By Chris Lee

Many companies are investing time and money in blogging for their corporation. Fresh, compelling content pleases search engines and also enables the company to showcase its expertise and engage with its target audience.

But the quality and effectiveness of blogs varies wildly according to writing skills and comprehension of what audiences want to read and share. With this in mind, NMK tapped into its address book for some tips.

Strategise

For Matt Rebeiro, Innovation Manager for social media consultancy RMM, forming a strategy up front is key to business blogging success.

“Having a strategy is key to maintaining a successful corporate blog, without it, you’re sunk,” he told NMK. “Moreover, you should know how a corporate blog fits in to the organisation’s overall social media strategy. Every company needs to have a social media strategy with clear objectives and metrics for measuring success. Having this strategy will tell you whether a corporate blog is the best way, strategically, to meet your objectives. All too often companies launch straight into time-consuming or expensive social media activities without any idea of what they hope to achieve by doing so.”

Rebeiro recommends that organisations are clear on who their target audiences is and set objectives.

“If the content of the post doesn’t support your social media objectives, you probably shouldn’t blog it!” he added.

Join the dots

RMM’s Rebeiro believes that as content is key to successful blogging a team of content producers should be put in place.

“You need to provide a compelling reason to keep people coming back to your blog and the quality, originality and exclusivity of your content will be what makes that happen,” he advised. “Corporate blogging can provide many different business benefits, from developing deeper relationships with customers, to exploring and innovating new opportunities with like-minded experts as well as sharing news with colleagues and partners, and much more besides. However, a corporate blog is only effective if strategically it is the right platform for you and your audience(s). Knowing your audiences’ behaviours and needs, as well as the objectives you wish to achieve in social media will ensure that if you do create corporate blog, the one you create is effective and joined up.”

Point of difference

For Hannah James, online marketing specialist for marketing agency Interdirect, organisations need to make sure their blogs set them apart from their competition.

“In order for a corporate blog to be successful it needs to be unique, so find out what your competition is up to, and do something completely different,” she advised.

James concluded by providing a checklist for companies looking to blog includes:

• Use your company blog as a way to reach your customers
• Educate and inform your customers, don’t just sell
• Tell a story; don’t just pitch your product
• Don’t be afraid to showcase unusual or unexpected uses of your product or service
• Set your goals, expectation, deliverables and measurement.  Do not focus on traditional metrics, give social metrics a try and rethink your return on investment
• Your blog is not your press release.  Speak like a person
• Your blog is your dinner table, not your podium.  You're the host, not the speaker
• Blogging is not about a blog alone.  Get on Twitter and Facebook and talk to people
• Blog with the community, not at them.  Link, comment and participate
• Ignite your fan base. Get them involved.  If you don't have a fan base ignite your employees
• Exude personality.  Be the person at the party that everyone wants to keep in touch with
• This is an investment in people, not in you.  Own up to mistakes, answer questions and use your head