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.

These days it seems as if every corporation has tried its hand at blogging. The more corporate blogs that exist in the blogosphere, the more difficult it becomes to gain blog subscribers by creating one that’s truly unique. To ensure your corporate blog stands out from the crowd, follow these 5 tips:

1. Talk about something other than yourself. Too many corporate marketers make the mistake of creating blogs as purely another mechanism to talk about their products and services. While increased sales and improved brand visibility may be two fundamental goals of a corporate blog, there are more effective ways for achieving those goals that just pushing product.

The most successful corporate blogs leverage product and service information with relevant industry news, human interest pieces, case studies and other useful information. That balance is what keeps readers coming back time and again.

SES New York did pretty well  considering many conferences are feeling the effects of business budget cuts. Publisher and VP Matt McGown stated that over 5,000 people attended 2009 SES New York.

Social media often folds well into search marketing and blogging represents a great example of the intersection between creating optimized content and a platform for enabling customers to be social with companies.  Some businesses have started blogs only to see them lose steam and die. Others are fearful of starting blogs in case customers make negative comments. 

My presentation for the Business Blogging session addresses both the common reasons business blogs fail and offers several tips for running a successful corporate blog, long term.

Note from Lee:  GasPedal and the blog council have partnered to deliver another BlogWell event (this time in Chicago) focusing on case studies from large companies on the topics of blogging, social media and online community building. I am pleased to introduce a guest blog post from Tonja Deegan, winner of a free pass from TopRank, who was a media sponsor of the event. Enjoy! 

A common thread that wove through the case study presentations at BlogWell was that the majority of the time, someone within a company took a chance, started something small online to make a connection and watched it grow.

Please welcome guest blogger Jessica Rosenberg, a freelance writer and active social media user who blogs daily at It’s my life… and does product reviews at The Lemonade Stand. Jessica attended  BlogWell: “How Big Companies Use Social Media” event this week in San Jose.

As sponsors of BlogWell, TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog also did a pre-event group interview with social media gurus from Wells Fargo, Home Depot, UPS & Graco who presented at the event.

Eight major companies gathered in San Jose, CA this week to demonstrate how they are using social media the “right” way.

The goal of the BlogWell conference, organized by GasPedal, specialist of word of mouth marketing, was to show corporations interested in entering this new and nontraditional field how to navigate the scary waters of social media marketing.

Whether to blog or not and exactly how to do it are big questions for many companies that have not jumped on the business blogging bandwagon yet. For companies that want to learn, there are many channels to choose from ranging from the many articles we’ve written on blog marketing and more recently, this roundup of news stories from the social web:

Blogging Becomes Mainstream – eMarketer article by Senior Analyst Paul Verna, “Blogging has become so pervasive and influential that the lines between blogging and the mainstream media have disappeared.” Data from a survey run by Technorati and Decipher.

Why Pharma Fears Social Networking – Not all indusries are keen on blogging and this article from BrandWeek explains the push behind the Pharmaceutical industry to get on board with social media.

Incorporating a company blog into your social media and marketing mix can be a tug of war, finding both supporters and defeaters within the organization.

At the MIMA Summit (Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association) this afternoon, I attended a session discussing the pros and cons, along with the challenges a corporate blogger must overcome to represent the company and still make a connection with the blogging community.

Valeria Maltoni is a blogger at Conversation Agent and Director of Marketing Communications for SunGard. Valeria kicked off the session with a discussion around how an organization can get started with social media and a company blog.

As a business and marketing professional, we are tasked to find different ways to make a profit, find new customers, and build the company brand.

This session at Media Relations Summit includes Tac Anderson from HP, Jennifer Cisney from Kodak and Robert Scoble from Fast Company.

First up is Tac Anderson from HP, who shares a specific example of a tactical execution of a blog. HP has had bloggers for 3 years. 60+ blogs.

Example of using a business blog as a competitive response. Xerox announced a change in pricing. Charging more for the printer and less for the consumables – ink and paper.

The next day, HP blogger Vince Ferraro responded followed by analyst responses. Ensuing media coverage became more about HP’s response than the original Xerox announcement. HP was able to instantly get their viewpoint into the coverage by using a blog.

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.

As part of a blog optimization panel I participated in during a recent conference in Australia, I decided to forgo the bulleted list of blog plugins and recommendations that you typically see on such sessions in favor of something more personal.

The presentation focused on 3 of the biggest mistakes we’ve made with Online Marketing Blog in the past 3 years, why we made them (and why others do too), what we learned, what you can do to avoid them and the expected outcomes.

This format was well received, so I thought I’d share them here.

Mistake Number One: Goals.

March has been a bit crazy so far as we’ve been rolling out an enormous SEO campaign for one Fortune 20 client and are in the final stages of signing another. On top of that, March will be a speakorama on blogs and public relations.

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting for the IABC chapter in Minneapolis at St. Thomas University with Sarah Bjelland, a VP from Wells Fargo. The event was called, “Delivering Insight into Business Blogs” and I presented on social media in general, trends with business blogging, applications for blog software in a corporate communications strategy and best practices for corporate blogs.

I just received my copy of Debbie Weil’s new book, “The Corporate Blogging Book – Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get it Right”. Debbie has worked long and hard on this book and with a forward from Bob Lutz, Chairman of General Motors, it promises to serve as an excellent guide to companies looking to find their place in the blogosphere. Chapters range from “Top Twenty Questions About Corporate Blogging” to “Should the CEO Blog?”. Check out the companion site where you can download a free chapter or order it via Amazon.

Both Debbie and I are involved with BusinessBlogConsulting.com started by Rick Bruner that now includes an impressive list of business blog consultants and marketers.