If you are in charge of a B2B (business to business) corporate web site, you might have wrestled with the decision of whether or not your company should create a blog. If you would rather not engage in blogging, you will find alternatives that can nonetheless help you drive qualified traffic and leads for your company Internet site, as a blog might, and to obtain the search engine ranking advantages a blog might bring. Here is why your corporate website needs a blog.
The Nuts about Southwest blog is the corporate blog of Southwest Airlines.
You don’t need to be a blogger to take advantage of the newest blogging methods. In reality, you can learn a lot about promoting your company’s products and services on the web by “doing what the bloggers do.”
The corporate world has traditionally been extremely slow to adopt running a blog. After all, adding a blog to a company Internet site is a large choice – and could have an impact on the company’s brand, as well as how the brand is perceived. Additionally, there are a great deal of maintenance requirements of a blog. For instance, who in the business will be responsible for the writing and posting around the weblog? How often will it be updated? Will the traditional weblog “comments” be added as a feature? If so, whose job would it be to “moderate” those comments?
The United States Government launched their GovGab blog, in an effort to reach out to more citizens. Several managers are assigned a day of the week when they’re responsible for posting around the blog. Each manager is charged with posting something on his or her designated day, and with moderating any feedback left by the blog’s readers, which could quickly turn out to be a full-time job in itself. A few other managers serve as backup bloggers.
Should you determine not to implement a weblog on your company site, you will find still several ways that you can benefit from utilizing the methods of successful bloggers. Let’s take a appear at the several techniques they are utilizing today to become popular, and apply them towards the on the web promotion of a company Web website.
Embrace Online Networking
Most likely the biggest, most essential “technique” that successful bloggers use today is networking. Networking with other bloggers, linking to and commenting on each other’s blogs, and even “guest blogging” for others’ blogs is typical.
Certain, corporate America does a great deal of networking. After all, that’s how a great deal of partnerships are made and how a lot of deals get done. But there’s not sufficient “networking” going on amongst corporations’ Internet sites and those responsible for maintaining the company Web website, including those in the advertising department.
Bloggers hyperlink to every other and suggest every others’ blogs; why not hyperlink to your company companions and ask that they hyperlink back to your corporate Internet website? If one business is an official “partner” with another business and will work collectively to provide solutions to their customers, why not continue this partnership around the internet level by linking both corporate Web websites together and recommending every others’ options?
The same goes for industry trade groups. Corporations should assist promote trade groups and associations to which they belong. Likewise, it’s useful if the trade group or association lists its member companies, providing links to the company Web sites.
Besides your existing companions, it is essential to attain out to new partners as well. Why not start networking with the bloggers themselves?
In most industries there are at least a couple of well-liked bloggers who maintain a close watch on the industry as a entire – and constantly write about what’s really going on. When your company issues a press release, keep these bloggers inside your outreach plans. Making your news and access to business executives available towards the top bloggers inside your business can pay off tenfold in backlinks and blogger goodwill.
If a blogger receives a press release straight from a company in their business, most likely they will pay attention to it. After all, bloggers are always searching for something to write about. And it is the bloggers who have the power to link straight towards the company Web site, which will ultimately help your site’s search engine rankings.
Furthermore, the publicity your company will receive is fantastic: several tech business bloggers have thousands of regular readers and subscribers who will immediately receive notification from the company’s news.
Use Technology to Get Your News Out There
An additional technique bloggers can teach corporate marketers is to make technology your friend. Company Web sites could use the newest blog publishing platforms, such as WordPress, TypePad, or BlogSmith, to publish content towards the Internet website.
Besides being simple for marketers to use and update the site with out IT intervention, blog software program has the added benefit of automatically creating an RSS feed from the content material. RSS feeds allow customers to maintain track of your site’s content. Furthermore, the weblog software sends out a “ping” to search engines like google and other sources, alerting them that the content material of the site has been updated.
A company news and press release section, or a company newsletter are appropriate places to supply the content in RSS format. By doing this, journalists, business bloggers, company employees, and anybody else interested in the company’s information and information could subscribe to the RSS feed and be notified instantly whenever there’s news to announce.
Adding an RSS feed and the latest running a blog technology to a company Internet website doesn’t mean that the business has to have a blog on the net site. In reality, the site’s visitors don’t need to know what technologies is becoming used behind the scenes. The “look and feel” of the page is still up to the site’s Web designers. Pages created with blogging technology could be made to look precisely like the rest from the Web website.
By embracing online networking and adopting the newest technologies that bloggers are utilizing, a company Web website does not have to be static anymore. You can gain valuable traffic and visibility using the search engines, and construct a sense of community with others in your space by applying individuals methods to your company site.
