Corporate blogging is not as hot as social networks nowadays; but, blogs are by no means not as important. Actually, blogs influence consumer purchases more often than social networks. Here is an essential checklist that I’ve summarized from my experience for corporate blogging success (it doesn’t cover technical part such as how to set up a blog as this blog is mainly for marketers):
- Benefits of corporate blogging
- It creates transparency to the company
- It adds SEO benefits.
- It creates instant feedback and two-way communication opportunities.
- It helps building relationships with the customer.
- It’s great crisis handler.
- It drives traffic to company web site.
- Types of corporate blogs
- Company blog
- CEO blog
- Industry blog
- Product blog
- Customer service blog
- Corporate blogging best practices
- Determine your corporate blog goal before you start it.
- Set up corporate blogging policies.
- Set realistic expectations and allocate enough resources accordingly.
- Use a good blogging platform like WordPress.
- Make sure the design is simple and clean and it has the same feel as the rest of your website.
- Add a prominent link to the blog on the main navigation menu.
- Use casual language.
- Create author bio and be transparent about who they are and what they do in the company.
- Post regularly with original content.
- Allow comment by visitors with moderation and encourage comments (discussions).
- Write compelling headlines.
- Use bullet points to create easy-to-read format.
- Include relevant pictures in the posts.
- Enable blog subscriptions for posts and comments by both RSS and emails.
- Engage readers with survey, polls, contest, etc.
- Optimize blog posts.
- Update your Facebook friends and Twitter followers with your latest posts.
- Corporate blogging topics
- Corporate press release (as stories)
- Industry news
- Expertise
- Video
- Organizing meet-up
- “how-to” post
- Case study and success stories
- Corporate event
- Make a list (like this one you are reading)
- Share a question one customer asked with the solution
- Survey / contest results
- Ask for opinions
- Measuring corporate blog
- Traffic
- Subscribers
- Comments
- Incoming links
- 8 Popular corporate blogs
Feel free to share anything in the comment about corporate blogging.