I’m often asked “Should my company have a blog?” My answer is almost always yes. I advocated the idea of creating a corporate blog for most of my clients. The power of a corporate blog can have extremely positive results; however, several recent articles have focused on the downside of corporate blogging.
The Upside
One of the biggest advantages of creating a company blog is it allows organizations a platform where information, data and opinion can be shared and traded. The open forum of communication is a two-way exchange between the company and its employees, customers, partners and prospects allowing a constant stream of exchanged information. Blogs make it easy for group participation allowing users a quick way to post and comment, creating an ongoing conversation.
Reasons blogging may work for your company
Blogging can be an inexpensive way to establish an internet presence for small business owners. It is a constant communication stream generating information about customers, their experiences and opinions. The sharing of ideas freely, in an honest voice, helps generates trust and gives potential customers a source to obtain additional information about your company. Blogs are capable of creating positive Corporate/Product PR allowing opportunity to talk about your product, company and increase brand awareness.
Corporate leaders can communicate directly with customers, suppliers and investors, as well as employees, helping disseminate and explain strategy. And, if updated consistently with quality content, blogs can establish the company as a leader in its industry.
Blog also happen to be very well suited for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search engines love blogs because of their constantly changing structure of content, linking between pages, and because the content is categorized and grouped.
The Downside
There are two sides to every story, and some individuals believe blogs are not suitable for marketing a company, advertising products, are too timely and expensive when done correctly. Generally the content has become mundane, it lacks originality and that blogs have become too much of an echo chamber. And companies don’t understand the time required to maintaining a successful blog.
Reasons to rethink corporate blogging
One of the biggest challenges with blogging is companies are likely to join the millions of blogs with little or no readers. In general, corporate blogs tend to be very boring lacking any personal voice. The content must be original or provide significantly better information than competitors in your industry?
Creating a successful blog requires lots of dedicate time and effort. Writing a good blog entry can range from two to four hours a post. Your copywriters and contributors need to be personable and good readers. They must keep up with feeds, forums and mainstream media, to be able keep your readers informed about your industry topics.
Companies must understand blogs are not a substitute for marketing campaigns, but simply a potential part of corporate communications. A blog can be a useful tool for advertising, but is not a substitute for advertising campaign. A blog may require a skilled programming to set it up, a professional designer to incorporate corporate identity, and a talented/dedicated writer or editor.
Summary
Just with everything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it. If your a company or an individual willing to spend the time, blogging can have very positive results. Successful blogging results will not come overnight and will take effort to gain long term results.
