The document outlines tips for an effective corporate blog, including developing a marketing plan to promote the blog using various social media and email marketing. It recommends writing tutorials, answering community questions, and highlighting customers to be designed for business. Additionally, it suggests going the extra mile by targeting specific readers and optimizing the blog for both readers and search engines. Finally, it lists some blogging pitfalls to avoid such as only focusing on the business or using poor quality writing or copied content.
2. AGENDA
• Market It
• Designed for Business
• Go the Extra Mile
• It Sucks
@Ali_Alsabbagh
3. MARKET IT
• Develop a Marketing Plan!
• Market it on Social Media
• Use RSS Feed
• Use Social Bookmarking
• Use Video, Webcasts, and Podcasts
• Use Email Marketing
@Ali_Alsabbagh
4. DESIGNED FOR BUSINESS
• Write a Tutorial about your Product
• Answer Community Questions or Comments
• Talk about a new Product Release
• Highlight a Great Customer
• Share Reviews and Feedback
• Connect with other Bloggers
• Share Exclusive Discounts and Promos
@Ali_Alsabbagh
5. GO THE EXTRA MILE
• Target Your Content To A Specific Readership
• Be Original, Be Honest
• Don’t Be Afraid Of A Little Controversy
• Don’t Oversell. Teach, Too
• Optimize Your Blog – Both For Readers & Bots
@Ali_Alsabbagh
6. IT SUCKS
• Using syndicated content
• Blog revolves around your business only
• Using clip art
• Can’t find the post I want to read
• Your writing totally sucks
• Spinning articles
• It looks like 14367298504 other blogs
@Ali_Alsabbagh
Hinweis der Redaktion
Market It: How to market your Corporate Blog?Designed for Business: How to use your Corporate Blog to promote your Business?Go the Extra Mile: How to maximize the potential of your Corporate Blog?It Sucks: Why your CorporateBlog sucks?
1. Develop a Marketing Plan!Not a long drawn out process. Something quick and simple.Jotdown ideas of what your plans are when it comes to marketing your blog.If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.2. Market it on Social Media-Installing the required social buttons on your blog posts.Find the place where your ideal reader hangs out and hang out there too.Every time you make a new post to your blog, let your readers know about it by posting to social networks.Play nicely in the groups and you’ll be rewarded with fabulous blog traffic.On LinkedIn, you want to be all about business.On Facebook, show a little of your personality – the carbon-based life form behind the blog.On Twitter, shine the spotlight on your blog.3. Use RSS Feed-Web-feed format to enable your subscribersto receive updates to your blogdirectly to their chosen feed aggregator or reader.-Most blog hosting sites will have everything you need to create this option for your readers.-Don’t hide your RSS button down the page with your WordPress theme credit links.-Add an RSS chicklet at the top of your sidebar so visitors can easily load your posts into their RSS readers.4. Use Social Bookmarking-The process of bookmarking and sorting your favourite articles and often sharing them with others.-The key is to share your preferences with other people online. Not just your own articles, but articles in a specific niche. If you share valuable articles over time you become trusted and when you share the odd blog post from yourself, the bookmarking community will check it out.-Think how you can apply what your target market is sharing to your blog.-Popular social bookmarking sites include: digg.com, del.icio.us, reddit.com and stumbleupon.com5. Use Video, Webcasts and Podcasts-Higher quality content = higher chances of receiving a good page ranking with search engines.-Higher quality content = more content for people to link to.-Readers have had years of “training” in watching television, they are exemplary viewers. -Video increases audience engagement. An ordinary text-and-images web page encourages skimming and scanning.-Viewers feel they know you better after they’ve seen you on video. This develops liking and trust much easier.6. Use Email Marketing-Win-Win: Reader gets a useful gift (handy for helping your reports go viral) and you get their name and email address, and permission to email them in the future.-Make your autoresponder (e.g. AWeber or Mailchimp) your opt-in list.-Add your subscribing details to your blog’s call to action.-Share the development of your ethical bribe to generate interest-Ethicalbribes can beezine, free reports, free ebooks, free access to private websites, etc.-Optimally, this bribe should be something you create yourself with high-quality content that shows your readers how much value you offer. -This should be available on your blog as soon as possible, as it will boost your subscriptions immediately.
Write a Tutorial about your Product-Push to the web instructions of your products/services.-Afraid that competitors will steal your documentation? Think you’ll be doing your community a great service.-It builds excellent search engine traffic.-It solidifies yourself as the authority where as other competitors are too afraid to share their best secrets.Answer Community Questions or Comments-Instead of passing customers’ questions off to a file you leave at work go ahead and write about them on the blog.-Gain great search engine traffic from people searching for answers.-You’ll have resources to point other customers to which saves you time answering questions!Talk about a new Product Release-Excite others that have been waiting for a new feature, product or service from your business.Highlight a Great Customer-Highlight loyal customers by sharing a small story about them on your blog.-If your best customers have businesses of their own than consider writing about the business and share part of the wealth.-It will create a great connection with your customers because it shows that you care more than just making a sale.Share Reviews and Feedback-Share customers’ testimonial with the rest of the community-If you receive feedback about a bug or some kind of improvement from your community you can show how you plan to implement these improvements.-Sharewhat others have to say about your business and it doesn’t come across as forceful marketing.Connect with other Bloggers-Connect with other bloggers to extend your network with more resources, ideas and creators, and additional fun and motivation.-Help promote your product when there is an equal exchange of value between two parties.-If another blogger thoroughly enjoys your products, they’re likely to write about your business on their own blog.-Compliment their great words by writing about them on your own business blog.Share Exclusive Discounts and Promos-Hold a contest, exclusive event or a gift back to your community while pushing out a new blog post.-Customers love when there are ways to interact with your business.Encourgeparticipating in a poll in exchange for a prize.Push out new coupon codes to ignite sales in new and old products.
Target Your Content To A Specific Readership-Pay attention to determine the preferred audiences to whom you would like to target.-Determine if it hits the sweet spot of your demographic.Be Original, Be Honest-Don’t follow the herd within your sphere of interest.-Don’t simply spin the same old post. Take an original slant on a common topic.-Verify your facts and provide links to additional verification.Don’t Be Afraid Of A Little Controversy.-Controversy sell!-Be prepared to engage others with differing opinions.Don’t Oversell. Teach, Too-It can’t be all selling and no sizzle. -Post information on a new blog piece, but also post news from other sites that you think will benefit your readers.-Learn when to stop pushing for a larger readership and when to start giving away information to drive more readers to your blog.Optimize Your Blog – Both For Readers & Bots-Cut the clutter of 23 affiliate banners, animated adverts and other distractions.-Blog should be attractive to human sensibilities, and look good to readers who follow you. -Blog should look good to search engine spiders.-Conduct keyword research using tools like Google’s Keyword Generator that provides keywords used by actual Google users over the past 30 days. Place those keywords in headlines, sub heads and a few of them in your blog posts.
Using syndicated content-Do not post badly-written articles at ezine.com, helium.com, goarticles.com and other well-known websites.-Do not cut and paste articles on your blog and just provide a link back to the author’s site or blog.-Without unique content your blog is nothing.-Write about topics that interest your readers, not post about topics that interest you.Blog revolves around your business only-Stop talking about your business already!-Tell your readers something theycan use in their own life. Facts, stories, not boring business (or sales)stuff.Using clip artIt can be spotted a mile away:The model smiling, the perfect family spending the day at the beach, the marathon runner – all license free clip art. And with free clip art, you get what you pay for.Can’t find the post I want to read-Categorize your blog posts-Use a built-in search engine, and place its box in a visible place.Your writing totally sucks-Posts are loaded with typos, misspellings, lost punctuation and other mistakes that signal you don’t care enough about your readers.Spinning articles-Writing about the same stuff everyone else inside your niche is.-Not as bad as getting content from article directories, but it won’t cut it all the same.-Write something interesting or go home.It looks like 14367298504 other blogs-Blogging platforms offers hundreds of templates from which to choose.-Choose a template and your blog will look like all others who build their blogs using the same template.