What are the benefits of corporate blogging?

When done correctly, blogging can be extremely valuable to a company. Here are some ways blogging can be advantageous to a company:

1. First and foremost, corporate blogging can create transparency to a company. It allows you to talk to your customers in a more casual environment about your industry and products. Obviously, the blog posts should not read as sales pitches in order to achieve a certain degree of transparency. When written in a casual, yet passionate voice, it’s easy to engage customers and offer them a person behind what could otherwise appear to be a large, faceless company.

In Steven Warren’s article entitled The Benefits of Corporate Blogging, he says that passion is what can make a blog so great. “Passion sells. People will read and follow you if you are passionate and really love what you are writing about. A passionate blog will reach more people than any high-dollar ad campaign.” By an employee using their own passion and enthusiasm, it can really bring something to a corporate blog.

2. Search engine optimization. “Search engines love blogs,” says Mark of Web Watching. Because blogs have a lot of text, offer constantly updated content, and are often link heavy, they are easily found by search engines.

3. New content being made readily available at a fairly regular rate. With RSS readers, it’s easy to stay on top of your favorite blogs. With a corporate blog, it’s the best way to reach a lot of readers quickly. Your brand can stay fresh in your customer’s mind.

It’s also an easy way to update content regularly without having to fuss with HTML or the actual webpage itself.

4. Instant feedback and communication. If a customer has something to say or ask, it’s easy to do it in the comments of the blog. It’s also a good way for a company to deal with criticism and other crises. The blogger can instantly respond, which can prove that they are genuinely interested in communicating with customers and bettering their services or products. It can change overall perceptions of a brand.

5. Getting linked to and promoted by other bloggers in the community. Links are really important for search engine optimization. Bloggers often reference and link to other blog posts, so by having a blog it’s a great way to get links.

Please tell us what you would add to the list.

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Filed under: FAQ

Posted by on April 28, 2006 11:17 AM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Comments

Great list. I'll add one more advantage of having a good corporate blog: It gives you a claimed space where you can broadcast the official word on your company's progress. Why would this matter when others will probably blog about your company on their own? Simply, because you can't control what others say about you, and without your own blog (or static website), you can't even respond to them in a compelling way online.

Posted by: Easton Ellsworth | April 30, 2006 12:53 AM

Hi Easton, Great point. Blogs are an easy and cheap way to publish ideas and timestamp your position when compared with let's say a press release. But should they be considered the official company view. Well that depends on who the blogger is. There was recently a debate about this follow this thread.. http://www.nevillehobson.com/2006/03/27/credibility-isnt-equal-to-authority/

Posted by: Stephen Turcotte | May 1, 2006 9:59 AM

I linked to this great post on a blog post I wrote today on the IABC Cafe.

http://blogs.iabc.com/chair/archives/2006/05/04/a-real-use-for-blogs%e2%80%a6ge-imagine-that/#comments

Posted by: Tom Keefe | May 4, 2006 8:45 PM

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