The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
October 2006, Volume 5, Issue 10

In the Company of Others: The Art of Active Blogging

Charmaine Madamba, Search Marketing Specialist, iProspect

Envision yourself maintaining a corporate blog. Shortly after publishing a post about your new product that was just launched, you read a list of comments posted by readers of the blog. Two of the comments read as follows:

iHeartGadgets says:
“Great idea to update to version 5.0, but when I couldn’t figure out how to use some of the new features, I called your customer service line. Not only were they rude, they didn’t understand any of my questions. I’m still confused!”

WalterWidget says:
“With version 5.0, you did not take into account the industry reviews that suggested incorporating crucial features that were missing from version 4.0. How come?”

Now if you’re an active blogger with any sort of marketing sense whatsoever, you wouldn’t just shrug and say, “Hmm. How unfortunate.” You’d want to immediately get involved in the conversation that those comments started and turn what could be potentially damaging feedback into something positive for your organization.

To get intelligently involved in the conversation would require you to take note of these comments, bring them to product teams and colleagues for internal discussion, and then acknowledge the feedback in upcoming posts. In order to be viewed as a reputable blog and attract loyal visitors, you must be actively engaged at all times. This involves responding to visitor conversations and keeping content interesting, accurate and fresh—while also managing as best you can the positive and negative rhetoric that the blog produces.

Companies—Why Blog?

It seems like a lot of work. So why put in the time and effort? The benefits to setting up a blog may vary from one company to another, but above all, a blog is an effective and efficient way to regularly connect with your target audience in an informal, interactive, conversational manner.

Here are some additional blogging benefits:

Blogs provide your company with an avenue for sharing ideas knowledge and expertise.
They offer you the opportunity to engage an audience and build a community.
Building and maintaining a blog is relatively easy and low cost (mostly just time).
Blogs provide an additional channel for search engine optimization, linking, and directory research (through blog directories such as Technorati, Google Blog Search, or Feedster).
Blogging can differentiate your company from your competitors that are not blogging.
Blogging allows you to communicate across other blogs by implementing various software programs.

Talk Amongst Yourselves: < Insert Topic Here >. Discuss.

By allowing your blog’s visitors to share their opinions by posting comments, you establish a dialog with potential customers—garnering feedback and information directly from your target audience. And typically, the most interesting and useful content comes from comments posted by visitors, rather than from the owner of the blog.

Here are two communication features that you should consider implementing on your blog:

One way for visitors to become more engaged with your blog is to set up a “talk-back” feature. A number of blog service providers, such as Blogger, Bloglines and TypePad, offer this option which allows visitors to comment on posts.
Another way for visitors to become more actively involved is for the blog to support the TrackBack protocol. TrackBack is a mechanism that allows communication between blogs through comments being exchanged. If one blogger writes a comment about an entry on another blog, and both blogs support TrackBack, then the blogger leaving the comment can alert the other blog with a “ping.” The other blog may then display the comment and perhaps include a link back to the initial blog as well. This allows bloggers to expand their community to those reading other blogs quickly and easily.

In Good Company

Like your corporate website, blogs also benefit from external links that point to them because they help build link popularity. Links from relevant websites and blogs also establish credibility for your blog and help keep conversations flowing by exposing your blog to larger audiences.

Here are some things to do when building external links to your blog:

Research blogs that are relevant to your industry. Analyze the content within these blogs, current links, the nature of their posts, Google PageRank, overall format, etc.
Send a personalized email to each blogger from whom you would like to obtain a link. This will indicate sincere interest and increase the success of obtaining a link partnership. The biggest mistake that you can make is to send an email that screams: TEMPLATE.
Assuming that you have implemented the talk-back feature, consider implementing the TrackBack protocol as mentioned above. Other blogs that also support TrackBack may include links to your website that coincide with visitor comments.

The potential offered by the blogosphere to enhance search engine results is undeniable. The growing utilization of blogs and bloggers alike is a reality with which any search marketer must reckon. It is the community that blogs create, and the relationships within that community, that can contribute to the credibility of the blog and to the other blogs and websites to which it is connected. Presumably, the old adage still holds true: “You are known by the company you keep.”

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The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: October 2006, Volume 5, Issue 10

In the Company of Others: The Art of Active Blogging

The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
October 2006, Volume 5, Issue 10