Corporate Blogger Survival Guide

As part of our blog marketing services we advise and assist companies in getting their blogs up and running. Usually its the CEO or the VP or Marketing tht wants to get the the blog on! The SEO benefits of having a corporate blog (especially for smaller companies) are huge. In week or even days these companies can start "owning" important business keyworks. Here are some of our own little example:

Indeed, nice choice keyword you don't have to pay for! Free traffic delivered (daily) to you, courtesy of your blog! A VP of marketing's dream come true! We have software internally that keeps track of keywords you "own" and keywords you "want to own" and tell you how well you are blogging. This magic machines tells clients daily what they should blog about. But keywords are not enough, you need content to "carry" them (bummer) and many times our braze corporate blogger is short on ideas, he or she is simply "blogged out" or "blogged down".  So we keep a primer on the types of blog posts one can write about your company. Again, you spin the magic wheel and it tells you: "Today you need to blog about corporate culture". If you don't like the suggestion, you spin the wheel again! You get the idea!

Monkey-blog

Here is a list of corporate blog post types..hopefully this will help some of the corporate bloggers out there keep their blogs nice and fresh and prevent that corporate staleness that sets in after the first week of "Look Ma no hands, Look Ma ain't blogging grand!"

  • Company News:
    General company new announcement

    • Example: Company announces partnership or product release
  • Internal Company Story:
    Story about an internal event, policy or happening that illustrates some important aspect of the company culture, philosophy or attitudes.

    • Example: Our Search for a New VP of Engineering
  • Trend Piece:
    Interest piece summarizing industry trends or market research

    • Example: SMS and Text-messaging grows at alarming rate
  • Industry Piece ("Big Picture" Piece):
    Interest piece on the industry that either summarizes the competitive landscape, talks about new or important issues or developments

    • Example: How new legislature affects the real estate industry
  • Customer profile, testimonial or highlight:
    Examination of how a customer is using company's service or product to be successful. Great away to reward active customers and encourage other customers to do the same. This can also be done as a podcast.

    • Example: How GE saved millions of dollars with our new platform.
  • "How To" or "Application" piece:
    Post that explains how to use a feature or service, or how a service can be used for a new application.

    • Example: How to post to Craigslist using our service.
  • New Feature or Product Release:
    Summary of new features or capabilities, can be combined with a "How To" post.

    • Example: Company adds Mobile and SMS support
  • Press mentions, awards or news summaries:
    Summary of recent news, press or blog mentions. Great way to tout ones own horn to customers and partners.

    • Example: Here is analysts had to say about our product launch
    • Example: News and Buzz surrounding our new product release
  • Upcoming events:
    Post to announce upcoming event or release
  • Interesting or humorous news piece:
    Interest piece about peculiar, humorous or interesting story relating to the company, a customer experience, service/product or industry
  • User survey or poll:
    Asking readers to take a short poll or survey.

    • Example: Please rate upcoming features?
    • Example: How do you use instant messaging with our product?
  • "Fishing Expedition" Post:
    Asking readers if they are interested in a new service you are offering or planning to offer

    • Example: Looking for sponsors to pilot a new service.
    • Example: Looking for beta users for new product.

Food for blog thought! And remember to incorporate that sweet "buzzword compliant" industry techno bable into your posts, otherwise you're wasting your companies time and money. Joking..but enjoy and hopefully you won't run out of blog post ideas!