Welcome to the blogosphere
After individuals adopted them massively around 2002, blogs have since then attracted companies, which ventured into the creation of their own professional blog.
What is a blog exactly?
A blog differentiates itself from traditional forms of company communication. The word blog is a blend of the terms web log; it's a journal which takes the shape of a webpage containing posts or articles published in anti-chronological order, with miscellaneous content (texts, images, links, etc).
More dynamic than a classical website, it enables visitors to react to a subject by publishing a comment.
A well-designed blog can have many benefits to a company. It enables it to get closer to its clients and to attract new ones, to generate buzz (viral marketing), to reinforce the company's values and culture, to create a community, to crowdsource ideas, to recruit, to work collaboratively, to establish itself as a reference in its field, etc.
What's more, offering information and advice in an uninterested way is an excellent way to give a positive image of the firm (be careful though: if mishandled, a blog can severely tarnish the company's image). A blog can also make the company look younger.
Another significant advantage: search engines reference blogs really well, as well as the wider website hosting them (partly because of traffic from blog-oriented search engines, retrolinks to the website, RSS feeds) and leads to great conversion rates.
Put a link to the blog(s) on the company website's homepage, to improve ranking.
There are several categories of company blogs:
- an event-based blog is used to launch a new product or service
- a reference blog enables the company to present its specificities, to differentiate itself from the competition
- a branding blog can bring a community which shares a brand's values together
- a census blog is meant to gather the customers' opinions so as to quickly match the offer to the demand
- a specialised blog facilitates the exchange of information on a given subject within a community of specialists
- internal communication blogs can be used by companies to inform their employees on certain aspects of the company such as its culture and environment (information blog), to get their employees to exchange on various subjects (discussion blog) or to collaborate (collaborative blog).
- a leader's blog brings the personality of a company's leader forward, and tends to establish a privileged contact with potential clients of a company
The critical success factors of blogs
- Name the person responsible of the blog; setting up a blog requires determining the writers of the blog. Several people from the company can contribute to the writing of the posts, but you have to set up responsibilities here. Put him in charge of obtaining content from colleagues, specialists, etc.
- The dynamic aspect of a blog confers its force, with new posts to be added regularly. Make sure a minimum of posts get published each week. This can be a bit time-consuming in the beginning, but it gets rewarding when comments multiply. No matter the business, you should write 1-2 posts every week, about industry news, website updates, a new recruit in the company – anything that relates in some way or the other to the business.
Always give priority to short stories, accounts of experiences and daily anecdotes. This will attract the readers a lot more than long commercial messages. Be sincere and strong-headed! Articles have therefore to be relevant and appealing, and to contain links towards the commercial site, to bring visitors to it without twisting their arm too much.
- Conversation matters; it is not about throwing in content about your latest materials. Customers want to talk about your products and services. Conversations include good and bad news: treat the good as well as the bad. Bloggers will talk to those who will show them great respect.
Treat them the way you would treat a customer visiting you in your office. Also bear in mind that a comment which is a bit unfair to your company could also trigger another comment to defend you.
- Take a lesson from the conversations about your company. Propositions let by visitors can be used to better respond to their needs, so to be more reactive than the competition.
- Attract visitors, promote your blog. Use title tags and keywords on your blog. This will get your posts a better indexing by search engines. Resort to blogrolling: on your blog, comment on what you have read on other blogs or sites of your field and put a link leading to it.
Also let relevant comments on other blogs with a link to yours. Consider establishing partnerships with other blogs.
Set up an RSS feed which will enable your visitors and allied sites to get updated. And don't forget to use a tracker in order to have access to statistics on your audience.
What's next?
You can use Wordpress as your blogging tool; it is easy to set up and it comes up with various SEO plugins which can help optimise your blog for search engine rankings.
A blog can be the first step leading to the creation of a wiki or another collaborative platform or brainstorming community, like the one established by Dell: www.ideastorm.com.
based on: Laurent Caplat — MaPetiteEntreprise.Net magazine no. 17 (Sept/Oct 2008)
+ miscellaneous sources on the internet
