Company blogs are a form of content marketing that, done right, offer tremendous value to potential customers. With a well-conceived strategy, blogging regularly helps to establish your company as a leading authority in its industry. Moreover, the content you produce for it can also be repurposed widely across other channels to drive more traffic back to your site and further cement your reputation as a thought leader.
While there are as many ways to approach the launch of a company blog as there are companies, anyone who is planning to start one should be aware of the most important aspects of highlighting a brand for the blogosphere. Below, members of Forbes Agency Council share 16 key pieces of advice that they would give a client who’s launching a blog to ensure that both the reader and the brand are well-served by its content.
Members of Forbes Agency Council share some important aspects of highlighting your business’ brand for the blogosphere.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Build A Strategy Around Your Final Goal
If you’re looking to build a corporate blog, make sure to build a strategy around your final goal. Is it mass traffic or is it quality traffic? This will determine the keyword research and article topics for your blog. Write articles that will be highly valuable to your audience and can be a reference point for other articles on the topic. – Brian Meert, AdvertiseMint
2. Never Put SEO In The Corner
Our approach to client blogs is to ensure that every piece written is optimized for search engines, is detailed and well-researched, offers great visuals, and provides value to the reader. In addition, don’t forget that a blog can include a variety of media, from written content to videos to podcasts. Magic happens when you mix it up and see what works best for your brand. – Terry Tateossian, Socialfix Media
3. Discuss The Industry To Highlight Your Place In It
Make sure your blog isn’t specifically focused only on your company and product offerings. Use your blog as a means to establish and build your credibility for both yourself and the industry as a whole. Discussing the industry should provide you with the ability to also highlight your company’s brand. – Harry Tajyar, Investor Relations Partners
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4. Determine What Would Be Valuable To Your Readers
The first question any client should ask themselves is, “What would be of value to my readers?” To break through the content clutter, blogs must be compelling, unique, useful, brief and visual. Like magazines, blogs must have a theme and a clear editorial voice. A blog is part of a larger thought-leadership and content strategy, and this content must be repurposed across media. – Nancy A Shenker, theONswitch
5. Set Short-Term Intentions And Long-Term Goals
At the start, set short-term intentions and long-term goals and then revisit them every so often to ensure you’re laddering up to your overall objectives. Your readers, whether loyalists or new consumers, are looking for accountability around authenticity. Be true to your brand ethos and ethics across all topics you might cover and, above all, lead with a consistent and measured tone of voice. – Steph Lund, M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment
6. Leverage Visuals To Reinforce Your Core Message
Assuming you’re already creating useful and valuable content, make sure you’re taking advantage of best practices in formatting and the use of visuals. I can take the exact same content (text) and make it infinitely more engaging and interesting by formatting it for the reader to skim. Using images and visuals every paragraph or two will enhance and reinforce the core message. – Scott Severson, Brandpoint
7. Write Uniquely Relevant Content For Your Specific Audience
First, get clear on your specific audience. Who are you writing your blog for, and what matters to them? Be specific! There is no shortage of generic content on the Web. You will attract and engage an audience by bringing ideas, inspiration and thought leadership that is uniquely relevant to those your business serves. – Renee Yeager, Yeager Marketing
8. Make Sure The Blog Reflects The Company’s Values And Brand
If the brand voice is authentic, the blog should be too. If it’s academic, the blog should be too. Regardless of the tone, it must provide value to target audiences and be educational to ensure that the content is viewed as a true asset to them, not just something the company is doing half-heartedly for show or to boost its SEO. – April White, Trust Relations
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9. Show True Expertise With Significant Coverage Of Specific Topic Areas
Google, specifically, is looking for expertise, authority and trust. If you are going to start a blog today, make sure you have a well-thought-out strategy that allows you to have significant content coverage in specific topic areas. This will allow you to show your expertise properly to Google and other search engines so that you can garner SEO traffic. – Brent Payne, Loud Interactive, LLC
10. Remember Who You Are Writing For
One thing that I reiterate to every client planning to take this step is that communication is not what is written, but what is read. When you are writing, remember which platform you are writing for and who is going to be reading it. The success of content lies in marrying what the brand wants to say with what their stakeholders want to hear. – Sandeep Rao, One Source
11. Think Like A Web Visitor
This spans everything across the user journey, including online search terms, the length of the content, the content itself and, perhaps most important, a title, meta description and intro that hooks the reader. Nobody reads blog posts that start with, “Learn more about Company X’s approach to…” You need to think like the reader and understand what got them to your blog. – Eric Fischgrund, FischTank PR
12. Humanize Your Brand Through Your People
Your blog is a powerful way for your company’s people to share their insights through their authentic voices. Identify the thought leaders in your organization, and use the blog to build their personal brands as ambassadors of your business. That way, you create a win-win by amplifying the voices of your employees while building your corporate brand. – Don Scales, Investis Digital
13. Consistently ‘Invest’ In Creating Strategic Content
Blogging is similar to investing in the stock market. Successful marketers routinely “invest” in content because they don’t know which of those investments will pay off. You research and create strategic pieces of content with a high probability of payoff, but they won’t all be winners. By publishing consistently, you build a strong portfolio of content that pays lasting dividends that increase over time. – Benjamin Collins, Laughing Samurai
14. Don’t Be Afraid To Give Away Your Trade Secrets
We’re living in the age of the internet; if anyone wants to find out how to do something, they can do so very easily. But your business isn’t solely based on you knowing information; it’s also about your experience and expertise. So go ahead and give them a taste of what they want to know. If the content is valuable enough, clients will come back because they know that you can do it better. – Kelly Samuel, Snack Toronto
15. Make Sure Your Blog Has A Strong, Bold Brand Voice
Many blogs are just plain dull. Counter that by having a point of view and being a bit provocative. And finally, make sure your posts add value. Value can come in many forms: something actionable the reader can do, a data point of interest, a new trend or just a piece of content that delights and brightens the reader’s day. – Elonide Semmes, Right Hat, LLC
16. Think In Scenes Or Snapshots
I explain that a blog is like one picture in a photo album of a weeklong vacation. Maybe you have 200 images you want to remember that represent the special moments. A blog is one moment, one memory, one focused story. That makes it easy to write a tight story with a clear point. Remember, a blog should showcase thought leadership and inspire traffic to your site. – Lynne Golodner, Your People LLC
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Author: Expert Panel®, Forbes Councils Member
