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Think a blog is just a fad or only for the famous (or infamous)? According to a Business Week article published recently, blogs will change your business. See what we mean here.
JDM offers blog marketing services to help your business leverage the increasing popularity and ease-of-use of blogs to promote your business, build a loyal readership, and educate your customer base. JDM's specialties include: blog creative design, technical development of interactivity, blog SEO and promotional services.
Before you contact JDM to help you market your business with a corporate blog, consider "The Three Keys to Blogging".
The Three Keys to Blogging and Beyond
There are already hordes of blogs on the Internet, but like most things that have become cost-effective and easy to learn, few are done well. There are three keys to developing something that goes beyond the typical blog and becomes a valuable resource to perspective buyers. The three keys are: content, consistency and community.
Content is King
Most importantly, what makes a good blog is great content. The content should be benefit-based, informative and, ideally, actionable. Provide content links only when relevant and save the sales pitch for your advertising.
Consistency and Frequency
Building a level of consistency into your blog is also important in order to build a subscriber base. This is not to say that you should re-package the same content over and over again or publish a post just for the sake of it. Rather, identify expertise your audience is seeking and consistently be their resource.
Consistency is also important when it comes to the frequency of posts. You don’t have to post daily or even weekly. However, set a content goal and stick to it. As an example, JDM’s blog content goals include at least two blog postings per month and if you look at our blog archive, you'll notice we've stayed pretty close to that goal. We aim to post content that is valuable to our readership on a consistent basis with relative frequency.
Beyond the Blog is a Community
The corporate blog can go beyond the classification of a resource when it's allowed to become a meeting place for a discussion.
Don't just allow comments from your readers, but welcome them with little or no moderation. After all, it isn't a discussion if the community can only hear what you let them hear. Welcome criticism. Criticism is almost always more interesting than praise.
Another way to build this sense of community is adding interactive elements to your blog. These could be elements such as polls, and reference link list or they could be RSS syndication and email sign ups.
Interactive Blogging (blog 2.0)
There's a lot of talk about RSS or "real simple syndication", but unfortunately there's nothing simple about it. Handling both the syndication of the blog's content as well as handling email subscriptions and unsubscriptions can be a little tricky.
Finally, implementing website statistics into the blog can also be a valuable way of judging traffic volume, visitor loyalty, and popular content.
For more information on website statistics, check out our blog posting entitled, "Web Stats :: Cause or Effect?"
Blog Marketing
There are those marketers who view promoting your company blog as analogous to "promoting a promotion" and spend little or no time promoting the blog. However there's little point in spending the effort developing a really great company blog if no one reads it.
The answer is that you do, in fact, have to promote your blog, albeit should account for only a small fraction of your marketing budget.
Promotional activities like a low-budget pay-per-click, search engine optimization, and inserting a link into your company's email signatures are inexpensive tactics and a good start. As the blog readership grows you'll be able to determine how much more or less it will be worth to continue promoting it.
For more advanced promotional activities download our "Easy Website Marketing" article.
Ultimately, the key to building a great company blog is to consistently provide valuable content to a community of readers. Contact JDM today to learn more about our blog marketing services.
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