Blogging for Business: Strategies, Tactics and Examples to Consider by Zach Braiker Social Media Strategist

Blogging for Business: Strategies, Tactics and Examples to Consider

written on October 13th, 2009 by Zach Braiker

A blog is a considerable investment. It’s an investment in time. It’s an investment in financial resources to plan, design, host and market. And it’s an investment in a business direction to listen, respond and contribute to your industry and your customers.

What makes this investment worthwhile is that it provides an authentic, human voice for your business, and it enables your company to demonstrate, through actions, that you are paying attention. This voice and its corresponding actions create real results, some of which are listed below.

Why blog for business

A low cost customer communication tool for small business. This works particularly well in defined niches. Even if your business operates in a highly competitive landscape, identify the point of view from which you can speak uniquely and credibly.

See: Yale Appliance blog

A tool to drive organic search. Keyword rich blog headlines, content producing incoming links, and the continuous supply of fresh content are factors contributing to effective search engine visibility.

See: Seomoz for many SEO tools for your blog

A thought leader strategy. A company blog provides a platform for an executive to interact with their industry and establish themselves as credible in the field.

See: Ross Mayfield, Bob Lutz

A place to continue the conversation started on a social network. Facebook, Twitter, and online communications reveal different perspectives of a business within social media. A blog provides the space to share a more complete story and to expand on a point of view.

See: Zappos

A social media credibility builder. Have you interacted with a business on Twitter, clicked on their URL and arrived at their homepage? It creates a disconnect between an intimate conversation and a business agenda. The blog provides an appropriate greeting place for fans you’ve met in social networks in order to continue the conversation.

A response platform. Where will your business respond if a major mistake was made or you want to publicly thank an advocate or respond to a critic? Your blog provides an ideal platform for this.

See: JetBlue

A technique to build an identity which informs other marketing. Companies, like people, can clarify who they are through their interactions. The clarity benefits other marketing initiatives.

How to blog for business

There are many expert practitioners including Debbie Weil, Amanda Watlington and others with deeply informed perspectives. I have found the following steps successful in my work:

Outcomes – “Measuring “new” media isn’t as different as measuring “old” media. The trick is to figure out what your goal is first.” Therefore, ask, “If the blog is successful, what will it achieve in a year?” Will it attract new customers? Provide a human face for the company? Secure speaking engagements for executives? Reveal actionable insights about customers? Getting agreement on the desired outcome is critically important. The outcome drives the strategy…I don’t believe you have to pick just one outcome; however, I do believe that if there are multiple outcomes they should be prioritized.

Audience – Is your blog written for current customers? Prospective customers? The industry in general? Knowing your audience is helpful to refining the message.

Key performance indicators – Common KPIs include blog visits, time on blog, number of subscriptions, number of comments per post, incoming links and mentions in social media. It’s important that the KPIs you measure are not only social media KPIs, but also business KPIs as well. For example, measure how the blog contributes to marketing, sales, HR, customer service and internal culture.

The big idea – What is the idea for the blog? I always test it with someone who has no knowledge of marketing or social media to make sure it is clear. For example, the Stonyfield Farm blog celebrates, “Cow”munities. Its big idea is to let fans look inside their company.

Content – Create categories prior to developing an editorial calendar. If you are blogging for a company that makes matchbooks, consider starting by creating a list of topics. For example, the history of matchbooks; the future of matchbooks; the most valuable matchbooks; things you didn’t know about matchbooks. Each topic has the potential to become a series. Once the topics are developed, build your editorial calendar. Consider this helpful presentation to help spark content and style ideas.

The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging … And When To Use Each One

View more documents from Rohit Bhargava.

Design – Knowing what you want to communicate first helps to define the design. There are several critical questions to answer: Which blogging platform will you use? Will you use a pre-existing template or create a custom one? If you are looking for a theme, consider these 100 amazing free themes for Wordpress.

Marketing – In what ways will you consistently market the whole blog and each individual post? What is the context for the blog? Who are its peers? Who will you feature in your blog roll? When others are asked what your blog is about, ideally, how would you want them to respond?

See: 25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog

Integration – What is your plan to integrate the blog into your company’s culture? In what ways will you integrate the blog with the official website? Notice how Whole Foods integrates its blog under the Talk to Us tab. BTW, Whole Foods should consider changing it from “talk to us” to “talk with us.” To what extent will you maintain the look and feel of the website versus establishing a unique identity for the blog?

Management – Who is responsible for managing the blog content and design. What is the content and comment moderation policy? To what extent are legal, HR and other stakeholders involved? The earlier in the planning phase you can uncover constraints and considerations the better.