September 23rd, 2009 | No Comments
This is part two of a three part posting on Corporate Blogging. It is based on a document that we give to our clients that we help with blogging. It is a compilation of ideas and thoughts collected on the internet on how to be successful with a blog.
How to be successful with your Blog
- Make it personal
- Share your knowledge
- Don’t over analyze your posts for more than errors and readability
- Consistency
- Read and Comment on great blogs
- Longevity in posting
- Be controversial, but not rude
- Be relevent
Make it personal
While it is a corporate blog, don’t be afraid to show some humanity. Despite its label, a “corporate” blog has to have a real personality as its primary voice.
Share Your Knowledge
You know a great deal about your business. Share your successes and failures. Encourage those who are looking learn about your business topic by providing them with insights that would have helped you when you were first starting out. Don’t be concerned with “giving away your secrets” and helping to the competition. Blogging is in it’s infancy. Those of you who are positioning yourselves as experts in your field will reap the rewards as customers look for the experts in Google and see your name pop up. Additionally, you can enjoy the benefits of expert status offline. Further, giving away something of value for nothing has always been great PR.
Don’t over analyze your posts for more than errors and readability
If you second guess all your posts you’ll never release anything of value. Just write it, read it and post it. Don’t spend a week on one post. While you may spend a week on research (or more), a week to write a post on a regular basis is not practical for a business blogger.
Consistency
Frequent and consistent posting is almost as good as quality posting. Give them a reason to subscribe and a reason to keep coming back to the site. Frequently updated sites get more traffic.
Read and Comment on Great Blogs
Find some great blogs and digest everything they have to say. Learn from those who now are where you want to be soon. Look to the great business bloggers to understand what they are doing (note their content, their discussions off their blog, their passion and their wit).
Longevity in posting
What you write today, while it pushes off your front page rather quickly, doesn’t disappear. It will be available in the search engines’ archives forever. Make sure it represents you and your company well and is a topic that will be popularly searched for a long time.
Be controversial, but not rude
It is good to have an opinion and a strong point of view. You should be willing to throw down a gauntlet, but don’t do it all the time.
Be relevant
You want to plan a blog that caters to the specific target audience on which your business focuses.
