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.
Very nice article! What I found really useful was the suggestion to go to Google’s Blog Search! I am going to see if our blogs are listed. Does it matter if your blog is part of your website in order to be found by the Google bots?
Thanks~
I learned about this post through LinkedIn which validates the power of Tip #9.
The last tip I also use – HOWEVER, until reading your post I did not know about Google Blog Search. Thanks for sharing this time saver! Jennifer
Chris – Thank you for your comment. As of today the following Google ranking has been obtained:
1) corporate blogging tips: 18 (was as high as 14 last week). This is up from 48 where is started shortly after being posted.
2) business blogging tips: 37
The cool part is that I have not done any advanced linking. This rank has been achieved entirely by following the tips listed in the three posts. I intend to keep working on these posts in the hopes that I can get on the first page.
Question: Does it matter if your blog is part of your website in order to be found by the Google bots?
Good question!
It’s best to integrate the blog into your website. This allows you the opportunity to rank your website in the search engines; and provides visitors continuity as they browse the rest of your website. This approach also eliminates the need to manage an additional web property. There is some additional cost involved to integrate the blog into your website, but this cost is minor. I like this approach for almost every situation — reputation management and advanced SEO strategies excluded.
If any one of the following are true, you might consider creating a separate blog on Wordpress.com or Blogger.com.
1) You don’t have a website.
2) The cost (a few days work max) of integrating the blog into your website is a big deal.
3) Your primary website already ranks at the top of the search engines for all of your target terms.
4) You want to push a competitor or bad review (negative press) off the first page of the search engines.
Hope this is helpful!
Jennifer – Glad you enjoyed the post(s)! Submission to LinkedIn discussion groups proved very successful. Our traffic is was up as high as 200% above average in the days following publication. The biggest traffic source was LinkedIn.
This surge is diminishing, but search engine traffic is on the rise. Also interesting is that these posts continue to be retweeted without any additional effort on my part.
Thanks again — Brian