There are a number of places to embark on your social media journey, but possibly one of the best bang for buck tools is a company blog. A blog by definition is a ‘web log’ or a self-published journal-style post on your website. Blogs are generally designed to display the most recent items at the top of a page, and written in a conversational, personal style, giving the author an authentic voice online. Blogs can offer readers the opportunity to comment on, and link to items.
Because blog items can be made available from the site in a stream of content - known as an RSS feed - you can subscribe to them and read them through a newsreader or aggregator. That means you don't have to visit a blog site to read it - you can pull the content to your desktop or a single website aggregator. Blogs are easy to set up, and update.
A blog is the best way for a company to reach out and build a community with customer, clients, and users. A blog allows the company to have a transparent platform wherein the customer is able to interact with the company, offer feedback, and learn more about the company culture.
It is crucially important to design and develop the blog for your audience and then optimise it for search engines and for social media. A well-written, value-driven blog post is essential in driving traffic, establishing authority, and adding value to the community. The blog is not a press release page; instead, it should target a highly relevant audience, teaching them new things about the Client’s industry, reviewing products, or just displaying the Client’s fun company culture.
Blogs can be incorporated as part of your company website or very easily established and branded under online publishing resources such as WordPress or Blogger.
To write a successful blog, there are a few simple rules to follow.
Be Addictive. One of the key aspects of any successful blog is the ability to create content that keeps drawing people back to your blog.
Be regular and consistent with when you publish. We all get brain block and are time poor, so build up a reserve of blogs, or at least blog topics.
Less is more. Clear and concise writing captures a larger audience. The blog does not have to read the length of War and Peace. Just remember, you might be time-poor in writing the blog, but the reader is just as time-poor when finding time to read it.
Offer Insight. Just because someone else has written about it does not mean you should not write about it too, because your post may offer information or insights that the reader has not encountered before.
Turn it on. Try and invoke a response from the reader, give them that light bulb moment that causes them to look at the world differently… at least for that day.
And finally, a blog is never, ever an overt sales advertisement for your product. We are not taking a microphone and touting our wares. Instead, think of a blog as thought leadership. Position yourself as the expert in your field, not a cheap salesperson with a microphone.
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