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.

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.

Additional resources

Basics:
The Bloggers Glossary
Blog Terms Glossary
Technorati’s Blogging 101

Strategy:
27 Resources to evaluate the ROI of blogging
10 Harsh Truths about Corporate Blogging
Agenda of the corporate blog

Examples:
See this list of examples from the Fortune 500
One of my favorite examples of a corporate blog

I just completed an integrated social media plan for a client. The plan will engage and activate their customers on social networks.

Customers that are engaged with the brand are more likely to buy products and services.

And they are more likely to refer.

This helps to establish the business case for social media.

A non-social media example underscoring this point is the way universities interact with their alumni. Check out your latest alumni magazine.

In mine I found 7 examples you can use right now to build a customer community:

1. User generated content. Alumni wrote 75% of the content in the magazine. In what ways can you incorporate customer content into your blog?

2. Icons. Images of new buildings, professors and innovations fill the pages of the magazine making me proud to associate with the community. What images are you sharing with customers in your coorespondence with them: clip art or photos that evoke a sense of identification with your company?

3. Context. On every page the alumni magazine reminds us of the history of the university, which is greater than any individual member. Reading through the magazine I feel a sense of being apart of something greater than me. What values does your company promote, which are bigger than it? Are you sharing those values with your customers?

4. Ceremony. Birth, death, marriage and accomplishments are ceremonies celebrated within the pages of the alumni magazine. What are the ceremonies you celebrate with your customers? (i.e., 1-800-Flowers is celebrating their customer’s birthdays on Facebook).

5. Featured members. The alumni magazine spotlights new alumni each month by honoring them with an interview. How do you honor your customers?

6. Togetherness. The alumni magazine invites fellow alumni to travel together. It encourages those who do to send pictures and features them in the magazine. This creates a sense of belonging that is real. How are you creating a sense of “togetherness” with your customers?

7. The Ask. A purpose of the alumni magazine is to raise money for the university. It does this in direct and indirect ways. Directly, it asks for contribution only once. Indirectly, the more you read the magazine, the more you identify with the community increasing the likeihood of donation. How are you asking customers for their business? And what value are you delivering before they do?

Vans is a brand that keeps true to its culture through social media.
The brand actively blogs, tweets and shares on social networks.

I recently interviewed Nikki Scoggins, the online communities development manager, to discuss Vans’ blog and participation in social networks.
Her fun, candid answers below give us an insight under the hood of Vans.

1. Why does Vans blog?

We blog to give us another way to connect on a casual level with our customers & fans. It’s a way to tell people about Vans-related phenomena (like sneaker customization) or random happenings that Vans actually has nothing to do with, but we find interesting. People do it on their own. Also, through the blog, Facebook, MySpace, & Twitter people can talk directly with us about their likes & dislikes….events & happenings in their world. I mean, people are online all the time anyway in social networks. Why not go where the people are, right? And anyway, of course, blogs are a great way to further our knowledge of how our products are being used. If a guy builds a giant chair made out of our sneakers I wouldn’t exactly put it on the front page of vans.com. It’s not the place for it. However, posting it on The Vans Blog and asking the artist why he felt he needed to make a giant chair out of Vans- getting the story about the person- is what I find most interesting and makes the best material to write about. (Is there really a giant Vans Chair? No, not yet. I am seeding. I need to see one. Haha!)

2. Who reads the Vans blog and why?

As far as I can gather, there’s not any particular type of person who reads the blog regularly.  I’ve connected it through all of our other networks so the range of person isn’t targeted at one audience. Certainly the majority of traffic is US, followed by Canada, the UK & France, but hey, I gotta give a big holler at my one reader in Azerbaijan, too. (I know where you are. What up, Google maps!) Some people could think that writing a blog about Vans would be boring and too restricting. You’d run out of content. In fact there’s so much out there, when you consider how many people wear Vans and have an emotional attachment to them, oftentimes I can’t keep up with all the material. Also, picking one topic & elaborating on it for more than a year certainly helps to understand the nuances of the culture behind it. I guess that’s why people keep coming back to it. It’s like looking under the hood of Vans.

3. How do you measure whether the blog is a success?

Ah! That’s a perfect follow up to the last question. I measure the success from two perspectives: connecting the people at Vans with the public & providing a conduit for the public to us. When people in my office learn something new about what one of our fans is doing with our product, they get excited.  When a fan feels more connected to us because we blog about DIY projects or something going on in their town, they get excited. That’s a success. That’s not supposed to sound all crazy altruistic, but maybe it’s not such a bad thing.

4. What’s your favorite Vans blog post?

Well, they aren’t terribly popular ones, but I really love finding the homemade commercials by kids on YouTube. They’re so sincere. They make up songs about Vans. They write bitchy skits about how nerds wear Sketchers and cool girls wear Vans and by wearing Vans you magically become Cinderella-awesome. Haha! I know I’m a sucker, but I used to make videos like that when I was little. It’s nostalgic.

As far as ones that readers like?

The Alexander Hamilton Vans

This one here where rapper Gata makes up his own slang

and the Coachella poloaROID RAGE! Study

5. In your “about” section on the blog you show a lot of personality. Do you feel free to be yourself on the blog?

Absolutely. The only things I stay away from are politics and religion. (I’m a Southern girl. That’s just not proper. Haha) Other than that, I am pretty down for whatever. Like I mentioned before, blogs are casual places. I can’t claim that I’m a versatile writer. I’m not about to win a national book award in my spare time. I write how I speak, but sans F-bombs as constant placeholders. Most people get my humor. Come on, I literally wrote about waffles this week. Occasionally, some people take me seriously. A while back I wrote about how a guy in a Facebook commercial for iPhone wouldn’t be my friend. Over the top sarcasm all over the place, right? After I’d written the post, I ended up exchanging emails with the guy in question. He works at an ad agency in Santa Monica, CA. We were quipping back and forth in the comments section, joking about adding each other on FB. Seriously, I wrote, “OMG LOL LMAO MAO ZEDONG” in the comments, so I figured it was pretty obvious that we were joking. Anyway this woman writes me back a long, “you need to respect yourself, honey” comment. It was hilarious! The moral of the story? Some people just don’t get it.

6. Have you used the Vans blog in any of your marketing efforts? If so, how?

Oh sure. Like I mentioned, it’s all part of our relationship marketing. When I post something, it goes on all of our networks. The Vans Blog is just one arm of the social networking program that I’m helping to build at Vans. No, I’m not making an ad, but I think the blog is something that rings true with our consumers. It comes from a sincere place.

7. What are a few blogs you personally enjoy?

For skate news: Skate Daily

Fecal Face’s NYC blog – Bryan Derbally & Todd Seelie are fantastic photographers. It lets me know what I’m missing and makes me want to move back east.

Design Sponge - Hooray to making things

Inspiration Resource

Music blogs: ah yes, the walrus & day trotter.

refinery 29’s blog

and of course I love the biggies like Gawker, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Mashable, and Cool Hunting is def a favorite.

Connect with Nikki on twitter.

(Image from Flickr: “The Boy Whatley” by whatleydude)

Introducing James Whatley, the boisterous creative force behind SpinVox’s blog and Whatleydude.
To be around James is to experience a whirlwind of creative energy which social media celebrates.
We spoke at length in Helsinki, and one of our favorite topics was social media and business.
This interview is a continuation of that conversation.
If you’re contemplating starting a company blog, or if you already write one, James’ perspective is essential.
And if you like what he has to say, make sure to give SpinVox a try.

1. Who reads the SpinVox blog and why?
The SpinVox blog, I would say, is read by our users, partners, employees, customers – past, present and future! The SpinVox Blog or ‘Big Talk’ as we like to call it… – is our way of communicating daily/weekly/monthly with our users on a personal level. I work at SpinVox and try to give a level view on what’s going on in ‘the World of SpinVox’ both inside the company walls and out. The readers drop by for a number of reasons I guess – for information about our activities, to read up on how we are and to also just ‘connect’ with SpinVox. I mean, the last thing we are or would want to be is some faceless corporation and SpinVox blog is one way we can give people insight to our culture and attitudes…. For instance, we care about our users and their experiences, so the blog – as well as being a place for SpinVox to give our point of view on the world – is a place for our readers to comment and give feedback on what we do and what we say… The feedback loop if you will.

2. How do you know if the blog is successful?
Obviously you can go down the old school route of sheer numbers. However, in this new/digital/social media world we live in, ‘numbers’ don’t necessarily equal success. Before we had the blog there was no personal online voice for SpinVox. There was nowhere where we could talk informally about any of the things I’ve mentioned so far and there was also no way for our users to really feel like they could discuss issues with us and our ‘ecosystem’. I consider the SpinVox Blog a success because it stimulates conversation and while simultaneously giving us a place to free-form ideas and point to other things we like, it gives all those who care about SpinVox a place to get involved.

3. How do you decide what to blog about?
This is a many-headed beast… but to be honest – the better question is what do we decide NOT to blog about? When I wrote the blogging strategy for SpinVox at the tail end of last year I floated a whole host of ideas about what we could talk about – to the point of there being nearly too much! The acid test is that what I blog about should be something that stimulates discussion – the difference between ‘visual’ and ‘visible’ voicemail being a recent example. Plus on a daily (sometimes hourly!) basis I get Google Alerts from all across the web from people talking about much they love SpinVox or how they integrated SpinVox into their life or business and that prompts a constant flow of new ideas.

4. Tell us about your posts: which is your favorite? Which was most popular and/or influential?
So a few posts immediately spring to mind – I mentioned it above but the first one would be the most recent post I wrote – which pitches the iPhone’s Visual Voicemail feature vs SpinVox Voicemail, something we’ve notionally referred to as ‘Visible Voicemail’.
The link is above but it resonates well because not only does it stimulate a discussion worth having, (and, of course, SpinVox comes off better out of the two), but we also have Testimonials from well-known users across the web, including TechCrunch UK! Worth a look (it features of my pen & pad diagram work too – which has kind of become my calling card of late)

The second one would be a post entitled ‘Ouch’ – in which we publicly apologised for a few hours downtime after an incident with some building works cutting through one of our main supplier cables. We learnt a lot from that whole episode and you can read about it all here.

The 3rd and final post – which really has to be my absolute favourite – (again featuring my handy work with a pad and pen) – is ‘Confidence in Communication’. This post came about after a particularly intense brainstorming session at SpinVox HQ and it was the first time we’d publicly shared some of the more meatier thinking that goes on around our product and is pretty typical of the sort of thing that goes on at SpinVox day-in day-out.. It also spawned many responses from our readers who wrote out their own interpretations and blogged them. Great stuff all round.
Actually – I’d really like to get your POV on it if you get a chance – you can find the post here.

5. You recently posted a video about condoms: Was that considered controversial? What does buying condoms have to do with Spinvox? Did partners with “tellingitlikeitis.tv” offend any SpinVox users?

SpinVox does one thing well – turn voice into text in order that people can message more effectively. The MTV campaign was all about getting messages over in an effective away and actually using our system to do it – to allow people to ’speak freely’ on associated websites through SpinVox. We’re also a company that takes our social responsibilities seriously – we sponsored this activity for instance – and our co-founder Christina Domecq has been personally funding for nearly a decade orphanages in Southern Africa in villages devastated by the effects of AIDS. So over the Summer SpinVox teamed up with MTV’s Global Multimedia HIV/AIDS prevention charity: The Staying-Alive Foundation (SAF). Together we launched the Stand By What You Say campaign which, along with the support of Causes for Facebook, encouraged people to not only pick up the phone and Speak Freely about the sexual issues that were relevant to them, but to then also act on them. The campaign was an outstanding success and resulted in SpinVox once again teaming up with SAF this time with the guys from Fur.tv (the puppets featured in the video you mentioned) to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the SAF being in existence. Inviting the viewers of this years European Music Awards to call in and ‘tell it like it is’.

6. If you were starting the SpinVox blog again, what would you have done differently and why?
When I first started the SpinVox Blog I felt a small amount of pressure to tow the company line and not to put too much ‘whatleydude’ into it, if you get my meaning? I was concerned that my writing style and my POV on the world might contradict with the SpinVox Brand/Image and I was reticent to put anything to (virtual) paper, as it were. After a month or so of this my boss noticed and pulled me up on it. He explained that the pressure was non-existent and was all in my head and that in fact, the reason I’d been hired was so that I could be myself – SpinVox really is that sort of company! I can write blog posts and I do have a sense for what makes good content and what doesn’t…. and if the James Whatley of SpinVox point of view on the world is one that the company is happy stand behind then who am I to complain?!

The recent Mortin issue underscored how powerful mommy bloggers are in influencing opinion. On twitter, blogger, and social networking profiles I have observed a tremendous outpouring of mom pride and affinity. In exploring this further, I came across MomForce  — a new service that connects employers and marketers to the mom experts for hire—they promise to help you “reach mom..with moms.”

I interviewed Jessica Smith, its founder, recently and have posted our discussion below:

Who should use MomForce.com?

Moms, Dads, anyone that has an authentic understanding of moms and who has marketing experience.  Companies that are targeting moms and want to successfully introduce their brand and establish brand loyalty in the “mom community”.

As a marketing agency, how can I use MomForce to communicate with mom’s in social networks?

MomForce.com gives agencies, start-ups, and large corporations the ability to bring an authentic voice to the social networks by hiring a social media and marketing savvy mom on either a project or long term basis. By doing this, you take away the megaphone of traditional marketing, the talking at a community and instead give them the ability to listen and to share…thus becoming a conversation.!

How are you marketing MomForce?

I’m marketing MomForce.com through word of mouth marketing, my 15 Days Series on my personal blog, JessicaKnows.com and through Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

What do you wish more employers knew about MomForce?

That it is designed specifically for hiring social media and marketing savvy moms (and dads) to complement their existing marketing and PR efforts while allowing for little to no overhead and flexibility around the logistics of making it a win-win situation for both the company and the mom.

What is your background—how did you get involved in MomForce?

I have a BA Communications and 8 years in marketing, business development, and recruiting.  I was hired as Chief Mom Officer for Wishpot.com this past summer and quickly realized that there are so many moms that can add value through their authentic voice and understanding of how social media is changing the way moms access and share information.  I shared my vision of promoting this concept with Care.com’s Sheila Marcelo and together we hatched MomForce.com with the talented Care.com team.

Learn more about Jessica on her blog here and her LinkedIn profile here.