Welcome to the evolution of the ContentRobot blog-powered website! We invite you to watch, as we convert our site to a new design and focus. We're even blogging the process, too.
Recently, guru Seth Godin published 54 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Site. ContentRobot offers some of the best ones that apply to business blogging.
ContentRobot found this bit of inspiration at Tom Peters most interesting blog.
This is #39 of his 100 Success Tips:
Blog As If Your Life Depended On It!
Blogging, I firmly believe, is the premier emergent marketing-brandbuilding-lovemarkcreating tool of our times! It is the premier way to have intimate-engaging-informative-WOWing “conversations” with Clients and prospects! This all goes double for small enterprises and niche enterprises; and goes triple for the Professional Services; and works wonders in the Public Sector as well.
Do you see Blogging in these exalted lights? If not, why not? Please … Blog-As-If-Your-Professional-Success-Depended-On-It. (Hint: I think it does.)
Begin today! Appoint yourself Chief Blogging Officer. Or, better yet, Chief Intimate Client Conversations Officer!
We, of course agree whole-heartedly with the management guru! Businesses need include blogging as part of their marketing and brand building plans now.
Tags: ContentRobot, Tom Peters, blogging , success tips
When you are business blogging, you should do many things — except maybe these three …
NO-NO #1: Talk about your blog more than you talk about your business.
Perhaps you really do have a state-of-the-art corporate blog - great! But guess what? Most of your visitors won’t care. It’s better to keep the focus of the conversation on your business offerings - not on the technology.
NO-NO #2. Have too few relevant, informative posts.
Learn to balance posting quality with quantity as you offer your readers the greatest amount and variety of information possible. For most business blogs, try to post at least two or three posts a week. If you can do more - do more!
NO-NO #3. Ignore people who care about your business.
Don’t kill the conversation - ask your readers questions, respond to their input. Don’t forgot to offer comments and trackbacks on your blog, even if you are afraid of spam. By making your readers feel important, your own importance will grow in their eyes.
Inspired by a post found on Easton Ellsworth’s often excellent BusinessBlogWire.
Despite all the hype and publicity surrounding blogging, businesses still are slow to enter the blogosphere. Why?
ContentRobot believes it’s mainly because they they really just don’t know enough about what blogging is and the value it provides. We offer 3 reasons why blogs are good for business.
1. To open the lines of communication between themselves and the public.
Blogs can introduce personal contact and a dialogue with with the public. By being open and accessible, a business can show themselves as a group of “real people” who have a certain knowledge and expertise to share.
Who to reach out and talk to? Current and potential customers and clients, the news media, other business or professionals in the industry, or simply casual readers interested in your topic can benefit from your blog.
Blogging, then, can nurture trust and confidence as you regularly communicate with your readers. Remember, people are far more likely to purchase products and services from other people who they know and trust.
2. To act as networking tool.
Because writing blog posts is very personalized, the blog becomes a natural networking vehicle. Readers can interact with the writer(s) by submitting the blog comments and by sending e-mail. These interested contacts often lead eventually to many shared business opportunities.
3. To improve search engine rankings.
Blogs are very powerful tools for search engine results because of its keyword-rich fresh content and any incoming links. Readers will click to your blog and spend time with your brand, which in turn, encourages them to engage your services or buy your products with what you have to say.
Corporate blogging is not all about marketing, it’s really about serving the customer.
What corporations should realize that their bloggers are their customer service agents as well as their product evangelists. They are, after all, conversing with the public about your products (and services).
What about potential customers? Instead of concentrating on “selling” them, communicate with them instead. Because if they are talking with you, they are already customers, whether or not your product is in their hands.
To truly serve them you must converse. What a better way to do that is in your corporate blogs. Keep writing and responding and keep those costumer converstations going!
Your blog team, not unlike your web team, needs to have these common skills to build a successful site. Is your team missing any?
Design
While non-professional blogging continues to grow, most corporations are still warming the bench and watching from the sidelines.
Why are they afraid to get in the game? Fear.
Fear of what? Fear of …
As with every business decision, one needs to decide whether a blog is worth its time and resources. With that in mind, corporations shouldn’t blog if …
1. The Blog Is One-sided
It has to be a two-way message systemt to be effective. Worried about negative comments? You can hide and not blog, or respond to them thoughtfully and respectfully.
2. The Blog Takes Too Much Time
It takes time and effort by company employees to publish and post contents on the blog. Content needs to be updated regularly and the quality of the postings needs to stay high. If you cannot commit the resources for maintaining a blog, then don’t.
3. The Blog isn’t Reaching Key Markets
If your customer are not reading your blog, then there is no point in maintaining the blog. A clearly segmented customer base that can be touched this way, however, deserves a corporate blog.
4. The Blog has Boring Topics
People will read your blog if the contents are relevant to them and if it’s interesting. It is easy to start a blog, but keeping its content lively and interesting to its readers over a long period of time is a challenge.
5. The Blog was Launched Without a Plan
Think of Blog as a marketing tool. Like all marketing communication media, there must be a well defined budget, objectives, roadmap and an exit plan in place before launching the blog.
Contact ContentRobot and we’ll help you create an effect roadmap for adding blogs to your marketing mix.
With the many articles out there on what you should do with your blog, here are 5 things you should never do.
1. Give up on Your Blog Project Too Soon
Be patient and focussed on what you want your blog to achieve - 2 months is too short to abandon your ideas.
2. Become Obsessed with One Element of Blogging
Common disorders include:
Balance your design, advertising, technical, and content requirements!
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Is blogging better for a small company or a large one? While, it’s beneficial for both (of course) here are five ways small companies can take advantage.
