Blogging for business

Technology

Blogging has been a phenomenon on the web for the past decade. Savvy businesses, such as Coca Cola and Microsoft, have been quick to realise that a blog has the ability to get ‘the word out’ about their products and services and enable them to reinforce positive images of their brand in an informal, cheap and easy-to-use format. At the click of a mouse, content can be published to a global audience, giving businesses an impossible to beat system for breaking news whilst creating a real connection with consumers.

With people no longer content to just read newspapers or marketing material and an increasing desire to read fresh, fast, new content on the web, blogging has become a way of satisfying not only consumers but industry peers in a way that isn’t generally communicated in general business practice.

You may already be considering which ideas will help your business gain an edge on competitors and in these testing times, with such a simple tool available at your fingertips, can your business afford to be without a blog?

For PR and marketing agency, Wildfire PR, a blog is an essential tool of the job. “We were going out talking to clients about blogging and we felt that we actually wanted to lead from the front and actually do it ourselves,” says account manager Danny Whatmough. “We really wanted the blog to demonstrate wider industry awareness, knowledge that we actually had, because obviously we were talking to clients about PR and marketing themselves, but also talking to them about their industry. I think having a blog and producing regular stuff, that you’re not necessarily communicating to your customers on a day-to-day basis when you’re speaking to them, means they can actually see what you’re thinking above and beyond the day-to-day tasks you might be doing for them.”

Whatmough also found Wildfire’s blog had other benefits. “We send out an email newsletter to all our clients on a monthly basis and really wanted to have as much fresh content for that as well, so the email newsletter, in a sense, is a digest of the sort of issues we’ve been discussing on the blog over the past month but [the blog] also acts as somewhere we could send people”. Their readers can then find out more information about numerous topics that can’t be included in full in the newsletter.

Fortunately, it isn’t only large companies with endless resources that can buy in to blogging trends. “Directly communicating information about your company is really important when you’re a small company. Perhaps they’re too small to get on to the radar of most press or can’t afford PR support but there’s a small group of interested people who can write passionately,” enthuses media consultant Darika Ahrens from Grapevine Consulting, adding, “the costs can be very low as well.”

Blogs are simple to set up, with many free or low-cost blogging platforms available, including Typepad, Movable Type and Wordpress. Users can set up a blog, have it hosted and pick from dozens of templates in a matter of minutes without the need for any prior technological know-how. Although there are providers who can create a blog for you at a cost, it is content that is king. “You can get up and running in a few minutes and then it’s just company resource time. I think everyone can do it but whether they can do it well takes planning, thought and persistence,” says Ahrens.

Whatmough agrees, “Some of our clients didn’t realise the amount of time they needed to commit to researching posts and actually writing them and checking them and actually putting them up there and obviously responding to comments from people to the things that you post. So there is a time commitment there.”

Unlike traditional marketing material, blogs can present a human face to the company. Whilst it is possible to measure the blog’s popularity through metrics such as Google Analytics or the take-up rate for RSS feeds, it can be more difficult to measure the goodwill blogs engender between peers in the industry and with consumers. Whatmough explains why he is drawn to company blog: “You can get slightly more of a feel for what the company is
actually like because you know it is people writing themselves and not necessarily the marketing speak that you often get on a website’s homepage. It’s more friendly, a bit more approachable and probably a bit more transparent as well. It gets over more personality about the company and it’s a very, very, good way to reveal slightly more about your employees and the sorts of issues you think are important”.

Ahrens also points out that the company blog doesn’t necessarily have to promote company services. “The intention maybe recruitment, if so, they don’t have to write too much about the service or the products they provide, but show why it’s a great place to work.” This is a key part of the blogs written by Google staff (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/) and the drinks company Innocent (http://innocentdrinks.typepad.com/), both of which are geared towards, attracting the best people, and extol the virtues of the working environments.

The benefits of relationship building during times of recession are legion. Putting a human face to the company and personality to a good blog ensures an engaged readership, and consumers who may look more favourably at the company they are ‘getting to know’ rather than the faceless competitor they don’t empathise with. Interaction through commenting on blog posts can increase the relationship and make both consumers and peers feel heard and valued. Blog posts are also a good way to comment quickly on industry news and to solidify your position, whilst also inviting discussion and managing your reputation. All these things are in your control from monitoring blogging output to the appropriateness of comments. That’s not to say a blogger should delete every comment that disagrees with them but they can moderate feedback as they see fit, so it is possible to diffuse negativity or even counter such comments with accurate and fair responses.

Whilst a blog is unlikely to replace a website, it can be an important tool in the company’s online presence due to the search engine optimisation (SEO) benefits; blogs are easier and more likely to be updated than a website, where content may remain static for longer periods. Regular, new content means Google will visit the site more regularly, and it can push your site further up the rankings.

During a global recession, when businesses are tightening their belts, a low-cost, high-return tool like a blog can give your business the vital edge it needs to maintain that crucial customer relationship. What are you waiting for?