Without further ado let’s get on with the rest of the reasons why your company should have a blog:
- Share Timely Information – Your blog can serve as an announcement board for your company’s current events. If you’re going to be exhibiting at a tradeshow or attending a conference you can create a series of blog posts leading up to the event that discuss relevant topics and highlight your participation. If you’re going to release a new product or a major update on an existing product then your blog can play an important role in getting that message out there. If you’ve signed up a key account or established a strategic partnership, you can get that message out to your audience instantly by posting the information on your blog.
- Damage Control – Your blog can be an archive of all things good about your company but can also play a key role in swiftly and deftly dealing with bad things that inevitably happen, helping to protect the reputation of your company, products and services. Say you just released a new version of your software without full testing Windows XP compatibility. Within hours of the release your help lines are overwhelmed by people who are finding out that your new software doesn’t play nice on XP. Within minutes of confirming the issue you could have a new blog entry posted recognizing the issue, accepting accountability for it and committing to a fix as quickly as possible. This might not correct the compatibility problem but will go a long way in assuring your user base that you’re dealing with the problem head on. And, if you use your blog as the foundation for social media channels, you might be able to get the message out to users before they install the new version and mess up their systems.
- Humanize your company – As much as it may pain you, your website is probably a fine blend of corporate hyperbole, hand-wavy benefit statements and industry jargon. Your company blog is different: it gives you an opportunity to have a human voice—a chance to wish people the best of the season, to comment on current events, to drop the rhetoric and engage your readers in a human and personal way.
- Understand Your Audience – By blogging about different products and services offered by your company and analyzing the number of pageviews, click throughs, shares and comments that each post gets you can understand what resonates with your audience. You could use this to boost products and services that might be underperforming or to eliminate products or services that your audience is showing that it’s not interested in.
- Search Engine Optimization – Having a carefully planned, well written and informative blog that is updated regularly gives you a chance to lace your site with words and phrases that are key to your business and will help you rank better with the search engines. The search engine spiders adore fresh content that is rich with relevant material and will keep a close eye on your blog, helping your rankings and thereby increasing the traffic it directs to your website. While this is usually the number one reason on every other list of “top reasons why you should be blogging”, we have found it largely depends on your industry so we’ve put it at the bottom. Check back for a blog post in the near future where we’ll expand on this.
Conclusion
A company blog is a great way to engage prospects, establish
your credibility, and keep your company in the forefront as prospects make
their way towards a buying decision. You
can use your company blog to share your experiences, keep your audience
up-to-date and improve your search engine rankings, thereby increasing traffic
to your website. But keep in mind that
if you do decide to start a company blog it isn’t a trivial task—you should
have a clear set of goals, define a strategy and identify your expectations
before even posting your first blog. If
the thought of all of this is overwhelming don’t let it stop you, just drop us
a line because we’d love to help you navigate the waters of corporate blogging!
Got
something to say? Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you! Got a
question that we can address in our blog? Contact us through our website or email me directly and we’ll put our crack team to work and let you know
when we post a reply.
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Steve Hartley,
Managing Partner
Fering Communications Inc.
