Corporate Blogging

Ethical Corporate Blogging

Ethical corporate blogs are now considered to be an essential component of any effective web presence and search engine marketing campaign. However, there exists a lot of confusion in the marketplace with respect to corporate blogs. In fact, you may be wondering if you really need to have one on your web site at all. In order to make that determination for yourself, you must have a basic understanding of what a blog is, and appreciate the impact that a well constructed, well written corporate blog can create.

"The last original idea was Adam. Eve was already a variation on a theme."

This is true of blogs as well. Blogs are the natural evolution of usenet groups, list servers, discussion forums, personal on-line diaries, and public guest books. Through this evolution, blogs have caused a revolution, and new words now exist in our lexicon to accommodate this growing phenomenon. The word blog is a shortened version of a web log and the intellectual space inhabited by bloggers is called the blogosphere. In case you don't understand the scope and the importance of the mighty blog, in January 2006 comScore Media Metrix estimated that 228 million Internet users read blogs regularly, since then you can be sure this has increased significantly.

Blogs are now or should be an essential component of any company's marketing, communications, and PR strategy. When properly executed corporate blogs can become the voice of the company, giving you a vehicle with which to establish a direct relationship with your customers and your employees that builds trust and loyalty organically. Employing a corporate blogging strategy also allows the company to address people's comments and concerns in a personal and meaningful way. In order to accomplish this you must be responsible and blog ethically. Always be truthful. Make sure that the information that you post on your corporate blog is accurate. If you don't know something or are unsure, admit it. Being human reinforces your honesty and credibility. There is a great deal of importance placed on full disclosure. A deliberate omission can be as damaging as a lie. You must be accountable for what you post in your corporate blog. If you make a mistake, don't delete your corporate blog and hide, hoping that no one will notice. You can be sure that someone will. Acknowledge your mistake, take the appropriate steps to rectify the situation with great alacrity, and move on.

Ethical corporate blogs can be used effectively for both internal and external communications to improve employee relations, customer relations, and to improve business processes. In order to use corporate blogs effectively, one must understand that blogging has created a dramatic change in the way in which the corporate message is delivered. Companies can no longer just talk at their market. They must now be able and ready to engage in dialogue with their market, giving businesses the opportunity to engage the public and promote themselves with ethical corporate blogs. Whether the corporate blog is used to promote new products and/or services, build relationships with employees or customers, establish credibility and trust, spread good news, do damage control on bad news, or as an alternative to newsletters, ethical corporate blogs return very tangible benefits in the form of increased press coverage, higher organic search engine rankings, customer information and lead generation, increased sales, new business opportunities, and in general more buzz about your company both on-line and offline. And best of all corporate blogs give you worldwide exposure as the Internet has no borders or boundaries. A successful ethical blogging strategy will deliver significant sales and marketing gains.

Corporate blogs create a chain reaction, or viral effect, that cannot be duplicated with any other medium or strategy. The key is to produce well written ethical corporate blog content whether it is pertinent information, new ideas, new products, or help in a way that engages and stimulates, while providing value to your audience. If they recognize that value and start to interact with comments and posts to your corporate blogs, then you have created the ideal situation "the viral effect" spreading out across the blogosphere. In order to accomplish this, the content of your corporate blogs must be appealing, relevant, useful, and move your customers to action.

Creating and maintaining a corporate blog can be a complex undertaking. K'nechtology can help you to find the right corporate blogging solution - externally hosted solution or hosted on your own web server - and implementation there of. The most common is the externally hosted solution where in essence you are buying space on someone else's blogging platform. It is a much less complicated and labour intensive option as the host company runs the servers, provides the software and manages everything related to the data. Companies with their own web servers and internal IT department will usually opt for an internally hosted solution. Although this provides for greater flexibility, it is also much more complex.

K'nechtology can write your corporate blogs for you. Blogging is time consuming and must be done well and consistently in order to be effective. And corporate blogging should not be done in a haphazard fashion. Careful thought and planning go into the best ethical corporate blogs. Editorial schedules are created and coordinated with other marketing and sales strategies for maximum effect. Quality ethical corporate blog content is written in order to provide value to your audience and create a viral effect. Most often when companies opt to produce their corporate blogs internally they face problems with waning employee enthusiasm, technological challenges, creating editorial schedules, writing relevant and engaging content, and how to effectively respond to comments and posts. However, if your choice is to produce your corporate blogs in-house, we can train your staff in the art of ethical corporate blogging.

Whether you write your own corporate blogs or K'nechtology writes them for you, we offer a Blog Monitoring and Blog Response Service. We will keep track of blogs and other on-line resources that reference your company in a positive or a negative light. This is a valuable consumer research tool. Postings even from small-time bloggers can get picked up by a search engine and eventually appear for all to see. There may be libelous comments out there in blogosphere that you don't know about. What you don't know can hurt you. In addition to tracking, we can post responses and help you to do damage control when necessary. Monitoring positive posts will give you insightful information on products and or services that are well received in the marketplace or let you know which of your campaigns is proving to be fruitful. And we can respond to these positive comments as well, establishing relationships with satisfied customers.

Contact K'nechtology to discuss how our ethical blogging solutions can benefit your company and positively impact your bottom line