Business and Personal Blogs Are Not the Same

A lot of companies are quick to set up a WordPress blog, have the CEO or some top executive, or (worse) public relations people make a couple of high level posts a week, and think they have an effective corporate blogging strategy.

That’s okay for what I call citizen journalism. If the goal is only to have your opinions “out there,” this is all well and good. A lot of corporate bloggers (including me) came to blogging as a way to build their personal reputation as a thought leader and increase credibility. This is all fine, but in business “fine” isn’t good enough.

What’s missing from the typical corporate blogging strategy is a lack of any measurable objectives. In business we can only afford to expend our energy on things that make our organizations stronger. What is spectacular about Internet marketing in general, and corporate blogging specifically, is the simple fact that everything is measurable.

When considering a real corporate marketing strategy, one needs to lay out concrete objectives that are measurable and replicable. Most importantly, corporate blogging needs to have a goal.

Every activity in an organization needs to have the goal of building the value of that organization. In that light, business blogs should have the same expectations of any other page associated with your Web strategy.

That means conversion goals. Every blog, just like every page in a traditional site, needs to pull its weight in the conversion mission. Assuming that people reach your blog through an Internet search, what do you want them to do next? Read and go away? No.

You want them to take the next step in the relationship. You want them to click or follow some call to action just like you would want them to do if they showed up on your homepage.

How do you know it’s working? Well, in traditional mass media (print, broadcast, advertising) this is tough, because those activities are difficult to measure. Online measurement, specifically in corporate blogging, is easy if you have the right systems in place and the things you are measuring are aligned with your established goals. Think about your calls to action. Leverage both your content and your template to help the visitor move to the next step in the relationship.

You also want it to be replicable. By that, I mean that if you do something over and over again you get similar results. The idea of successful marketing begins with the investment in things that when you do them the results can be replicated as often as you do them.

With corporate blogging, this is great because the software is inexpensive and easy to use and deploy. Generally speaking, if it’s working, you expand it and do more. Move beyond the idea of top-down executive blogging and free up your people to blog. We’ll talk about the benefits and risks associated with widespread employee blogging next time.

Chris Baggott is a blogger and the co-founder of Compendium Blogware in Illinois. He can be reached at [email protected].

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