If you are running a corporate blog and you feel that you do not have the customer base and the blog is not doing well, you may not be using the blog to its fullest potential. There are a few areas you need to examine to evaluate your blog to see how hard it is working for your company.

First and foremost, you should enable users to post comments, and your company should take the time to respond honestly and in full to user comments. While the blog is a podium for you to get your message out, it should also have a Q and A section to it, otherwise your blog will fail in the ether of corporate blogs. Answering the questions and comments that your users provide will ensure that your customers feel that you have a genuine interest in their opinions regarding your product.

Secondly, blogs should be in a conversational voice. Every post you make could be geared towards selling a product, but don’t make it sound like a commercial or copy for the product. Rather, you should make the piece have a real voice behind it. You can provide tips towards using a product, discuss upgrades to the product, give an insider perspective regarding the company, and many other posts which seem like natural conversation. Do not post blog entries as though you are a sales man; post entries which make you seem like an extreme fan for your company and its products.

Another aspect to watch for is whether your blog is providing a transparent look into your company, or whether it appears as though it is a filter piece of corporate propaganda. This is a very difficult aspect to gain control of, given that any large company will have a large legal department using black sharpies on every piece of copy. This ends up back at the same idea as before, you blog should be personal. It should be written from the customer’s perspective, as if they had open access to your company. Not only will you garner additional customers this way, but the ones you have will have much more trust in your company, and that means more customers.

Do not assume that if you post content on a site where users can comment, that you are blogging. That is a poor way to start and shows an indifference towards learning how to properly utilize the education available to you. Reading other blogs is the best way to truly understand how to setup your blog and how the posts should end up sounding. This also has a real benefit if you go to other blogs and comment and participate. This demonstrates that you have full interest in the consumer.

Finally, do not expect users to give you any real information on their own. Instead, gear posts towards asking your customers for their input. Making them a part of the creation process will not only give you valuable market research, but customers gain great confidence in a company when they feel that they are a part of the process.

All of these tips will ensure that you are utilizing your blog to the fullest potential. It is not a difficult prospect, but rather one that should should be approached from the consumers perspective, not the PR department’s.

Photo Credit: 1

Originally posted 2008-12-18 05:21:31. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

• How to Handle Corporate Blog Comments One of the biggest issues in the corporate blogging world is whether or not you should allow readers to comment on your blog posts. There are two main schools of thought to the issue, basically yes and no. However, we believe that it is important to allow your readers to......
• Blogging for Business Pt 1 Business blogs are quickly becoming the "in" thing, at least as far as corporate communication is concerned. "Blog" is short hand for weblog or web log, which is an online public diary that is updated on a regular basis. Some web logs are updated daily, while others see updates every......
• Blog Shmog By Robert W. Bly If you are on the fence about starting your own corporate blog, this is a great book to read to help you make your decision. The subtitle is “The Truth About Business Blogs” and that pretty much says it all. For those that don’t have time to go through stories......
• Developing Your Blog’s Style Why do some blog instantly become hits, while others languish without a reader to be found? Although the subject matter can play a big role in popularity, a lack of readership can be attributed to a lack of style in the blog. Since there is so much competition out there,......
• How Should You Classify Your Corporate Blog? When you are getting ready to start publishing your corporate blog, it is a good idea to put some thought into the kind of information you will be sharing with the public. There are many different kinds of corporate blogs out there and it is a good idea to pick......

• Walmart sets the record straight on its $298 laptop I received a comment from Ryan Halford, a Senior Buyer for Walmart, and specifically for computers.  He was commenting on my $298 laptop post.  I'm including his comments and responding to them here. Mr. Halford said: I am the buyer for computers at Walmart.  Thanks for the comments and feedback.......
• How To Regularly Grow Your Affiliate Checks The promise of earning profits without really doing much of anything has drawn a load of people towards affiliate marketing.  But does affiliate marketing really work that way? As an affiliate, all that is needed of you is to simply place the merchant's ad on your website.  Then after that,......
• Top Blogging Strategies Whether your blog is about general interest topics like how you washed a crayon in your son's pocket and there's a new bank going up in town, or you have a niche blog designed to make money, the same basic blogging strategies apply if you want to be a top......
• Ways To Make Money Online: Start A Blog Writing Business When you think about ways to make money online selling a service is probably not the first you think of. To be truthful there are many other ways that people try to earn money online. The most conventional income sources come from traditional Internet marketing strategies. More than anything else......
• Compare VoIP VoIP allows for the combination of voice and information while unhinging the service from the network. In other words, the network operator that delivers the connectivity does not have to be the same service provider that delivers voice services.The rise of VoIP permits other businesses that have not conventionally......