Corporate Blogging For Quality Relationships
by: Joseph Pratt
The struggle for customer share is as intense as ever, and companies need to shore up their corporate message in anyway they can. Corporate weblogs, or “blogs”, are a great, cost-effective way to engage customers, fellow professionals, or merely the curious. This opportunity to reach thousands of interested people requires no hefty advertising budget, yet can significantly strengthen your client-customer relationship. Taking dialogue online means added and valuable interaction with your customers.
A corporate blog can be used in any number of ways, from an informational hub to an online diary for a sales rep. They tend to be no less varied than personal blogs are. They deliver on-point messages to anyone who reads it. Since blog entries often have a personal touch, they tend to reach readers in ways a company homepage can’t. This is where creative and well written blogs can really count; quality keeps people coming back. A blog isn’t a venue for the hard sale but instead a resource where resource where readers can stay informed or sign up for newsletters and emailings.
Just because lemonade stands can afford to blog doesn’t mean it’s not something for the big guys, either. One well known corporate blogger, Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman of General Motors, has found tremendous success with his “Fast Lane” blog. Thousands of daily readers get his thoughts daily on all things automotive, with a decided emphasis on GM. What’s more, these daily readers are usually car buffs and industry and not a motley cross-section. His blog’s success lends influence to his opinion and GM’s corporate message. Just as many readers of Lutz’s blog are in the car industry, those who’d read your corporate blog would most likely be in your field, too. It’s targeted readership, just what the blogger wants.
2005 marks the year that blogs finally got hot, probably because people are realizing how valuable targeted Internet flow is. In an advertising sense, sure, that’s value in search marketing. It’s somewhat similar for a corporate blog, especially considering the high interest level of writer and readership. It’s high quality interaction where a person and a company can do themselves good amongst some people who really count: their peers and interested customers. Blogs do not generate smorgasbords of readership that resemble radio listening audiences. This is new media, where quality trumps quantity.
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Corporate Blogging For Quality Relationships
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