and the world of online corporate blogging.

- Remember, above all else, that message consistency depends on the message working for everyone within the organization.

- Appoint the right person to maintain your message and its consistency not only throughout the company, but also in how the company communicates outside its doors as well.

- Train, train, share information and train some more. Talk to your staff members in real terms, treat them like real people. Show them how to implement your marketing philosophies and messages when they blog, and then let them share of themselves and your company in ways that uphold these core messages.

Corporate blogging is a double edged sword – When used correctly it can significantly boost the capabilities of your web presence online, but when used incorrectly it can destroy your company’s marketing message in a flash.

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