5 Essential Tips for Corporate Blogging

A study conducted by Hubspot in 2009 discovered that SMEs with a corporate blog received 55% more visitors or traffic to their sites than those that didn‘t, and that SMEs with a corporate blog also attained 97% more inbound links. Another study carried out by Hubspot in 2012 found that B2C companies that blog generate 88% more leads per month than those that don‘t, and B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that don‘t.

These astounding statistics should be reason enough for you to invest in business blogging.

If you‘re already invested then good for you. But, there‘s another challenge that corporate bloggers face, besides getting off their backside to write, and that is thinking outside the box. In other words, creating content that visitors are actually going to want to read and share.

To be honest, there is a huge list of issues with corporate blogs that need to be fixed for them to become perfect… but, with some help, you can develop a corporate blog that is structured, relevant, and valuable.

Here‘s 5 essential tips for corporate blogging.

5. Throw away the corporate concept

The first step to create a powerful corporate blog is to throw the corporate concept away entirely. Your blog is there to build connections and converse with people – not blow your own trumpet or deliver content fit for robots.

To achieve ultimate freedom, you must gift your team of bloggers with flexibility, and the go ahead to be themselves. By having a team that can inject their individual personalities into the content, this diversity will represent your company in a powerful and human way.

4. Be prepared for criticism

Your blog will likely attract a 50/50 split of visitors who love your content and post nice comments and visitors who disagree with your content and publish their thoughts. You need to get this into your head. If your blog accepts comments (which, by the way, should ALWAYS be moderated), you can expect the odd flaming or rant from a reader. In truth, you will get a variety of different comments and the trick to dealing with them is to take nothing personally.

3. Be human

One of the most common mistakes corporate blogs make is writing about very boring topics and producing content that simply isn‘t worth the read. Your blog is the perfect place to think outside the box and produce content for your visitors that evokes emotion – so, do it.

The best way to produce blog posts that are humanised is to writing in a conversational tone, and to craft stories. People love stories because they can connect with them and by writing in a conversational tone your blog will keep people reading. Your blog posts will connect with your visitors and get shared much, much more.

2. Your team

SMEs often make the mistake of handing blog control over to an inexperienced team, or a team that simply doesn‘t know how to write for the web. A healthy business is only as strong as the team that operates it, and the same rings true for a blog.

To start with, you should have a team of core bloggers who understand your company mission and the product and service you offer. This team of core bloggers must be able to research, write, and edit effectively… if they can‘t, then you have a serious problem, in which case outsourcing might be the best move forward (I will cover the benefits of outsourcing content in a later blog post).

1. Establish a theme and editorial guidelines

Consistency is key with a corporate blog, and so too is producing content within your area of expertise. If you stray off this, you run the risk of looking like a lightweight and not creating content that defines the value of your product or service.

The first thing you should do with your corporate blog is to establish a content theme and set editorial guidelines for your team. Once you have chosen an area to cover (it can be one area or a few, set out into categories), you can begin creating well structured content that is going to be valuable to your readers. Remember that your blog should contain information that benefits the visitor.

A consistent theme and editorial guidelines will give your blog a tone of voice which will attract return visitors and build a community.