This is a reproduction of a post I recently wrote on corporate blogging for the IAB which can be read on their website or in full below
In a word, ‘strategy’ makes for an effective corporate blog. Having a strategy is key to maintaining a successful corporate blog, without it, you’re sunk.
Moreover, you should know how a corporate blog fits in to the organisation’s overall social media strategy. Every company needs to have a social media strategy with clear objectives and metrics for measuring success. Having this strategy will tell you whether a corporate blog is the best way, strategically, to meet your objectives. All too often companies launch straight into time-consuming or expensive social media activities without any idea of what they hope to achieve by doing so.
Assuming your social media strategy calls for a corporate blog, the following are a few points to consider to ensure an effective corporate blog:
- Know your audience. Customers? Prospects? Media? Colleagues and partners? There are a number of possible audiences for a corporate blog and it is imperative to know who you want to address. Having a clear idea of who you are addressing (and why you are addressing them) is key to a successful corporate blog.
- Have objectives. These objectives should be informed by your overall social media strategy and it is important to bear these in mind whenever writing a post. If the content of the post doesn’t support your social media objectives, you probably shouldn’t blog it!
- Content is king, so spread the workload. A truism that you’ve doubtlessly heard endlessly in relation to most things digital but nonetheless one to ignore at your peril. You need to provide a compelling reason to keep people coming back to your blog and the quality, originality and exclusivity of your content will be what makes that happen. The demands of researching and producing strong content means that it is often impractical to give one person responsibility for a blog without significantly restructuring that individual’s workload. There are many great individual blogs out there but for a company the team approach is the best one.
Corporate blogging can provide many different business benefits, from developing deeper relationships with customers, to exploring and innovating new opportunities with like-minded experts as well as sharing news with colleagues and partners, and much more besides. However, a corporate blog is only effective if strategically it is the right platform for you and your audience(s). Knowing your audiences’ behaviours and needs, as well as the objectives you wish to achieve in social media will ensure that if you do create corporate blog, the one you create is effective and joined up.
