Online Marketing Blog

Numerous companies start blogs to better connect with customers (but often through a narcissistic lens).  In most cases, Public Relations departments manage social media and blogging for companies which is great for promoting key messages and distributing information. That’s the Push side of PR. But the Pull is often overlooked.

Most corporate blogs are not only boring, but they’re disappointingly difficult to locate on search engines. Key messages, voice and timing are considered, but keywords to drive search traffic are not.

Numerous PR practitioners have approached me after I’ve given a SEO for PR presentation and mention that they’ve never thought of, or just don’t know how, to include search keywords in the copy. Here are a few, simple tips I’ve followed for years here at Online Marketing Blog that companies can follow to increase search traffic and visibility to corporate blog content.

With over 100 million blogs tracked by Technorati, there is a tremendous amount of momentum and motivation for businesses to take advantage of all the marketing, PR, support and revenue opportunities that business blogs can bring.

Sometimes it seems there are more “blog consultants” than there are business blogs due to the ease of using free blog software like Blogger or WordPress.com/Wordpress.org. What’s easy to get into is also easy to get out of and many business blog efforts that started out with optimism have petered out like a car out of gas.

Dying corporate blogs (hat tip mykl) are completely avoidable, especially if you understand why they often fail and plan accordingly. Here are 5 of the top reasons why business blogs never make it.

When talking with TopRank or M&O Account Teams about new clients, it is inevitable that I will ask if there is a blog involved. There are simply too many advantages to enabling a web site with fresh, themed content that is well structured for SEO benefits and that also offers a great platform for creative promotion, not to consider it in the online marketing mix. However, the mis-perceptions about what a blog is and is not abound, even with self-described “blogging experts”.

Despite that, I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question for a company to ask: “Why should we have a blog and what will it do for us?” Answering that question in the most effective way possible starts with understanding the business and marketing goals of the company. Too many SEOs and blogging consultants focus on the mechanical capabilities of a blog and not on the business goals that can be met.

Blogs are useful for many marketing and communication purposes. They’re also useful simply as software that manages content. Businesses can use blogs to communicate a corporate vision, to build thought leadership corporate-wide or for subject matter experts. Blogs can be very useful in support of public and media relations efforts and they are certainly excellent tools for making a site more search friendly with fresh content that attracts incoming links.

One of the best resources for blog content comes out of interactions with prospects and customers. If an organization can tap into the flow of dialog that happens between front line employees such as sales people and customer support there is an abundance of valuable content available. If customers and potential customers have questions about certain topics, then it’s pretty likely that many others will too.

Blogs have been one of the big buzz items in 2006 along with social media. It seems companies are still trying to figure out whether blogging is worthwhile for their business and where social media fits in within overall marketing strategy. The number of “blog consultants” also appears to be growing at a much faster rate than business blog adoption.

For our clients, we use blogs extensively in both our public relations practice as well as for search engine optimization. One of the most productive uses of blog software as a content management system is for an online media room.

Jim Boykin is taking a break from blogging and getting down to business, a very good idea worth exploring but sad because Jim puts out some excellent information.

Matt Cutts interview with eMarketing Talkshow

Jobs in Search turns 2 years old

New SEO candidate articles at Marketing Pilgrim

Putting Blogs to Work for Wall Street – CNET article on using blog and social media tracking services to give traders competitive intelligence on investor sentiment

Marketing Sherpa released findings of a Technology Marketing survey that include blogs and podcasts as two of the top 5 lead generation tactics for technology, hardware and software firms. Overall, the top 5 lead generation tactics were:

1. Free Trials
2. Webcast
3. White paper
4. Blog
5. Podcast

Of course, if you’re a really good marketer, you would be able to tie in four or five of the above into one campaign, especially when integrated with a blog. Not that you need to offer all five to have a successful campaign, but providing options for how to interact or make contact with your company allows you to reach more of your target audience. A podcast may work for some people, a free trial or a white paper for others. One of the new features of this report is the 13 prospect personas of prospects such as CIOs, IT professionals and business owners.