How to Build a Corporate Blog like a Pro

There have been several studies over the last few years showing the companies with corporate blogs, espeically small businesses, receive significantly more traffic online than those without one. Unfortunately, just having a corporate blog isn't enough to get you the traffic results you need or want. Too often organizations will build a blog after having heard that it will bring them more traffic but when it comes to turning it into something that improves website traffic and ROI they fall short. Why? Because they don't understand the fundamentals of a successful blog or the amount of content and resources needed to build and maintain a successful blog.

What can you do to help your corporate blog start generating more traffic?

1. Develop a publishing schedule. Before you get started blogging, you need to determine how often you're going to publish posts. Having a firm schedule and ensuring that you have the resources necessary to keep it up is an important part of ensuring that your blog has fresh,quality content on a frequent basis.
2. Put ownership in the right place. Blogging can't be an afterthought or a side-job for one of your already overworked employees. For you blog to be successful, it needs to have a dedicated person(s) who are able and willing to put the time and effort in to creating the content, finding graphics and researching posts to keep up with the publishing schedule you've already established.
3. Avoid blatant self-promotion. Your company should already have enough marketing strategies in place without co-opting your blog into your newest advertising platform. When done correctly your blog should be a repository of knowledge developed by your blogging team to help your target audience find the answers they need, when they need it.
4. Syndicate your content. Once you're posting regularly it's important that you are spreading your content to the largest audience pool that you can. The easiest and quickest way to do this is to synidcate your blog content through social media and the use of RSS Feeds.
5. Monitor comments, posts and feedback. Just like any other social media initiative, it's important that you're monitoring your blog for comments and feedback from your audience. One of the best ways to increase your blog subscribers and traffic is to start a loyal following based on genuine conversations you've had with your readers.
6. Measure. Setting and tracking web analytics for your blog is just as important as having them set up for any other page on your website. Tracking metrics like blog traffic and measuring which blog posts are the most popular can help you to optimize your blog in the future. I also suggest measuring the navigation paths of visitors who arrive at your blog to help you visualize where your readers go on your site after they've arrived at a post.

Don't forget when you're planning your corporate blog, that blogging for business is very different than personal blogging. When you're writing a blog for professional purposes you need to keep your audience's needs and desires front-of-mind. You need to make sure that your blog is written in both the language and tone that your audience finds most accessible and that the content your writing appeals to their wants. Remember, your blog isn't meant to be simply an advertising platform, but it is meant to help support your online goals and targets.

image by Kristina B on Flickr.

Posted by Amberlie Denny at December 6, 2010 8:00 AM

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