Question

Topic: E-Marketing

How To Know If Blogging Is For You

Posted by Jessica_Castro on 4/21/2008 at 2:16 PM ET 200 Points
I have heard all this recent news about how blogging is the future and a way to humanize your company to customers...How ever I'm still not sure it’s for my company. We deal a lot with anonymity and we hold personal privacy of customers very highly. I am afraid that a blog would really be a waste of time for us and it could jeopardize the way customers view their privacy...

Any ideas on whether a blog could be for us would be great and if so what could I possibly talk about that wouldn't seem like an invasion of privacy? Thank you so much!
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by melissa.paulik on 4/21/2008 at 2:30 PM Member
    I highly recommend a corporate blog. For our organization, it has helped our presence on the web and our ranking in the search engines. https://enterprisetechblog.com My web team could give more evidence as to how that works. All I care about is that it does.

    It's also helped tremendously with media outreach. Whenever something big happens in our industry that we have the expertise to comment on, we do so. Then, when we reach out to the media, we have supporting opinion pieces that we can point them to. It's different than pointing them to your web page because media wants opinions not product information. In our industry, they also tend to love podcasts and blogs are an excellent way of making those accessible.

    I'm not sure I understand the confidentiality concerns that you have. We don't write anything specific about our customers. At times we ask them for their opinions but it's not a lot different than what we've done in other forums such as webcasts where they have agreed to be a testimonial.

    The biggest challenge with a corporate blog is to make sure that someone owns it and has the freedom to put time into it. One of our marketing guys loves social media and is playing around with it all the time. I've tried to give him the freedom to work with this new way of reaching out to our prospects and customers. If you don't have someone who is really willing to own the blog, or your team doesn't have the freedom to dedicate time to it, the chances of succeeding are slim.

    Best of luck to you!

    Melissa
  • Posted by Jessica_Castro on 4/21/2008 at 3:52 PM Author
    Thank you for your response melissa!

    I visited your site and read some of your blogs and your social media guy is doing a great job. I noticed you talked a lot about the industry, but I am not sure how I could do this and make my company more appealing to customers.

    We specialize in DNA testing and our customer pool generally tends to not care about the industry or any latest developments. That is why I am afraid to start blogging. It would not benefit us if our blog falls on deaf ears.
  • Posted by Jessica_Castro on 4/21/2008 at 5:41 PM Author
    Thank so much Ryan that is one point I didn't consider... although we are in a favorable position SEO wise I would love to solidify it or move us up.

    Ill probably leave this one open for a few more days so that people may add their suggestions or stories of success for their site when they added a blog.
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 4/22/2008 at 8:59 AM Member
    You can view a blog either as a dialog with your (prospective) clients or as a newsletter. If you have stories about how your services has been used and the benefit to the client, this is an ideal forum.

    Blogs have the benefit of being ideal fodder for search engines, which are looking for new content. Getting backlinks to your blog to increase SEO is an art, and is more than simply putting out a blog and hoping. It involves visiting others' relevant blogs, and providing a reason for them to check out your company (with an on-target post).

  • Posted on 4/22/2008 at 10:36 AM Accepted
    Blogging should be part of every marketers tool kit for two main reasons...

    The first is SEO. DNA testing or whatever, people are searching and you can't control how I'm thinking of the problem...your job is to listen to the search terms and be standing there with the solution. I'm sure you have hundreds of terms that you want to win organically. That is a content driven strategy meaning you need lots of people contributing.

    That means your employees beyond the Marketing folks. There is a great quote from Richard Edelman:

    "It's clear that when it comes to traditional authority figures – whether they're chief executives or heads of state – people trust them less," says Mr. Edelman. "Employees are the new credible source of information. We have data that shows an employee blog is five times more credible than a CEO blog – and I say this as a CEO blogger."

    That credibility is the other benefit of widespread employee blogging. When someone makes a search, they land on a post that directly relates to their search term and written by a real human being. Check out one of our employee blogs: https://blogging.compendiumblog.com/blog/blogs-in-business

    You will see lots of contribution from smart people from all parts of the company.

    Best,

    Chris Baggott
    CEO
    Compendium Blogware
    www.compendiumblogware.com
  • Posted on 4/22/2008 at 7:28 PM Accepted
    Blogging brings you all the benefits described by the previous posters. It definitely humanizes your company and increases transparency, but the bottom line is that it might not be the right fit for your company.

    Would your customers be receptive?
    Are you an engaging writer?
    Do you have the time and commitment to blog regularly?
    There might be a better arena for social dialog with your clients.
    Do you have the patience to nurture a blog and grow your readership, or are you looking for a quick hit?

    Here's an excellent post from Now It is Gone on that subject.

    https://nowisgone.com/2008/02/25/blogging-may-not-be-the-answer/

    Best of luck
    Eric
  • Posted by Jessica_Castro on 4/23/2008 at 7:05 PM Author
    Eric that is definitely the kind of answer I was looking for. I know that blogging is good but is it right for us?

    That being said, I do believe we will see positive results, considering the SEO factor and we do have the stability to nurture the blog. However my writing and customer response can't really be determined. I guess we will have to hope for the best.

    Thank you for your response.
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