Corporate blogging Tips (7-10).
This is the third and final part in a three part series on my top 10 corporate blogging tips.
Corporate Blogging Tip 7 (Fully Utilize the Advanced Features of Your Blogging Platform)
There are a lot of blogging platforms and each had its pros and cons. I’m a Wordpress.org fan, but the other blogging platforms are also very good. The point is to select a platform and learn it. In Wordpress.org, the version of Wordpress that you download and host yourself, there are several useful plugins including pretty permalinks and the all in one SEO pack. There are many more, but as I mentioned in Corporate Blogging Tip 5, I need to stay on message.
Pretty premalinks create a static URL for each post and place the words in your post title in the URL. This is great for SEO. Depending on when you read this post you may notice that we are not using pretty premalinks. This is a limitation of our current host and one that we are in the process of resolving.
The all in on SEO pack allows you to edit the title (the title within the <head> of your document, not the blog post title), meta description, and meta keyword tags. Only the title currently impacts ranking. However, the description often appears on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and can influence searchers to click on your listing. Adding meta keywords is just a good practice.
Corporate Blogging Tip 8 (Publish Frequently)
You should post at least once a week. This is easier said than done. Your efforts will be rewarded if you post regularly.
Corporate Blogging Tip 9 (Distribute/Re-purpose Blog Content)
One of the benefits corporations get from blogging is that they can leverage their investment in the creation of blog posts over and over again. Corporate blog posts can be the subject of white papers, presentations (as this post will be), seminars, and webinars (which this post is).
Social media is an important aspect of corporate blogging. Twitter, LinkedIn, facebook, YouTube, podcasts and social bookmarking are great ways to distribute posts and develop a following.
- Twitter – Tweet blog titles and include a link back your post. I use bit.ly to shorten my URLs.
- LinkedIn
- Use the LinkedIn Wordpress application (or similar application if you are not using Wordpress) to integrate snippets from your blog posts into your profile.
- Join LinkedIn groups that are interesting to your customers. When on the main page of a group, you can start a discussion by clicking on the “start a discussion” link and adding the title, an excerpt, and a link to your post (again use a shortener like bit.ly). If you post compelling titles and good content, you will earn the right to engage with group members.
- Facebook – Similar to LinkedIn.
- YouTube/Podcasts – Film/Record someone “presenting” your post and publish your this content to YouTube/iTunes and other video and podcast sites.
- Social Bookmarking – Encourage readers to bookmark your posts by integrating one of the many bookmarking icons/tools in your blog.
Corporate Blogging Tip 10 (Create Buzz by Posting Comments on Other blogs)
Go to Google Blog search and search for your selected keywords. In the case of this post, I would search for corporate blogging and corporate blogging tips. Post a minimum of three comments per post. For really important (competitive keywords) posts add as many as 20 comments to popular blogs. Don’t spam other bloggers. Take the time to leave valuable comments. You don’t have to agree with the other blogger, just be genuine.
Use Google Blog Search to find related blogs. Post meaningful comments and link back to your post. If you provide value, other bloggers will start to comment on your posts.
This concludes part three. Click on one of the below links to view Business Blogging Tips – Part 1, or the Blogging for Business Tips – Part 2.
