If you have never blogged before and are interested in starting a corporate blog, there are a few issues and concerns that you need to be aware of before you ever get started. These can be treacherous waters at times and if you are not prepared, it is all too easy to get in over your head. Blogging can be a great way to increase consumer confidence and build a strong brand, but you will need to be able to spot and avoid some common pitfalls along the wall.

First up, you need to make sure that your blog is taking advantage of all the latest technological advances. This means having a blog that has an RSS feed and utilizing buttons that will allow your readers to share the articles on social bookmarking sites. These are two very simple things but many bloggers omit them. An RSS feed is essential since most blog readers rely on their newsreader software to find out when new articles are posted. This is done with RSS feeds. If you don’t have one, your readers may never make it back to your site to see if you have new content posted.

Social bookmarking buttons are incredibly useful and can help new readers discover you. There are plugins available for most blogging applications that allow you to easily add these buttons to your site. Once they are there, visitors can simply click that button to share your blog with others. This can really increase your page views, especially when you have a popular post.

Next, you need to be aware that blogging is a very public forum and you will be opening yourself up to criticism, and some of it may be ugly. You need to go over some responses now so that you can keep a cool head when it matters. If your company has some known issues with customer support or other problems, you need to have responses all ready to go that will address this.

Comments sections can be deadly for a company that has this kind of problem. You can avoid a lot of controversy by simply not allowing any comments. However, this can backfire if readers feel that you are hiding something and do not want to allow them the freedom to discuss your posts. It’s a double edged sword and you’ll need to find the right balance for your unique needs.

Lastly, running a successful corporate blog can take a lot of time. If you are trying to do it yourself, or if you have an employee handling it for you, this will be taking you away from your other work. You may want to consider hiring a blog management service so that you can focus on your actual work and leave the blog to them. This is a great solution for first time bloggers that aren’t really sure what they need to be doing with their blog and how to handle everything that comes with it.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2008-07-31 05:36:21. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

• Professional Blogging Roundup - Twitter Tools and More Welcome, welcome. Here's another roundup of what's going on around the blogosphere on blogging. Lots of Twitter tools and tips in this edition, be sure to check them out. Corporate Here are some Blogging Tips For Business Owners over at Best News Small Business Today. CIO Insight presents Robert Scoble......
• 5 Tips to Get More People to Read Your Corporate Blog 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......
• Frequently Asked Questions about Corporate Blogging If you are completely new to blogging, you may find that you have a lot of questions and at times, it can be hard to find the answers. We’ve compiled the most common issues facing new corporate bloggers and supplied the answers to these problems below. 1. Is this going......
• Will StumbleUpon Work for Your Corporate Blog? If you are not familiar with the site called StumbleUpon, it is a service that allows users to discover new sites. With the use of a toolbar (spyware free), users of StumbleUpon can find new sites that are related to their interests, or they can choose a random option. Millions......
• Corporate Blogging May Be Right For You If you are trying to get more consumers interested in your products and your company in general, you may want to consider adding a corporate blog to your website. These are quickly becoming very popular and thousands of companies have found that they are an incredibly effective means of adding......

• Attracting Free Blog Traffic There are plenty of ways that you can attract free blog traffic if you know what to do. First and foremost, you should be hosting your own blog to earn free blog traffic, rather than having your blog hosted by WordPress, Blogger or another similar platform. There are stories floating......
• How to Monetize Your Blog If you want to monetize your blog, you have to ask yourself a series of questions, starting with what kind of blog is it, and do you have any readers? If you're not getting readers at your blog, you might as well put all your money-making plans on hold. Even......
• What is Social Investment and How Does It Apply To You In this first of our new "Investment Thursdays", I decided to tackle a subject important to me. One of the major trends in the past decade or so has been individuals stepping up to do their part in improving the world. The green movement has been the most visible as......
• 6 + 1 Steps for How to Increase Blog Traffic Having access to the right tips and hints for how to increase blog traffic can really come in handy. The more tips and tools that you have in your arsenal for learning how to increase blog traffic; the better off you will be when it comes to building up a......
• How to Increase Blog Traffic with Blog Carnivals One of the easiest things that you can do to build traffic is to submit your content to blog carnivals if you want to learn how to increase blog traffic. In as few as four simple steps, you can bring new visitors to your blog and you can build excellent,......