This week's Ruud Questions is a little bit different due to our SEP Experts Week on Blogging.
I'm talking with Paul Wylie to get another angle on business-driven blogging.
Initially blogging was very personal. Now blogging can also take the form of reporting. For a business, for a company, which considers blogging, what angle should they pursue?
Business blogging is a slippery slope each company must fully understand the complexities involved before decided if their company wants to commit to blogging.
Not all companies are transparent enough to open their doors to the world. In todays business environment a company needs to communicate with their prospects, clients and business peers in near real time; blogging can be one way to do so.
Not everybody is a good writer or blogger. Egos can easily get in the way, especially when it belongs to somebody higher up. What is a good business strategy to decide who blogs when, what?
Your company must have a strategy and a clear way of implementing those strategies.
One main concern for any company is reputation management. The company ideally should have a media marketing team or at the least hire a consultant to set some guidelines. Then appoint a spokesperson to be the companies eyes and ears.
As far as when to blog I suggest starting with a post or two per week to get the feel of it and to prevent blog abandonment.
Make time in your scheduale to blog in a timely manner. If you have an editorial process in place then follow your guidelines. Before long you will look forward to writing that next blog post and not look upon blogging as thing you have to do.
How would you explain the benefits of blogging to a client?
Here is your chance to step up onto the soap-box and proclaim to the world just who you are and what you represent!
In todays marketplace you can ill afford not to take advantage of blogging. You don't have to look far; just see what your competitor is doing and it becomes pretty clear what the benefits are.
One, increase in traffic to your site which can equate to new customers.
Two, positioning your business as an authority in your business genre.
Three, an increase of links to your site which in turn may posiition you higher in the SERPS.
If you do not have a company blog you should seriously consider having one.
So do you think that business blogging is primarily for SEO?
My backgound is SEO so I am prone to the benefits of blogging for SEO benefits. However, in business the last thing you should be worried about is SEO.
Blogging is wonderful platform for you to engage, capture and convert your visitors. Imagine, the power of converting your visitors to become brand evangilists; passing your blog post to their friends, placing your RSS feed on their sites for their visitors so that they too can enjoy your postings...