Companies that have added a corporate blog to their online marketing strategy have noticed that it has an immense positive effect on their business. Corporate blogging allows companies to build a strong presence on the Web and achieve greater online visibility. Compared to traditional communication channels such as newsletters, advertisements and press releases, corporate blog allows companies to reach larger audience of potential customers and partners and deliver their business' message in a highly informative and less formal way.
Corporate blog is a great platform for companies to interact with current and potential customers and partners, share their expertise, give tips and advice, talk about their products/services, and comment on the current market and industry trends. Due to the nature of blogs that are usually updated on a daily bases, companies can craft their message to their target audience just in time.
Creating brand awareness and loyalty through corporate blog is just one of its many business enhancing capabilities. Through corporate blog, organizations are able to show a human face to their customers and build quality relationships. Blogs are good not only for disseminating information, but also for receiving a valuable customer feedback that can be used for product development, customer service improvement, etc. If written well, blog can serve as a subtle advertising tool for company's products and services.
Here are some of the ways a company can benefit from corporate blogging:
Corporate blog is a powerful SEO tool
Corporate blog is the best tool a company can use to secure higher ranking on the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! As new content is usually produced and published daily, in a very short time a company can build up a large archive of keyword rich articles. Blogs that are constantly updated with fresh content with properly placed keywords and links are quickly picked up by search engines.
Position yourself as a thought leader in your industry
Writing about current trends in your industry or niche, commenting on the latest news and industry events, providing valuable insight to your customers and partners, all this will prove your market knowledge and industry expertise and give you a reputation of a thought leader in your industry. This kind of reputation is priceless, as it builds trust among customers who would rather do business with companies that are in-tuned and well informed about all the newest happenings in the industry they operate in.
Blogs are fantastic for dealing with crisis
A corporate blog allows you to publish content at a heart beat. Most companies have found themselves in a situation where somebody tried to tarnish their brand and their reputation and they needed to respond quickly and refute the false claim. Unlike other methods to publish a contra claim, blog does not require an approval period of 24 or more hours, you can instantly publish the response to the false claim and disseminate positive information to prevent losing customers and consequently the revenue. This is why having a corporate blog makes for great update tool for crisis handling.
Corporate Blog promotes transparency
People like to do business with companies who openly discuss the way they operate their business, produce and market their products, bring innovations to the industry, and so forth. A corporate blog allows your customers, partners and potential prospects to see that one of your company's policies is to be transparent to customers. This is certainly a way to build trust and engage your customers through less formal conversations about your specific niche, your products and services, or whichever topic you choose.
Potential customers will favor your company over your competitors if they are provided with enough information explaining how they can benefit from doing business with you. Corporate blog can provide readers with just the right dose of info on the way your company operates to brake down the barriers your potential customers may have in trusting your product/service. Corporate blog keeps company transparency that is highly valued by existing and potential customers and business partners.
Receive valuable customer feedback
Corporate blog is used for direct communication with customers and it is a way for your company to solicit feedback from customers in order to better understand their needs and requirements. Whether your blog describes your products and services or talks about company culture, it gives your customers the opportunity to express their opinions. Your company can use a corporate blog to discover the strengths and weaknesses of products/services without having to spend a large amount of money on customer andmarket analysis.
Measure the results of your Corporate Blog
The good thing about blogs is that you can measure the results to learn what is working and what is not. There are free online tools, such as Google Analytics that can provide you with different metrics to show you for example what pages visitors enter and exit, how many visitors come to your blog and leave instantly, where your blog traffic is coming from, etc.
