A couple weeks ago, Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot’s blog manager, talked to Google’s chief blogger, Karen Wickre about corporate blogging, and the important things companies need to do when taking the plunge into blogging.
Wickre says the most important thing a company new to blogging should do is to get a feel for what’s out there, and consider what they would want their blog to say. A blog could be personal, could be about thought leadership, or could focus on customer service. But find the blog’s voice, and stick with it, she says.
While that’s important, I don’t think it’s the most important thing. In some ways, that issue is going to resolve itself as time goes by.
I believe the most important thing about corporate blogging is that a blog will “establish ground for the company.” Wickre said a good company blog should do all these things:
Do most posts offer useful or unique information?
Do they reflect the company’s values and interests?
Do they demonstrate the people behind the company/products?
Wickre had other good points for corporate bloggers to consider, but for me, this was the biggest. We try to get our clients to see that their blog needs to be more than just a commercial, or a catalog. Yes, you can have those kinds of posts, but you also need to tell your customers about your company. You need to show what you stand for, how you work, why you work. You need to answer questions about your company, your products, and your values. You need to introduce your staff to your customers, and let them develop relationships. (Remember, people buy from people they like. If they like your staff, they’ll like your company, and they’ll buy from you.)
Your corporate blog is more than just a marketing mouthpiece. It’s not a cheap form of sales literature. It’s the window into your company and possibly one of the best ways to communicate with your customers. So find the voice, jump in, and you’ll answer all Wickre’s questions as time goes by.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
You hired incompetent staff. You hired people you can’t trust to properly deliver your company message. You hired people you don’t believe will represent you correctly to the outside world. That sounds like you made some bad decisions.
Do you trust your employees to answer your phones, or do you answer all the calls yourself? Do you trust your salespeople to speak to customers without you, or go on all the sales calls with them?
Of course you trust them. You have people you trust to count and spend your money. You have people you trust to write sales brochures and organize trade shows. You have people you trust to produce your product, put it in a box, and stick it on a truck. You have people you trust to speak to customers when they call in with complaints. And you even have employees you trust enough to let have access to email.
Yet you don’t have people you can trust to write 350 words three times a week on a platform where errors are easily fixed? That means you hired the wrong people for the job, and that’s nobody’s fault but yours.
Think of it this way:
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh trusted his employees.
Hsieh trusted them to tweet and blog.
They tweeted and blogged the bejeezus out of that company, in addition to providing some awesome customer service.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
One of the best things travel and tourism destinations can use for social media marketing is blogging. It’s a way to share content that:
is easy to update. Writing a blog post is as easy as writing an email.
helps with search engine ranking. Search engines love blog content.
will last for years. Your content can be found years later by interested visitors.
So here are the four things you can do with your blog to help market your tourism destination to your visitors.
1. Tell stories about the stuff your guests are doing.
Rather than just describe the activities that are available at your destination, talk about the things your guests have been doing. Write it more like one of the old weekly newspaper columns that used to tell us when the town’s citizens had visited each other.
The stories should talk about some of the stuff the guests are doing. Do a quick interview with them, find out the favorite part of their activity, and write a brief synopsis of what they did. Include some photos if possible (see #2).
We just heard from David and Sharon A. about the round of golf they played this morning. Sharon is a fair golfer and scored a 91, although David (89) is still recovering from a back injury. David said that while the course was a little challenging, he still couldn’t make it out of the water trap on the 13th hole.
Meanwhile, the Robins just returned from their horseback ride, on Morgan and Shadow. Morgan is always a gentle horse, which is good, because David Robins has never ridden before. They spent the morning out on the trail and stopped for a picnic lunch out on Oak Lookout.
It’s just a short post, and people may not really care about what the families are doing (more on that in a minute), but the people who have gotten caught in the 13th hole water trap, ridden Morgan, or had a picnic lunch on Oak Lookout are going to have their own memories of the place, and will remember the great times they had. (However, the families who are mentioned in your post may also tell their friends about your blog entry, and they’ll get to read about your place as well.
But your blog is also an easy place to share those photos and videos. Choose the embed code for your album or video, and paste it into a blog post. You can use this content to reinforce the text you’re writing about, and increase the impact of your posts. Plus, videos and photos embedded on your blog will help your search engine rankings
3. Talk about behind-the-scenes stuff.
Think about your good friends, the ones you really like. How much do you know about their lives, the stuff they don’t tell just everyone? Probably quite a bit. And it’s that non-public knowledge that probably makes you feel closer. You can do the same thing on your blog.
Inn-Bedded Resorter Martin Earley is spending two months at The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel as their social media guy. He’s been enjoying all the amenities the guests get to use, but he’s also giving people a behind-the-scenes look at The Balsams. You can see a video of the kitchen during a dinner rush, but he has also spent time with the cleaning staff, and will also spend one night working security.
He’s showing regular and potential guests how things work around the place, so people will understand a little better how their favorite New England resort works, but also so they feel a little closer to it, and will want to return again and again.
4. Write it as a letter.
The biggest mistake beginning bloggers make is writing for posterity. They imagine thousands of readers, book editors, and critics, all poring over their blog. As a result, the posts sound stilted and forced, the language is wooden, and the whole thing sounds like it was written by a marketing committee.
Don’t write it for those people, write it for one person. Pick your favorite guest, your best friend from high school, or your mom. Write it in the same friendly tone as if this was only being read by that one person. In fact, start your post out with “Dear Sharon” or “Dear Mom.” Then, write the post to Sharon or your mom. When you’re finished, go back and delete the salutation. The tone of the post will come across as casual, friendly, and personal. The net result is more people will enjoy reading it, and they’ll want to come back every time you publish a new post.
Photo credit: Erik Deckers (Disclosure: I am a travel writer for the Indiana Tourism Department’s Blog, Indiana Insider.)
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
A friend told me he was getting frustrated with blogging, because he was trying to publish some serious posts about serious issues, while his colleagues were writing posts about their favorite TV shows or weekends with their kids.
“Chin up, little buckaroo,” I told him. (Okay, I didn’t. But I wanted to.) Here’s what I did tell him.
Corporate bloggers should not be afraid to write about issues, but should also include personal posts about your favorite shows, restaurants, crazy things your kids did, etc. And while it is a pain to have your profound thoughts overshadowed by personal reflections on how The Biggest Loser has changed someone else’s life, this is what blogging is.
In fact, it’s what life is: whoever speaks last and/or loudest is heard the best.
Blogging does two things for the average business person, whether you’re a consultant, small business owner, or corporate executive.
It adds to your credibility and expertise on your chosen field. Now, anyone who knows you personally already knows you have it. But what about those people who don’t have the chance to meet you or only get to talk to you for a couple minutes at a networking event. Blogging helps you show off your knowledge about a subject.
And by publishing your knowledge over and over, you’re going to show people that you know a lot about your chosen subject. Your potential customers are going to realize you know a lot about their issues and their problems (especially if you answer their questions on your blog). As a result, when they have a problem they need to pay to have fixed, they’ll call the person who knows enough to talk about it on a regular basis.
2) Personal blogging — as dreadful as you may think it is — is going to make you more accessible and, well, personal. People will get to know you, and feel a closer connection to you, by reading what you think about personal topics like your favorite TV show, or your adventures in finding a babysitter to watch the kids on a Friday night. While this may not seem as important — because it frankly doesn’t do squat for your credibility and expertise — it lets people know you. When they get to know you, they will trust you. And when they trust you, they’ll want to be a part of what you’re doing.
If you’re not sure about whether you should write about personal issues, read Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agents (affiliate link). In one of the chapters, they talk about people being One Of Us.
If you are One Of Us, we will listen to what you have to say. If you are One Of Us, you understand our struggles and problems. Too many old-school business people I have known were not One Of Us, and held themselves in a higher position than their employees and their customers. They weren’t approachable, and were often not trusted. We still see this now, only executives and politicians are held in lower esteem than they were 30 – 40 years ago. They think they’re too good for the unwashed masses, and then don’t understand it when people don’t like them.
On the other hand, if I know you like 30 Rock and collect beer cans and have issues with raising a kid, that means you’re One Of Us. That means I’m more willing to listen and learn from you.
So, you should be doing both types of blogging, even if the second kind seems stupid. Because it’s those personal connections that are going to bring people in and keep them coming back.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
There has been a lot of news lately on how companies are really not hiring right now. A recent report talks about how a companies are hiring temp workers, but they are not hiring them to stay. In the past, a common practice was to test drive a worker then offer them a position. Hiring them as full-time employees is not happening right now.
So, who is getting the work done?
When I joined ATA Airlines back in 1997, George Michelsons brought in Bain and Company to basically prepare the company for sale. The process was to get rid of a lot of people and put more jobs onto fewer people. While this strategy worked around the country for Bain, it usually preceded an upgrade in office automation to ensure the work could still get done.
The office automation phase did not occur at ATA Airlines.
The result was a lot of stressed out people carrying around their imaginary trays trying to figure out how they were going to fit one more item onto an already heavy load. No longer were people interested in teamwork, they were more interested in self-preservation. It created a lot of ill-tempered people in the process.
As some of my clients reveal their corporate cultures, I am finding similarities to what I experienced at ATA Airlines. No one has time to commit to anything above and beyond what their core responsibilities are. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is not projected to get much better – CEO’s are reluctant to hire.
What are the solutions?
The easiest is what is being done by some today. Hire temp workers to get things done. They may cost a little more in the short-term, but allow you to avoid the headaches of hiring employees and their costs over the long-term. There are a lot of companies providing these services.
Sometimes, just hiring a grunt worker is not enough. Sometimes you need a professional person to do the work, you don’t have time to do. There are companies being set up that can act as your Marketing Department, your Accounting Department, or your HR Department. They can do it at a cost that is far cheaper than hiring full-time employees, but are focused solely on getting work done for you.
So, look around and ask yourself, are you and your colleagues a bunch of stressed out grumpy people not really accomplishing much because there is too much to do? There is help out there that can help your company meet its strategic goals for the year.
We actually put together a white paper on the ROI of outsourcing blogging and social media. You can download it here, if you want to take a look.
About the Author: Paul Lorinczi Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.
Professional Blog Service started a year ago out of Indy Associates to assist companies in generating content they need for most of their Internet marketing activity.
While at Indy Associates, we always recommended blogging as a good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. With the popularity of social media sites like Linkedin, Facebook and micro-blogging service Twitter, the strategy has become even more important. The challenge for most of our customers was the blog content generation. Most companies do not have trained content writers that are able to develop conversational blog content, while writing for the search engines. Most important, many of clients have great ideas with no time to share them.
So, what have we learned in 2009?
Most companies still do not have the resources, or the time to write their own content.
2009 saw the unemployment rate hit 10% in November. It was reported that many companies laid off many in their workforce leaving those left behind with more work to do and little time to get it done. The last thing on anyone’s mind is getting blog content written, even though everyone agrees that marketing is still important in a down economy.
Blogging and Social Media continue to evolve from AOL of the 90s to Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter heading into a new decade.
“Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit social networking or blogging sites, accounting for almost 10% of all Internet time, according to a Nielsen report published in March of this year, “Global Faces and Networked Places.” These numbers keep rising as the year progresses. By 2012, IBM predicts that globally, a quarter of the global population will be using social media in some form.
Results still matter to most companies.
Learning how to play in social media is one thing. Getting people to interact with you is another. Your clients may or may not interact with you through social media. The challenge for all companies is finding out which ones they should engage. You may be able to sell like Dell, or respond to customer complaints like Southwest Airlines and Jet Blue Airlines have done. (Note to my former colleagues at American Airlines – take note!). Either way, Social Media and Blogging is measurable in some way depending on the strategic approach you take with it.
There are great tools like Yahoo Analytics (shameless plug as we are a Yahoo Analytics consultant). Radian6 and Scoutlabs can track who’s talking about you, and help you decide whether to act on the positive or negative media being generated.
We predict that 2010 will be the year of results with blogging and social media. In a nutshell, you are doing it to build your marketing list, or to generate interest in your products or services. To succeed, you will need:
An understanding of how your market uses blogging and social media, if at all
A plan to participate
Execution and commitment to the plan
Measurement of the results over the course of the year, not a month
If you can learn how to do it before your competition, you win. It will take them 12 months just to figure out what you have done.
Happy New Year from Professional Blog Service
About the Author: Paul Lorinczi Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.
If 2009 was any indication of social media’s success, 2010 is going to bring about some new changes and the way things are done. Social media growth won’t happen by your parents joining Facebook (if they haven’t already). It will happen because the business world is starting to see the light, and companies will start flocking to it in droves.
These are our social media predictions for 2010.
Business blogging will grow. (Oh sure, way to go out on a limb there, Nostradamus.) While this may seem obvious to some, it’s not as obvious to the corporations themselves. Blogging has become more accepted as a part of a marketer’s toolbox. But it’s not just limited to the entrepreneur or small businessperson. Corporations are starting to use blogging as a form of corporate communication. Ford Motor Company already uses a blog for their media center, the CDC uses a blog as a way to communicate public health issues to the media and general public. This is only going to grow more as time goes by.
Social media will lose its virginity next year. More and more people will begin to make money through social media, despite the protestations and gnashing of teeth by the social media purists. We’re seeing it already, as spammers and MLMers are using Twitter to sell their ebooks, nutritional supplements, and online marketing plans. However, people like Kyle Lacy, Jason Falls, and Chris Brogan are helping companies figure out how to actually make money with social media. And as more people adopt a “meh” attitude about the whole “selling on social media” controversy, and it becomes more seamless and less interruptive, the trend will only grow.
Social media will become more accepted in big corporations. This one will be a harder sell in the halls of large corporations, but some of the more forward-thinking corporations are going to jump on the social media bandwagon sooner rather than later. I’ve spoken with a banker who’s looking into Twitter, and there are several lawyers who are looking at the micro-blogging platform as a way to increase their name recognition in their chosen area of specialty. And when a cable giant like Comcast can find success on Twitter with @ComcastCares, you know the other corporations can’t be far behind.
Android will eat iPhone’s lunch. We’ve been discussing this one around the office quite a bit. Rumors are swirling that the iPhone may come to Verizon in Q3 2010. This may be too little, too late, since a lot of people are buying the Android because it’s available on their favorite network. But even if people hold off buying a new iPhone until it’s available in the fall, the Android will still see their enemy crushed before them, and hear the lamentations of the women.
The same thing will happen like it did in the ’80s when the IBM PC and PC clones swamped Apple and took the high-end business market away from them. Or when Windows overpowered Apple’s Macintosh in the business world in the ’90s. Apple has the manufacturing capacity to fulfill AT&T users’ needs now, but if they offer the iPhone to Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and any of the international carriers, they’re going to have problems filling orders. On the other hand, LG, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, HTC, and Hunwai (China) are all the licensed Android manufacturers. Their combined manufacturing might is more than enough to meet the demands of the Android users.
Mobile will become more important. David Armano of Harvard Business Publishing talked about his Six Social Media Trends for 2010, and said that mobile will become especially important as more corporations start enforcing social media policies at work. The social media break will become more prevalent, as people totter off to the bathroom with their iPhones and Droids to send a quick note to their Twitter followers or update their Facebook status. The ramifications for bloggers is that your posts should be shorter, easier to read, and your blog software should have a mobile version plugin. (Hat tip to my good friend Lorraine Ball for this one.)
SMS will become obsolete. As users continue to buy smart phones and phones that have email, Twitter, chatting, and other communication features, the desirability to pay your cell phone carrier $.04 to send a message will become less attractive. Since Twitter is free, how long will it be before restaurants, movies, sports teams, and other entertainment venues start offering DM clubs to members? They’re already doing it with text services, so can Twitter and other micro-blogging programs be far behind?
So what do you think? What are your predictions for 2010? Leave a comment and let’s see what others are thinking.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Yesterday, I gave a talk about Blogging Basics for Job Seekers to our local Business & Professional Exchange organization, a networking group for people who are looking for new employment.
I tried to explain blog writing as simply as possible, but as I was talking, I realized there’s more than one way to skin that cat, so I thought I would assemble a few of my favorite blog writing techniques here. Use any of them when you’re stuck, not so much for what to write about, but how to write it.
Dear Mom: The nice thing about blogging is that it doesn’t have to be hard. It’s as easy as writing an email. And the important thing about blogging is that you make the subject matter as simple and easy as possible. “Easy enough so that your mother can understand it,” I tell people. So start your blog post like this: “Dear Mom, Let me tell you about this cool thing I learned today,” and then tell her about it. When you’re done, delete the salutation and opening line, and you’ve got your blog post.
What Can [Insert Movie/Song/Sport/Esoteric Trivia] Teach Us About [Industry/Job/Social Movement]: I very nearly wrote a post about “What Ultimate Frisbee Can Teach Us About Blogging” once (I was an avid Ultimate Frisbee player many years ago), but then I decided I hated those kinds of posts. Still, they’re very successful, and they do serve a purpose. They force you to do some lateral thinking, and find weird connections between your chosen song/sport/etc. and your subject matter. It also gives you a framework to start building the post, which makes the writing much easier.
Use the News: This one is especially important if you’re writing about your chosen industry or field. Find news articles in other blogs, trade journals, or even the mainstream news, and write a news-opinion piece about it. Talk about the basic details of the story, and then offer your opinion on how this will affect your industry, for good or bad. Spend about half your post summarizing the story (don’t forget to cite the article and link to it), and then the other half putting forth your own ideas.
Once Upon a Time: People love stories. We’ve been passing knowledge through stories since before we had a written alphabet. Storytelling is in our DNA. So rather than just put forth an idea in the most general, vague terms, tell a story about how you saw it used. Tell a true story, or make one up, as sort of a modern-day parable. If you need to, tell your story to someone out loud before you commit it to paper. You’ll find a story flows much more easily than just reciting dry facts and banging out 30,000 foot overviews.
Lists: Create a list of ideas or techniques, and give it a descriptive and persuasive title. People love lists, and they’re easily drawn to them. (Hey, it got you to read this far, didn’t it?) Plus it makes writing much easier. Rather than coming up with one really long idea, you can instead create five simple ones. A list will keep you focused and let you lightly touch on the different ideas you want to cover. Then you can expand each of them for later posts.
When you’re trying these techniques, don’t let them turn you into a word factory. Try to stick with the mantra, “one idea, one post, one day.” If you find your posts are getting too long, split them up into two different ideas, or make your post a two-parter.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
These new guidelines, FTC Guide Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising says that bloggers who receive “cash or in-kind payment to review a product” must disclose the fact of this payment on their blog.
When I receive a free product or service or overnight stay for my blogging or travel writing, I usually just handle it with a quick, “I received a free _____ courtesy of the fine folks at ________,” I think bloggers need to create a new official statement that sits at the bottom of every blog post, sort of like a photographer’s credit or stringer’s byline at the bottom of a news article.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
The 5 Categories and the the types of sites that were measured were:
Content (Sites like NYTimes.com, ESPN.com and Edmunds.com (Content sites)
Communications (websites offering email, and Instant messaging)
Community (Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn)
Commerce (such as Ebay, Amazon)
Search (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc)
Here is Jeff’s interpretation:
The study on online activity titled the “Internet Activity Index” released by the Online Publishers Association shows the trends of the types of activity that have occurred on the Internet over the past 6 years. The study’s findings has important implications for online marketers and how they should be focusing their time, resources and strategies in 2009 and beyond.
Five key findings of the study?
Internet users continue to spend a majority of their “time” with Content sites, up from 34 percent of total time spent in 2003 to 42 percent in 2009.
Emergence of Community (it wasn’t measured in 2003 as it wasn’t statistically significant enough and not on the radar)
Content is still king; the content rich sites continue to be a place where consumers spend the majority of their online time and provide an environment for brand marketers to reach and engage with consumers despite the emergence of community sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.
Community sites are reducing the share of online time by communications sites due to community sites ability to offer the same activities such as email and instant messaging more efficiently.
*Notes: Excludes .gov and .edu Web sites, as well as pornographic domains. Percentage change indicates the percentage increase or decrease from the previous month’s value (June 2009 % change not shown due to introduction of Nielsen’s NetView RDD//Online data). Share of Time data based on Total Time values. Source: OPA and Nielsen Online
For years now, the principals here have been preaching that content is king. Not only for search engine optimization (SEO), but also for it being the hub of a social media campaign. A colleague of mine, who is the Chief Marketing Officer of a large travel company has validated these findings with their strategy. Quote: “Blogging is the hub of a social media campaign. Social Media alone is not a strategy for corporations wishing to participate.”
The numbers Jeff shared this morning kind of validates this approach. From a hub, there are spokes to other platforms through sharing. The valuable asset is the content generated.
About the Author: Paul Lorinczi Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.
(affiliate link). In one of the chapters, they talk about people being One Of Us.
Social media has already grown by leaps and bounds. At last count, 
3.4
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