New feature starting up this month: Blog Success Mondays.
I’m not talking about personal blogs. I’m talking about company blogs, corporate blogs.
I am a corporate blogger. I help companies develop their presence online. How do I do that exactly? I write great content, to a specific niche (which is the company’s core readership).
I didn’t start out to do this. I kinda stumbled into it about a year ago when people looked at my own blog (which is so not a corporate blog) and liked my writing voice. It’s an extension of my own business personality. I know what I think when I’m talking business. I am not a wallflower when it comes to my clients. I may be a social misfit, but I know my customer and I know how to help them. Long story short: clients started talking to me about getting that voice for their own blogs. I had no problem with that. Only one issue. I had only written in my voice. Now I had to write in someone else’s.
It took a few tries, but then the first few clients hired me on and the corporate blogging just began to grow on its own. I know a whole lot more today than I knew at the beginning of 2008 about writing other people’s blogs.
The next question everyone asks is: Why does a company need a blog?
Easy answer and I’m going to give it to you straight. The Internet is here to stay. Even if you’re not even online with your products or services, the Internet is where you’ll find the majority of your customers and even if you are a mostly word of mouth business, why not utilize the Internet to speed up that word of mouth process? Couldn’t hurt. I’ve seen amazing results for many companies, both large and small, when they started blogging. It’s called social media. You get known from your blog (and some other social media platform like Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook) and voila, people start equating you with your specialty. It’s the magic of the Internet. Instant platform.
Platform? I know, sounds like another term plucked from obscurity and now everyone throws it around.
Platform, or your niche, is where your influence lies. This is your following, your tribe, your industry, your place to showcase your knowledge. This is your market, your audience, your customer. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a large group of people who trust you to answer their questions about a certain subject? They trust you so much they buy services and products from you without even asking how much. They are repeat customers because they trust that you know your stuff and will guide them to the best results.
That’s what a blog does. It gathers together the people looking for the same thing–what you know best–and connects you with them.
Not convinced? Neither was a client of mine a few months ago. We dipped our toe into the blogging water and we tried a lukewarm version of a blog that was entertaining but not quite there. It was static. Didn’t do anything. Finally, we developed more of a industry-specific niche. We developed a nice blog that showcased this industry and already, the posts radiate the company’s knowledge much more than it did just last summer. Those waves will come back to this business owner in innumerable ways. She will be seen as an expert in her industry and people will continue to flock to her for information and products that help them assimilate that information, while other companies will hire her for projects that will allow her to communicate her knowledge on a much larger scale.
If you have any questions about corporate blogging and how it can improve your company’s platform and influence (and can bring you more customers), please contact me via Twitter.
