A corporate blog can be a wonderful way to market your products and services if you learn a few simple guidelines. Whether you are selling to consumers or business, the same tenets apply. Creating content to attract customers allows you to use your creativity to attract potential clients who are interested in the products or services you market. Unlike advertising, corporate blogs are less obtrusive and don’t interrupt a potential customer.
Seven Guidelines for Business Blogging
Get agreement why you are blogging: It is important that you articulate and share a purpose for your blog to your colleagues. That way, you align everyone on the same objective, and they agree to the same metric of success. I recommend a one-page brief that you share to ensure everyone is on the same me page.
Don’t make the blog about you or your product. Tell stories how people accomplish great things and where your product or service plays a modest role. Remember, your customer’s experience is the heroic part of the journey, you are just helping facilitate that experience.
Work with different writers who can help tells original stories from the category. Having several authors share views and perspective on a product, service or group, can maintain and expand interest in your blog. A range of voices helps customers see themselves in your storytelling.
Consistency Matters. You can’t occasionally publish without a regular schedule. Even if you can only afford to publish once a month, follow that plan. Release on the fifteenth of each month at noon – but anchor a day and time as yours. Ideally, publishing a post weekly keeps you top of mind with your customer base.
Build an Email List. You want to be able to reach your audience directly. Facebook is like rented territory and people who built Facebook brand pages are suffering from a lack of control. An email list allows you to gain direct access to customers or potential clients who are interested in what you have to say. Don’t be afraid of a pop-up to grab subscriber’s addresses. It helps if you can offer something free of value like an e-book on a subject of interest.
Build an Editorial Calendar and Plan. You want to have a schedule that outlines what stories you’ll tell and when they will publish. A calendar helps you align with activities within an industry or your product launches. Remember, a blog isn’t a press release but a creative way to tell the stories about how your product or service fits into the life of customers. If it smells commercial and salesy, no one will want to read it. If it feels exciting and human, you can grab attention.
Make it Visually Appealing. A strong graphic or photograph can be a magnet to draw in the reader and get them hooked. Think of the cover of magazines on a newsstand when they have amazing photography that makes you want to pick up the publication. Images help flesh out a story, and simple infographics or charts can do the same thing. Remember, keep it entertaining and don’t make it overly cerebral, unless your target audience is cerebral.
Over the last 15 months, my team and I have built a successful corporate blog in the wine industry. We work with free-lance journalists who help us tell stories about interesting personalities, new technical topics for making wine and stories about marketing wine to consumers. I’m very proud of the success of this blog at building an audience and finding its voice. Check it out here to see an example of a corporate blog.
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