Getting the Most Out of Your Corporate Blog
Posted on Mon, May 09, 2011
By Melissa and Mike
Corporate blogs are a great way to break company news, discuss industry developments, and promote executive thought leadership. Below are some practices to keep in mind for building your company blog.
Identify:
- A strategy: Align topics with your overall communication and business goals.
- Your voice: Choose your primary bloggers and make their bios easily accessible.
- A posting plan: Frequently updated blogs receive more traffic.
Investigate:
- Develop content ideas at the beginning of each month.
- Identify top keywords or phrases that will attract your target audience.
- Prior to posting, work with legal to determine what is confidential.
- Evaluate the blog quarterly to identify achievements and mark progress against business goals.
Involve:
- Join conversations. Offer opinions on industry developments via your blog and others.
- Have others blog. Do you have a star engineer who developed a new product? Invite him to write a guest blog about the experience.
- Start your own conversation. Encourage visitors to comment on posts and respond promptly. Blogging is reciprocal.
Once you’ve covered these bases, you’re ready to be exposed—in a good way. In “The Science of Timing” webinar, HubSpot’s Dan Zarella, shares some great tips for blogging ROI, including:
- Most blogs are read mid-morning. However, men report a higher rate of reading blogs at night than women. Know your target audience and post accordingly.
- Monday is the best day for page views, but, as on Facebook, sharing spikes on weekends.
- For more comments, blog on weekends. Because fewer blogs are posted on these days, a reader will pay more attention (and be more likely to comment on) to the few that are.
- If you want to get links to your blog and capture an SEO boost, meet what Zarella calls the “blogerati.” Of all the readers out there, a select group is able to create links and circulate your blog. To target them, publish your blog when they are just beginning to write theirs in the early morning.