What Exactly is A blog?
In the past several years, blogs have gone from the geek underground to a main attraction for media, marketers and businesses. Talking heads babble on the TV about “what the bloggers are saying” and companies are flummoxed on how they can leverage blogs to promote and grow their business. Blog is short for “Web-log”. A blog is an easily, frequently and instantly updatable Web site. It looks like an online diary with the most recent entries (called posts) on the front page leading to monthly or categorized archives. Each entry has its own Web page and can have a comments form for readers to talk back to the author to agree (or rebut) their idea. Blog posts are written in a warmer, more informed voice than a traditional, sterile corporate Web site and can give readers a more personal and conversational impression of a company.
How Blogs Work
Usually blogs are dismissed as diaries or the realm of rabid political punditry, but that misses the big deal: a blog can be updated anytime, anywhere from any Internet connection on any computer in the world. You log into the system that manages your blog (called a blog platform) and fill out a simple outline form with your latest post. You then click “publish” and within seconds your post is available online for anyone in the world to read. Further, the blog platform updates the blog front page and re-shuffles the archives automatically. This leaves you to get back to managing your business – not your Web site. You can always go back and edit or revise your posts as needed and accept, remove or moderate any comments. You can also easily add links, pictures, audio, and video to your blog to make it a multimedia presence.
The Advantages of Blogs
The four main reasons that businesses turn to blogs are to save time, save money, strengthen customer relationships and improve search engine ranking. Because updating a blog doesn’t require the intervention of the IT overlords in your company, you are able to save time, routing around a labored change control process. Since a blog allows you to publish online with inexpensive software, you don’t have to wait for your web designer to get off from Apple which will also save you money. Because of the informed voice of blogs, they can provide a warmer face to the client, increasing trust and reputation. Finally, the underlying architecture of a blog’s pages make them fantastic for instant search engine optimization, which will enable you to rank higher in relevant online searches.
Using Blogs Inside the Company
In addition to the main advantages of blogs, they can also be used inside a company in the following ways:
- Project Management – Blogs can provide an instant snapshot of a project’s status, an archive of past reports and an easier way to access deliverables. You won’t be annoying your employees by clogging their inbox with an eight gigabyte PDF.
- Intranet News – Intranet announcements and initiatives from the top brass can be communicated faster and managed more easily across business units or down the organization.
- Knowledge Management – Blogs can be used for sharing industry research, test-driving ideas, and documenting policies and procedures. Information can be quickly published, categorized and archived in an instantly searchable database.
- Organizational Development And Learning – Blogs can function as touch-points for manager development, performance management, and on-the-job training so that employees can share what they are learning and how it is impacting their performance.
- Distributed Workgroups – With project teams scattered around the world, a blog can provide an instant update on status and needs as the workday moves from time zone to time zone. Collaborative features help collect ideas, provide version control, distribute deliverables, and track dependencies
Using Blogs Outside the Company
Blogs are great inside the enterprise but become even more useful when unleashed outside the organizational chart.
- Crisis Management – When a public relations challenge comes calling, your PR team needs to get information published quickly and correctly. A blog provides a quick platform for defusing potential PR conflicts before they affect a company’s brand or products. Plus, if you are finding backlash from bloggers, using a blog is a great way to meet them on level ground and earn their respect.
- An Additional PR Channel – Journalists and news organizations are increasingly turning to blogs for industry buzz, news, and views. A blog can become a key way for your company’s products and services to get noticed and covered by the media. Stories that are littering the evening news were fermenting among blogs a week before.
- Customer Outreach And Education – Blogs can easily manage information that prospects need to know when they are doing product research, and they can also establish relationships after a purchase through customer education, product demos, and customer support.
- Thought Leadership And Visioning – A company’s leaders can utilize blogs to communicate their organizational or business vision. Being a media-savvy CEO is more important than ever for businesses and a blog provides a more informal conduit than a traditional press release. Customers, shareholders, and the media get to experience a company’s top brass in their own voices and on their own terms.
- Research and Development – Blogs can provide an in-progress view of upcoming products and services. They allow customers to provide instant feedbacks and suggestions for further features. Rather than spending money on customer surveys and waiting for reports, you can quiz your target audience and start getting feedback within minutes.
Utilizing Blogs without Having a Blog
Often companies think that the only way for them to start using blogs is for them to start their own blog. Perhaps your company wants to start one, but might want to use the collective “hive” of blogs (often called the blogosphere) to keep track of what’s being said about your brand and products – and find your biggest fans.
Buzz Making
Send influential bloggers products sample, promotional items (often called “swag”), and press kits for new products. Bloggers love to get a scoop, so give them early notice of events or product demos. Allow bloggers to apply for press passes and they’ll delight in the extra access.
Customer Surveys
Track what bloggers are saying about your company, your leaders and products with alerts so you always know how you are being perceived online and offline. Read bloggers who are your company’s target audience. What are their needs and concerns? What can you glean from reading their blogs?
Corporate Intelligence
Along with tracking your own company’s reputation online, you can also use the blogosphere to track the news and views of your competitors. You’ll be able to track the reputation of your competitors compared to yours.
Advertise on Blogs
There are several services out there that allows you to advertise on blogs related to your industry or products. This careful alignment of content, audience and advertising can help promote ideas and products.
The Big Fear
Most companies are scared of blogging because it subverts the usual top-down communication style that they are comfortable with. Blogs provide equal platform across an organization and the internet, inviting two-way conversation with real flesh-and-blood people, instead of carefully programmed PR robots. Blogs and outside criticism or discussion is often seen as a vital threat to a company’s integrity and bottom line. Are you willing to talk to your customers like they are real people? Are you willing to hear that may be some of your products might actually suck? The clincher is your customers are already talking about you. Clincher number 2: they want you to talk to them. You might as well join the discussion as a partner and stop hiding behind your brand.
Getting You Started Quickly
Here is a quick mini-product plan to get you going.
- Choose a blog platform – You can start a blog in 15 minutes using low-cost tools and services. Blog platforms like Google’s Blogger (www.blogger.com) or WorPress.com are free to low-cost and include hosting.
- Choose your bloggers – Approach some forward-thinking folks in your company and see whether they would be interested in being guinea-pigs. You probably already have some bloggers in your midst – you might be surprised.
- Set–up expectations – You can tell them how often to post, what to post about and how to engage with other bloggers. Or you can just set them loose and see what happens. The important thing is that they are able to blog honestly and openly and engage readers in a true discussion.
- Track metrics – Most blog platforms have some sort of statistics and traffic system so you can see where hits are coming from, what bloggers are linking to you and what search engine results are finding you.
- Highlight your bloggers – Once the bloggers are up and running, start bringing them into the marketing process. Have them write supplements to press releases, have them interview industry experts, satisfied users, or topic gurus. Let your bloggers highlight other bloggers that are writing about your products or industry.
Conclusion
Start Starting
There are ton of other options and configurations available but the important thing is to start getting started. Blogging is a powerful medium to get past your brand and let the world see that personality of the people that make up your organization. You passionate employees and satisfied customers are your best sales force. Let them start talking to the rest of the world about your products and services and see what happens.
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