A common comment made by companies large and small. What isn't common? Is the understanding that you can't simply dip your toe into these waters, you have to dive in or be prepared to swim with the fishes. Okay, that is probably enough aquatic references for today...
Creating a blog is one thing, diving into the community that you hope will engage, read and follow your blog is another. To take a line from the infamous Gary Vaynerchuck... you have to get in the trenches, bitches.
Before you decide to start a corporate blog, here are a few suggestions.
- Promise transparency - be truthful, authentic and personable.
- Listen to your customers - bring issues (good and bad) onto your blog.
- Give something away - whether it is a best practice, tips, report, PowerPoint, information fed into the community will help build social equity.
- Make it easy for people to comment and participate.
- Link love- link back to areas of your site as well as other sites of interest.
- Chill on the marketing speak - this is a place to be conversational, not speak like a robot.
- Make it social - make it easy for others to bookmark the content, subscribe etc.
- Give it personality - what can people expect to hear from you.
- Be the first to provide a statement - in case of an outage or other issue, make sure you use the blog to communicate to your customers and community before someone else does.
- Commit or don't do it... This isn't a one time thing, you need to dive in.
Good luck and if you would like to learn what not to do, give me a call. I have a catalog of lessons learned the hard way!
