So, you're a business blogger. However, that doesn't say very much about your specific goals and aspirations. All blogs are different. Their reasons for existence vary depending on what the publisher is trying to achieve. The key to the success of your blog is having a clear vision of what you want it to do for you. This is your blogging strategy. Once it's clear in your mind, you can start to set concrete tactical goals for your blog, which we'll cover in Chapter 2,Introducing our Case Study—WPBizGuru.
For now, consider the 'raison d'être' of your blog. Why are you putting your time, energy, and resources into it? What do you hope to achieve?
Note
One of the key drivers for many business bloggers is the fact that blogs can be a very inexpensive form of marketing—you can get a lot of value for a relatively small investment.
Obviously, not all business bloggers are trying to achieve the same things with their blogs, but here are a few of the more common strategic goals of business blogging:
To increase sales
To add value to your products and services
To open a dialog with your customers
To raise awareness of your company, products, and services
To demonstrate your knowledge and expertise
To provide customer service and support
To improve public relations (for example, media relations, reputation management, crisis management, and so on)
To drive traffic to your other website(s)
To give some personality to your corporate image
You may well have several of these strategic goals in mind for your blog. There is no reason why your blog can't achieve a combination of these. Let's take a look at each of the goals in more detail with some examples of blogs that have them. (Not all of the example blogs here are created in WordPress; they're included as they are good illustrations of these strategic goals.)
A blog can be a great way of expanding and updating your online and offline sales literature. Posting about the benefits and features of your products or services can be a great way of converting leads into sales. This usually involves a simpler approach rather than a full-on hard sell. Your regular sales brochure, whether online or offline, will probably list your selling points with brief explanations, which for many customers, can seem rather over-hyped. A blog allows you to expand on your selling points and, in doing so, demonstrate that there is more to your products than just sales hype.
A great example of a 'sales' blog is that of GPS manufacturer, Garmin (http://garmin.blogs.com). Their blog not only gives background information about the products, it also shows innovative ways in which customers are using their GPS units, going beyond the scope of their regular sales literature. There are also plenty of customer testimonials and images of the products actually being used.
Your blog is a great place to tell customers about extra features and added benefits of your products and services. This is related to the idea of increasing sales, already mentioned, so your blog can probably kill two birds with one stone. Customers who use your products and services can learn ways of getting more out of them. For example, software developers might blog about hidden features that regular users might not otherwise know about.
A good example of this type of blog is the 37signals Product Blog (http://productblog.37signals.com/). The company uses it to educate its customers about features in its range of online productivity software. The following screenshot illustrates this approach—who knew how to change time zones in Basecamp? As well as adding value for its existing customers, this kind of information is also sales material for prospective buyers.
Blogs provide the perfect environment for a genuine conversation with your customers. A key feature of any blog is the ability of readers to write comments about posts. Businesses can use this in-built technology to engage in a live conversation with their customers. It can be a great way of receiving feedback and testing opinions about new products and services, as well as finding out what your customers really want.
Obviously, opening up public communication channels with your customers can involve some risk—you may receive damaging comments. How to deal with negative feedback is a delicate issue that we'll look at in more detail in Chapter 8, Connecting with the Blogosphere. For this reason, many large businesses do not use comments on their blogs. A notable exception is Boeing, which does allow comments on its blog (http://boeingblogs.com/randy/).
Blogs are a great way to raise awareness for your company and products. The nature of the blogosphere is that bloggers link to each other. This provides a great platform for spreading your message virally. Having your blog linked to and commented on by bloggers across the globe can spread the word quickly. It's a great form of buzz marketing, and many start-ups use a blog to create an air of anticipation about their forthcoming launch.
Joost, the web TV Company, used a blog in the lead-up to its launch, using the code name 'The Venice Project'. It helped to create a buzz and raised awareness for the company before it launched (http://joost.com/).
Demonstrating your professional knowledge and positioning yourself as an expert in your field is a great way of raising your business profile. This is particularly true for consultants and others who are hired because of their knowledge and experience. Web designers, academics, authors, life coaches, and software developers are just a few examples of the kinds of business people who may wish to demonstrate their expertise. Using a blog is a great way to achieve this because it provides a regularly updated outlet to showcase your professional activities and write about your achievements.
A great WordPress blog that demonstrates this is that of web designer, Jeffrey Zeldman (http://www.zeldman.com). He uses his blog to discuss issues in the web design arena and give his comment about what's happening in the industry.
Providing efficient customer service is the cornerstone of most successful businesses. Using a blog as part of your customer service provision can be a great help to both you and your customers. You can use your blog to provide answers to frequently asked customer service questions. Blogs are also great for quickly alerting your customers to product issues as they arise.
A great example of a customer services blog is Dell's Direct2Dell (http://direct2dell.com/).
Your blog can provide a great window on your business. It can put a human face on the organization and provide a great way for both the public and media to get an understanding of what you're about. Blogs can also provide a means to transmit your company news, which can complement or maybe even replace the traditional press release. They also provide a forum to discuss and respond to any media coverage you receive, be it good or bad. A blog is also an invaluable tool for crisis management, as it enables you to provide instant updates about any negative situation you may find yourself in. Blogs allow you to control your corporate reputation.
Digg's blog has a strong public relations focus. It provides plenty of good-news stories, such as awards the company has picked up and enhancements to its service. It also uses it to respond quickly to any potentially damaging feedback it has received about its service. The blog also gives a good sense of the company's ethos and outlook, which is useful in managing its brand and reputation. All in all, the Digg blog is a great example of a WordPress blog with a PR-focus (http://blog.digg.com/):
Search engines love blogs. A continuous supply of frequently updated content is the key to improving search engine rankings. However, many company websites are updated infrequently, particularly if they are brochure style sites. A blog is a great way of bringing dynamic and fresh content into the mix. If you have a relatively lightweight company website that isn't updated too often, you'll find you get far better search engine success from a blog. It's basically down to the fact that search engines like fresh content to index.
This strategy would work particularly well if you keep your blog within your
site's domain. So, rather than having www.mycompany.com
and www.mycompanyblog.com as separate domains, consider
placing your blog at http://blog.mycompany.com. This is
becoming the standard approach for more and more company websites, who
understand the importance of driving traffic from their blog to their main
website (or vice versa—it works both ways).
An example of this approach is the blog set up by Articulate, an e-learning tools company (http://blog.articulate.com/). Not only are the blog pages within the main site's domain, they are also well integrated into the design and navigation of the main site. The blog and the main website have similar headers and menu bars.
Blogging's evolution with its roots in personal journals means many blogs often take on a very conversational style. This lends itself very well to injecting a personal touch or a human face to corporate communications. Many companies use blogs to reveal some of the personalities behind the business. These days, many CEOs and senior executives blog on behalf of their companies. The topics discussed aren't necessarily related to company activities. These bloggers have the opportunity to write about their extra-curricular interests or anything else that takes their fancy.
This approach can be very useful in building a relationship with your customers. People are now far more used to informal communications with the organizations with which they do business. They like to get to know the people behind the corporate façade. Nevertheless, it's still important to gauge the tone correctly. If things get too informal or inappropriate content begins to creep in, you may end up upsetting or alienating some of your customers.
Bill Marriott, Chairman and CEO of Marriott International, maintains a blog at http://www.blogs.marriott.com/. The blog contains a mix of his personal musings as well as company news, and remains firmly under the Marriott brand. It's an excellent opportunity for a huge multi-national corporation to give a personal touch to its web communications.
