BulletProofBlog the blog on crisis communications

The top six social media tips to know before you leave the office.

In today’s digital world, corporate blogs are becoming an increasingly important tool in the ongoing effort to connect with customers, stakeholders, and other important audiences. Corporate blogs make it easy for companies to showcase their services and thought leadership, connect with a core group of brand ambassadors, increase online exposure to new audiences, and much more.

Successful corporate blogging involves more than just picking up a pen (or a laptop) and writing about the first thing that comes to mind. In this week’s Six @ Six, we share some tried and true methods for achieving corporate blogging success.

1. Write with a purpose

What is the goal of your blog? Is it to generate new business? Enhance customer service? Demonstrate thought leadership? Connect with employees? These should be the first questions you address when developing a corporate blog – and before writing every post. It is also essential to determine who should author the blog at the start. The appropriate voice may be the CEO, the communications team, or employees throughout the organization. For instance, the stated goal of Marriott’s blog is to give readers a forum to interact with Bill Marriott, and many of the posts reflect Bill’s personal touch. Focusing on a key goal or two makes your blog more coherent and organized, more attractive to a dedicated readership, boosts targeted search engine optimization, and helps ensure maximum return on your investment.

2. Provide value to your readers

Unless readers find value in your content, they will not be enticed to consistently return to your blog. Crafting messages that resonate with your key audiences depends on the blog’s goals. If you are seeking to reach new audiences, identify a specific niche where interest abounds and supply is limited. On the other hand, if your goal is to communicate with existing audiences, make sure to provide information about your brand that is not easily available elsewhere. If it makes sense for your company, try using your blog to provide opportunities for supporters to engage with your brand, following the example of Nuts About Southwest. Southwest cedes a level of message control to its readers, providing them with an ownership stake in its brand and, in turn, building consumer loyalty.

3. Don’t Just Speak; Listen

Every successful blogger must understand that blogging is, at its core, a conversation. It’s not simply another soap box from which to blast your marketing message to the masses. Give your blog a human touch by asking questions, embracing criticism, responding thoughtfully to comments left by readers, and using these comments as ideas for future blog posts. Track conversations and keep them going – even offline – with those who have a particular interest in your brand, whether positive or negative. By addressing the concerns, questions, and comments of interested readers, you can cultivate relationships and convey genuine interest — qualities essential to success in today’s social media-dominated world.

4. If You Build It, They Won’t Necessarily Come

With 118 million blogs out there today, any blog will fall flat unless it can successfully expand its visibility and reach new audiences. To that end, repurpose your blog content to reach relevant audiences where key conversations are already taking place elsewhere in the social media sphere. While comments on your blog provide a clear picture of how your readers feel about a particular post or your brand in general, this is but a snippet of the conversation taking place on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. If you have a corporate presence on these sites, integrate them with your blog. Set up a LinkedIn blog feed, tweet out your new posts, and direct readers to your social media profiles from your blog. At the very least, make it easy for your readers to share your content through their own social media profiles by installing simple plug-ins and using social bookmarking tools.

5. Blog Regularly

One of the quickest ways to lose readers is to go for long periods of time between posts. A successful blog should be updated at a minimum of twice each week. Much as the traditional public relations advice goes, it’s all about reach and repetition. After all, it is difficult to build readership, authority, search rankings, or any sort of success metric without regular updates. If it is unreasonable to ask your company’s designated blogger to write content so often, consider adding several other contributors. If you have four or five employees who you trust to author posts, ask each for just two posts per month to make the process more manageable. Alternatively, most companies already have employees who blog personally and have a genuine interest in this space, so try conducting an assessment of the in-house talent. Chances are you’ll find at least a few employees who will be excited about blogging and serving as a genuine brand ambassador.

6. Remember, Blog Posts Never Die

Once published online, content is nearly impossible to retract and erase from the online public record. Emotional or knee-jerk reaction posts can inflict brand damage and contradictory statements can come back to haunt you. As you would with any important client memo, advertising collateral, or email, always have at least one other person look over a blog post before clicking “Publish.” Preferably, your company can designate a single “editor” who understands the goal of the blog and can ensure each post adheres to the overall strategy. Remember, when in doubt, leave it out. But also remember that if managed correctly, the everlasting nature of online content can be an asset. Search engines make it easy for potential customers to find even the oldest of posts that may be related to a current need. You never know, yesterday’s insights could trigger tomorrow’s profits.

Click here to receive the Six @ Six in your inbox each week.

Dallas Lawrence is Chair of the Social and Digital Media Practice at Levick Strategic Communications, the nation’s top crisis communications firm. He blogs on emerging digital media trends and best practices for social media engagement on BulletProof. Connect with him @dallaslawrence.

---

Win a Levick thumb drive! Tweet a link to this week’s Six @ Six and include a topic you would like for us to address in an upcoming post. We will announce our winner in next week’s post. Be sure to include the hashtag #Levick in your entry and submit your suggestion by 5:00 p.m. EST Friday.