One of the best ways to help your business is to create a blog for corporate blogging. You want more exposure, free to cheap advertising, growing traffic to your main site, and interaction with your customer base, don’t you?

A corporate blog can do all of that for you, if you do it right. You can also spin your wheels and experience a big puff of disappointment, if you just go by the seat of your pants. So, the problem is: you want a corporate blog, but just don’t know how to go about it. You also don’t want to spend extra time or money in the process.

Corporate blogging is actually fun

Unlike a regular, static web site, a blog is informal, intuitive, short by nature, and even humorous. There is more than enough stuffy, boring monologue already in all the technologically oriented websites. You can reach your business goals by using a blog, and enjoy it at the same time.

Corporate blogging is effective

A huge advantage of blogging is that you can interact with your customers in an informal manner. People tend to be more open and forthright if they are writing in a blog, and you can learn an enormous amount from them. You can find out what their concerns are, what frustrates them, what they need and so on.

By checking your statistics in the blog Cpanel, you can learn how they found out about you, which keywords they used to search for you, how long they visited, which pages they visited, and more. This is enormously helpful because it is much closer to real time than with a regular static web site. You can learn the same things on a regular site as well, but it is not nearly so revealing as with a blog.

Corporate blogging also enables you to build your brand in the marketplace. By making use of frequent, interesting, relevant and attention grabbing posts, your brand name will soon be all over the internet. The search engines, such as Google seem to favor blogs because pages from a blog are indexed and spidered much more quickly. They also can receive a very high ranking when people are searching for information.

For example, suppose your company focuses on hedge trimmers. If you know the right strategies, you will soon find yourself in the enviable position of number one or two in the search engine results. What this means is that when somebody types in something about hedge trimmers, your blog post will be one of the first choices presented in the results page. Everybody wants to be in that spot, and you just did it without much extra effort at all! But, you need to know how!

How do I start blogging?

So, you keep hearing about how I need to create a blog, I need to get into corporate blogging, and you want to find out how to start blogging in the best possible manner.

There are many great platforms in the marketplace that can provide services to get you going. Some are free, some are very expensive and some are in-between. You should most definitely avoid a completely free service for a variety of good reasons. One very good reason is that all the hard work you put into gaining all the high search engine results will not actually belong to you; it belongs to the hosting company. There are other reasons as well, but you get what you pay for, mostly.

Check out blogs that you like and find out how they do it. Here is my blog, it is a sort of hybrid between a personal blog and a business blog. For me, it serves both purposes quite well. I is called Family Stress and Health, and check it out: it is number one in Google’s search result for those four words, which are known as a long-tail keyword. In fact it has the number one and number two positions!

Here is what to do

Look around, check out my blog, check out other blogs you like, but make sure you visit this little page I made to direct you to the best of the best. It is called, How do I start blogging? These people are driven business coaches who are in touch with everything that can make your business take off. They are experts at media marketing and know all about the stuff that works in this new media marketplace.

Randy Hough
Plastic Injection Mold Maker/Engineer
http://www.howdoistartblogging.com/

“You know Dad, I’ve been thinkin’, one is a lot more than zero!” my son, Thomas, age 5.

It is widely recognized that blogging is one way to easily add new content to a website, and a number of corporates are embracing the idea with gusto. Not only are there companies that do corporate blogging, but in lots of cases it is not just the CEO or the marketing manager who blogs, but the actual employees of the company itself. Google and Microsoft are just two companies that allow and/or support their employees in their blogging. But the whole idea is fraught with pitfalls. The problem is the conflict between confidentiality and openness and quite a number of blogging employees have been fired recently for inappropriate blogging behavior.

Questions that are raised and that contribute to the problems around corporate blogging are some of the following:

How much should employees be allowed to say about the internal workings of the company? Certainly, Coke-Cola will not be pleased if an employee blurts out the formula for Coke on the company blog for the whole world to see.

Likewise, should employees be allowed to criticize the company or their direct management? Some companies allow this, some do not. Another question that must be asked is how much time employees should be allowed to spend on blogging. Is this seen as part of their job descriptions, should it form part of their formal job output models?

It is clear that companies that venture into the corporate blogging arena would be wise to follow some other large corporate’s examples and draw up blogging guidelines. These blogging guidelines should state clearly the boundaries within which the employee should operate, but it should not be so strict as to stifle any creativity or place a complete ban on the activity, nor make it so cumbersome to get permission to say something that it becomes virtually impossible to keep a personal feel to the blog and it merely becomes another official corporate mouthpiece.

Corporate blogging is a great way to add content to a corporate website, to attract new customers, to publish more content regarding company products, services and events and in general to add a more human feel to a company website - but some guidelines are necessary to protect both the company and the employee respectively from blogging themselves into bankruptcy or unemployment!

The following guidelines have been taken from various corporate blogging rules that are published - they might be a good starting point for any company thinking of allowing its employees to blog:

Do not criticize other products or competitors.

Make it clear that you are stating your own opinion, and not necessarily that of the company.

If in doubt, discuss it with a colleague or your manager

Do not share company secrets (e.g. secret processes or formulas, or things such as potential mergers, takeovers, or anything that can be seen as confidential information)

Do not blatantly use the blog as a platform for overtly selling the company products. The blog is not the right place for that. Be informative and authentic.

Do not cite customers or partners without their approval

And quite important - do not venture personal opinions on politics, race or religious issues - respect your reader.

Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4you, a small but professional company offering Web Design and Hosting services for small to medium enterprises. We use the Joomla! CMS to build websites quickly and efficiently and also do custom PHP development.

Corporate Blogging Alphabet - What Is It?

I built this alphabet to showcase what I think are the benefits and best practices of corporate blogging. Not all of these entries will apply to every individual blogging scenario, but they all apply to corporate blogging in general. So here you have them, corporate blogging benefits and best practices … from A to Z.

Accountable

Accountability applies to corporate blogging in two primary ways. With single-author blogs (such as CEO blogs), the author can inspire trust among readers by “owning” his or her commentary. But companies also assume a certain level of accountability for all blogs under their umbrella, regardless of disclosures to to the contrary. So blogging accountability must be carefully considered at both the individual and corporate level.

Believable

Used properly, a corporate blog or CEO blog can make a company more believable. And in the low-trust, post-Enron world of corporate skepticism, a little believability goes a long way. Use your blog to tell an honest story in a passionate way.

Candid

A common mistake in corporate blogging is when organizations use the blog as “website, part two,” shoveling press releases and other corporate literature onto the blog. To achieve the believability mentioned above, a corporate blog must take on the candid, heartfelt voice of the author. Sure, it takes courage to do this (and probably a set of corporate blogging guidelines), but your readers will reward you by becoming advocates.

Direct

Corporate blogs are direct. You write your message, click the “Publish” button, and your words are directly viewable across the Internet. This removes intermediaries from the corporate communication chain. There are no journalists or editors to put their own spin on things. The message goes from the author directly to the audience. Never again will your message be diluted or mis-aligned (unless you do that yourself).

Enthusiastic

In my opinion, only enthusiastic bloggers should be allowed to represent the company. Half-hearted commentary stands out like a purple elephant in the corporate blogosphere. This kind of commentary does more harm than good, whether it comes from the CEO, the communications chief, or Joe Employee. Enthusiasm comes across in blog posts — and it’s contagious.

Flexible

One of the great things about blogs is the versatility with which they can be used. A corporate blog, for example, can be used internally or externally. It can be a news channel, a customer-feedback forum, an educational tool, or a combination of these things.

Google-friendly

And Yahoo-friendly, and MSN-friendly, etc. A corporate blog can help you increase your search engine visibility in a number of ways. For one thing, a blog gives you an easy way to expand your website with new content. If you blog daily for a year, you’ve got 365 new pages of topical content (and 365 new items for people to find through search engines). Blogs are also more “social” than websites, so in time a well-written blog will acquire links from other blogs. This kind of link popularity does wonders for your search engine ranking.

Happening

Nine times out of ten, a corporate blog is more “happening” than its website counterpart. Blogs are easier to update than a regular website. And when you update a blog often with quality content, it becomes an active resource that people are more inclined to revisit.

Informative

When you keep your customers well informed on new products, services or “behind the scenes” company happenings, you increase the likelihood of future business from those customers. Corporate blogging is a simple but effective way to keep people informed.

Jargon-free

Generally, corporate blogs are not the place for corporate speak. At least, not a customer-facing corporate blog. Save that language for your annual report. Business blogs evolved from online diaries, single-author sources of information and insight. Much of this plain-speak expectation carries over to corporate blogs, so the potential power of blogging for business purposes lies within the blog’s frankness, not its jargon.

Knowledgeable

Use your corporate blog to show readers how knowledgeable you are on your subject. When your readers see how much information you have to share on a subject, they’ll recommend your blog to others who are interested in the subject. These are the kinds of readers you want. Just remember, some of your readers will know as much about the subject as you do. So check your facts before posting.

Limitless

Corporate blogs can be configured in endless ways to serve endless roles. They can stand alone, be part of a website, or be part of a larger network of blogs. Because the technical aspects of a corporate blog are limitless, so too are the uses for the blog.

Manageable

Blogs reduce the technical side of web publishing to such a degree that anyone can blog, regardless of their web experience. Blogs are so manageable, in fact, that even a large web presence built on blogging technology can be managed by a single individual. In this way, blogs are only an initial burden on the IT department. Once a blog is setup, it can be managed by the author alone.

Non-invasive

Corporate blogs “pull” readers to the message, rather than “push” the message to the reader. People can sign up for a blog in total privacy, simply by pulling the blog’s RSS feed into their feed reader. In this way, corporate blogs are non-invasive for readers. The readers come to the blog — the blog is not thrust upon them, like other forms of corporate communication. As long as blogs adhere to this non-invasive, respectful approach, they will be held in higher esteem than other communication channels like email.

Operational

Corporate blogs are more than simple communications tools. With their versatility and ease of use, a corporate blog can server operational roles. This might include internal collaboration (like an intranet) or outward instruction (like an interactive Q&A forum). Blogs can be an active part of your organization’s daily operations.

Purposeful

The key to a good blogging experience is to have a purpose. Sure, you can plunge right into corporate blogging and figure out your purpose as you go. That’s part of the appeal. But your blog will be more effective (and easier to produce) if you have a blogging plan and purpose. Maybe your blogging purpose is to educate readers on what goes on behind the scenes at your company. Maybe you want to increase your visibility on the Web. Or maybe the CEO wants to share his ideas on the business to foster interaction. Fill in the blanks as needed, just be sure you have a purpose behind your blogging efforts.

Qualitative and Quantitative

When corporate blogging is done well, it has both a quantitative and qualitative affect. Because blogs are easy to publish, they help you increase the quantity of content on your website. This increases your blog’s value to readers, as well as its visibility to search engines. If the content is also useful and informative to your key audience, the blog adds quality. A well-managed corporate blog can enhance your web presence by adding both quantity and quality.

Reusable

Blog content can be reused for a variety of purposes. For example, if you expand on a blog post (or compile several blog posts), you can create articles that you can syndicate online. This will help you grow your web presence and even more. This is one of the strategies I teach through my blogging guide mentioned at the end of this article. Another example of reusing blog content — Seth Godin’s book Small Is the New Big is simply a compilation of his blog posts over the last few years.

Straightforward

Okay, so this is somewhat repetitive of ‘C’ for candid. But it’s worth repeating. The most popular of the corporate and CEO blogs reached their level of popularity by being straightforward. And here, I’m referring to both the design and the content of the corporate blog. Blogs that are “overly designed” don’t really look like blogs at all. They look like corporate websites, which (I believe) takes away some of their candidness and authenticity. The same is true of blog content. Blog postings that are straightforward and candid will generate more trust, interaction and “buzz” among the blog’s readers than thinly-veiled corporate speak.

Thoughtful

The best corporate blogs are thoughtful. I don’t mean thoughtful in the sense of “kind,” although kindness goes a long way on the Web. I mean thoughtful as in “full of thought.” Blogs with a lot of “fluff” don’t fare well in the corporate blogosphere. So be sure you put some thought into your blog’s content.

Usable

Your corporate blog should be easy to navigate and read. In fact, any blog should be easy to use, or any website for that matter. Web readers and researches are skilled at hopping from site to site. They don’t need much of a reason to bail out on you, and they’ll do just that if your blog is hard to navigate. Review a list of the most widely read blogs on the Internet, and you’ll find they have something in common — they all have simple designs with high levels of usability.

Voluntary

You should blog because you want to, not because you think you have to. If you start a corporate blog just because people say you should, it will lack the heartfelt enthusiasm that’s a hallmark of great blogs. (See ‘E’ for enthusiasm above.)

Wise

Your corporate blog is the ideal place to share your wisdom about your industry. This will help you position yourself as an authority in your field, and will also help foster the trust that’s mentioned under the letter ‘T’ above. Show people what you know about your industry, but do it in a conversational way. A “tip of the day” series is a prime example of this. It’s a great way to share your wisdom, and it’s the kind of thing others will link to if it’s full of useful content or advice.

Xstensible

Okay, so I cheated with this letter. But blogs are certainly extensible (and you try to come up with a good adjective starting with ‘X’). Corporate blogs, business blogs, CEO blogs — any blog — can grow as the company grows. You can add additional authors, additional sections, whatever you need. And it doesn’t require and act of the I.T. gods to get it done. By design, blogging programs are meant to be extensible.

Yours

If you ask me, anonymous blogs are not blogs at all … just plain old websites. A corporate blog can have one author or several authors, but it should be somebody’s blog. It should be yours, or his and hers, or all of yours. Somebody needs to own it. Otherwise, nobody will trust what it has to say.

Zippy

The definition of zippy is “lively and full of energy.” These are great traits for a corporate blogs. Some people equate the word “corporate” with “dull.” Show them otherwise. Inject your personality. Show them the passion you have for your industry. That’s the only thing that will keep them coming back.

* You may republish this article online if you retain the author’s byline and the active hyperlinks below.

About the Author
Brandon Cornett is the publisher of CEO Blog Watch and the author of a new blogging guide. Download your copy of the blogging guide by visiting http://www.ceoblogwatch.com

Corporate blogging makes it possible for people within an organization to communicate with one another by blogging and form communities around projects, products and other areas of common interest. Over the years, several best practices in corporate blogging have evolved.

Corporate blogs are primarily of two kinds internal and external. Internal blogs refer to blogs within the organization that operate behind a firewall. Some organizations have only a single blog to update employees about the latest news and changes implemented. This is far easier to manage, control and ensure that the content adheres to the corporate policies. Some enterprises allow employees to form blogs and share their ideas, though such practices are harder to control. Blogs improve communication, increase knowledge and clear doubts instantly and hence are necessary tools. External blogs are made available on the Internet and can be viewed by anyone. It allows company representatives to communicate with customers, allowing the company to make announcements, get reviews about its products etc.

Best Practices in Corporate Blogging:
1. Creating an open, transparent and honest blog: the blog should give specific details as to who started it, what his position in the company is. Make sure the content is credible and that no attempt is made to hoodwink bloggers as that can severally damage the reputation of the firm when found out.

2. The blog should be created carefully as it is primarily designed to retain existing customers as well as develop interest in the products and recruit new customers. It should develop a community of bloggers who actively participate in blogging, hence the content has to be written by some one experienced and knowledgeable, and they can include links of other blogs that relate to the product or subject of the blog by asking permission from the owners of those blogs.

3. The writing has to be consistent as also the blog policies that have to be enforced.

4. It is essential that corporate seek legal counsel to develop blogging policies such that information shared and posted in blogs can be informative without too much censor as well as comply and conform to the Sarbanes-Oxley rules and other regulations that govern information exchange.

5. Keep updating the blog and make sure to stay committed to the blog.

6. When mistakes occur, make sure that instead of covering up and destroying the corporate image further, the company can quickly acknowledge a mistake was made and make amends.

7. Have adequate tact to deal with negative posts that will dispel doubts about the company or its products, try conversing with such bloggers asking their opinion how your product or services can be improved.

8. The blog must be designed to conform to the usability guidelines.

9. Have a clear idea about the purpose of the blog and have periodic checks to see if it is serving the purpose and if there are benefits.

These are some of the best practices in corporate blogging.
There are firms that offer services as well as products to help run a successful business.

Alexander Gordon is a writer for http://www.smallbusinessconsulting.com - The Small Business Consulting Community. Sign-up for the free success steps newsletter and get our booklet valued at $24.95 for free as a special bonus. The newsletter provides daily strategies on starting and significantly growing a business.

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