Blogging for business
Blogging is a low priority for most mature businesses. They prefer to focus on getting a good website up, some search engine optimisation , email activity and a lot of traditional off-line events. (If it ain’t broke, why fix it?).
Well, the fact is it is broke: most companies just do not know it.
Traditional company websites cost a fortune to build, maintain and get traffic to. Ill conceived email campaigns can and will damage your reputation. The simple fact is that the ‘old’ (yes I know it’s only 5-10 years in many cases) way of Internet marketing is expensive and ineffective: you need to throw a lot of money at the problem to get a consistently high Google ranking.
Why blogging?
Even old school web designers will tell you that the main thing that gets your website noticed is good content, regularly refreshed. The problem is that most company websites are not set up for regular (once a week minimum) updates.
The second issue is links: most company websites are difficult to link to, the pages and connections are ‘hard wired’.
Put simply: your company website is a good asset but it has its limitations as far as hardnosed business generation is concerned. Company websites provide great references for companies interested in doing business with you but they are not very efficient when it comes to attracting and identifying potential customers.
Blogs on the other hand are built around linking and regular updates – the things search engines like! The other advantage is they federate your information: produce a good article and you will get plenty of readers, produce good articles regularly and you will get an avalanche of visitors which would smother your company website.
How do Blogs work?
There are several types but Seth Godin only counts three for business purposes: Cat Blogs, Boss Blogs and Viral Blogs.
Cat Blogs
These are essentially ‘My Diary’ entries, of little interest to most of the outside world. So called because they are usually the blogger giving news about their cats (or other small animals/pets/significant others). From a business perspective they can be useful internally and for Key Customers: letting people know what is going on and quashing rumours.
Boss Blogs
Unlike Cat Blogs, Boss Blogs are full of useful information (like this one, hopefully) . They provide a resource for individuals (potential customers) looking for a solution to their problem or just keeping up to date with developments in their industry. They provide ‘thought leadership’ and are far more flexible, more widely read and interactive than the old ‘link to a white paper’ email trick.
Boss blogs generate significant business: www.davavailability.co.uk for example has generated over £10 million in enquiries this month (does your website do that?)
Viral Blogs
These are the kind of blogs most company directors think of when they hear the word ‘blogging’. They are essentially on line discussions, chaired by the blog author.
They generate interest, traffic but their ROI is difficult to measure. (So they are not that popular with companies looking to hit numbers next quarter). However, they do fulfil a useful role: they build a company’s web presence and reputation. They can also help with market research (more on that next week).
Don’t start on a ‘Blogging site’
There are plenty of services offering Blogs for free. As a business be careful: you need your own URL. You do not want to build reputation, traffic and revenue on what would effectively be a ‘rented site’. You need to build your own. www.datavailabilty.co.uk is just that – owned and edited by a successful small company. And it is generating far more business than their traditional company website.
Posted: February 2nd, 2010 / 7 Comments /
7 Comments to Blogging for business
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I agree that Boss Blogs in particular are effective marketing tools, as long as the writing is good! I suspect most companies would want to have a skilled writer/editor on tap to make sure that happens. I find I am most drawn to posts that include a small element of the Cat Blog as well — the author sharing a personal anecdote that leads into the main business thread. I can also attest that, at least on the “free” blogging site I use for my personal blog, I was able to pay a small fee and redirect their generic @blogsite URL to a .com URL one that I had purchased — so it seems that I’m hosting my own blog. This may be an attractive alternative for smaller firms.
Christine Hollinger on
February 2nd, 2010
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Absolutely. The cost of setting up and hosting your own site is minimal. The real costs are in the time taken to design a good looking easily navigable site and the hours of work researching & writing posts. We write one per week, which is pretty heavy in man hours. All companies can benefit from designating an ‘editor’. This can be a staff member or outsourced. They have to be a good copywriter and capable of extracting information from busy executives. A difficult job but it has to be done to maintain momentum.
The CWL success story: http://www.datavailability.co.uk only happened after 6 months of regular bi-monthly postings. They are now generating $15m in genuine enquiries (things you quote on) per month!
MG1 on
February 5th, 2010
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tom Pick and APM Digital, APM Digital. APM Digital said: Blogging for business – the full article: http://bit.ly/buhdfG Gives the lowdown on three types of business blog. [...]
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February 7th, 2010
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Great advice and very true. One of the most important things bloggers, or any business, can do is try not to give up. Even when times are tough it
Glory Verlinden on
February 10th, 2010
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I suppose the same ideas could be applied to someone that offers no products but only advertising space on their blog. I guess that could be considered as a product
Edmond Lakins on
February 10th, 2010
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Edmond makes a reasonable point. There are many individuals running blogs in the hope of earning money from affiliate schemes. In most cases the effort is much higher than the reward. Earning fractions of a cent for each referral means you have to generate plenty of traffic. If however, your blog helps to sell your own product/service the revenue per visitor increases expotentially.
MG1 on
February 11th, 2010
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Great tips you have on your site. I am a new blogger and learning to write effective contents. I had started to jot down notes so the idea will not slip out when I sit in front of the com.
Tamie Greife on
February 11th, 2010