Creating a Corporate Blog That Attracts Visitors

Presented by

Ralph Miller

A bad blog is worse than no blog…

A dead blog is worse than no blog…

But an engaging blog is one of the best things in the world that you

can do for your business. ~Jeremy Wright

Is Your Company Ready for a Blog? Investment of time and money

Custom design Generating ideas for content Writing and managing content Commenting on other blogs Moderation

What makes sense to do yourself? What makes sense to outsource?

Why a Corporate Blog?

The original social media

24% of our page views come from our blog posts (~2,000 per month)

We make 2 new posts per week

Gives us a vehicle to post new link worthy content

Keeps the search engines coming back

Blog Setup and Branding

On your current URL Self-hosted Matches current website design – seamless

transition Blogging software choices

Lots of open source choices, Depends on current website, your programming

ability and the programming language – PHP, MySQL, Ruby on Rails

Self-hosted Blogging Platforms

WordPress - http://wordpress.org/ Large user base and support community Lots of plugins that extend functionality SEO friendly

TypePad - http://www.typepad.com/ B2evolution - http://b2evolution.net/ Joomla - http://www.joomla.org/ MovableType - http://movabletype.com/ Typo - http://wiki.github.com/fdv/typo/

Writing Posts for Your Blog

Who will post? Single voice versus multiple bloggers If it’s a large business with multiple areas, think experts CEO, owner?

How often will they post? Dell posts 2x a day We post 2x/week What’s doable for you and your business? Whatever you

choose, make it consistent What will they post

Relevant, but non-promotional News, don’t just report it, make it Link out – share the love and talk about other things

Posts (continued)

What not to post Only self promotional items White papers Press releases Too much personal information Don’t keyword cannibalize

Keep commercial keywords on your website Target non-commercial keywords and phrases Link to your commercial pages from your blog

Editing

Will you edit? If yes, who will edit? Who will publish?

Keep in mind training time here for special formatting, keywords, SEO etc.

Ideas for Content

Upcoming events, webinars, seminars Product or service releases Industry news Other related products, services, and

businesses in your industry Studies you produce, insights you have,

educational information Lists

Participating in the Blogosphere

Keep an ear on the conversation Google Alerts – http://www.google.com/alerts Technorati - http://technorati.com/ BackType - http://www.backtype.com/

Comment on relevant articles Use your name or business name Get a gravatar -http://en.gravatar.com/ Don’t self-promote, just comment

Comment and Moderation Policy

Develop a comment and moderation policy early on, before you have issues

Allow both positive and negative comments? Most corporate blogs don’t tolerate SPAM or

offensive language Other considerations –

Follow, nofollow comments Hold for moderation before publishing Use SPAM filter like Akismet

Why Social Media?

12% of our visitors come from social sites (~500 per month and growing)

More than double what we get from PPC

Helps with organic rankings & branding

Keeps the search engines coming back

Social Media Distribution

Twitter Tools for WordPress- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/

HootSuite RSS/Atom Feed Tool FaceBook Social RSS App -

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=23798139265

YouTube for videos with embed on blog DIGG, SPHINN, REDDIT – don’t submit yourself Other social media sites…

How Blogs Build Links and Rankings Comments you leave on other blogs create a link

back to your blog Linking to other blogs often leaves a trackback on

that page Each trackback on a page of your blog is someone

linking to your blog. People naturally link to content that provides value Each comment left on your blog is an indication to

search engines how hot and important a page is Opportunity for long tail rankings

Measuring Success

ROI - hard to measure Measure success by

# visitors # page views # of inbound links created -

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ # of comments # RSS subscribers # of RFIs coming off blog pages

Corporate Blogging Blunders

Not enough content, inconsistent content, impersonal content, content that’s too lengthy or technical

Not reaching out to other bloggers, participating in the blogosphere

No follow-up to comments/questions on the blog Cannibalization of keywords Lack of internal linking Blog is on separate URL or doesn’t match design No distribution through social media

Examples of Corporate Blogs Done Well Google - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Dell- http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell

Marriott - http://www.blogs.marriott.com/

Southwest Airlines - http://www.blogsouthwest.com/blogsw

Questions?

Thank You!

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