Build Your Brand
Every company has a brand — and if it hasn’t been strategically created, it’s been created for you. That brand leads to how consumers — or purchasing companies — perceive your organization. It’s what makes you interesting or funny or quirky or likeable. It is your company’s personality.
That said, a blog is a powerful tool toward establishing that brand and identity. Through words, you have a direct line of access to your purchasers. Sure, you can use it to inform them of your products or services — but if you do just that, odds are you won’t have a high returning readership. Instead, use it as an opportunity to discuss industry-relevant items with them. That could mean a hot news story, a new software or technology, new study — as long as it’s relevant and/or newsworthy, it’s fair game. Take that story and run with it, staying “in character” to build your brand and corporate personality while also connecting with your target audience.
Increase Visibility
Beyond building your brand, your company needs to find — or continue to gain — its foothold in the industry. That’s the thing about business, after all — your work is never done. Blogging is a great way to gain visibility for your organization and to position it — and its leaders — as true leaders and thought leaders in the space.
From Fortune 500 blogs that gain nearly automatic followings to the new-to-town blogger posting fun finds and tips through fresh eyes, every blogger has a shot to gain visibility and earn a following. It’s what you do with that opportunity — and how you use the floor — that makes a difference.
Be original. Take an opinion — it may not be popular, but that will likely only contribute to the discussion. Look at blogging as a way to take a stance, announce — and discuss — the latest and greatest, and to position your leadership and talent as leaders.
Discoverability
You’ve likely heard about SEO (short for search engine optimization). If not, do a quick Google (wait for it … you’ll get the pun in a minute).
More or less, each company needs a way to be found. With 90 percent of Internet experiences these days starting with search, it stands to reason that winning a first-page placement in Google’s search results will help with earning you Web traffic and — ultimately — clients.
There are hundreds of factors (could be thousands … the algorithms are a constantly changing mystery) that determine what shows up in search results and in which order — and while we’ll likely never know exactly what they are at any given moment, we do know that relevancy and timeliness count.
Every time that you post a blog, you are publishing new content to the Web — that content is time stamped, temporarily getting a little boost in the search rankings for being new. If you’re blogging, odds are that you are posting regularly (and hopefully often) — this turns that temporary boost from that one post into an ongoing traffic boost that keeps on giving.
Additionally, since you’re posting content relevant to what you do, and likely including links to external sites as well as to relevant pages on your own site, you get some organic backlink points. Not to mention that the relevancy means that your content likely matches up to what people are searching for — this is something that Google is really working to hone — so when your content naturally matches and is found as truly relevant, it spells good things for your search rank.
All of these things contribute to your SEO rank — or, in laymen’s terms, your company’s discoverability.
1 More Revenue Stream
Blogging is a great way to earn revenue — and while there is likely a bit of a split between most corporate blogs and hobby blogs, the potential is still there.
For self-contained, highly branded corporate blogs, the revenue opportunity lives through your blog as a way to direct traffic to your service and product pages.
For hobby bloggers, once you are established, you are eligible to participate in Google Ads or a variety of other monetary-earning ad programs, or even sell your own ad space.
There are tons of benefits to blogging — from getting a creative outlet and way to communicate to establishing a brand, building your reputation as an innovator and thought leader to even earning revenue. That said, to truly capitalize on the opportunity, you need to do three things:
1. Be relevant to what you offer. If you blog on behalf of a technology company, stay away from politics, gossip, etc. — do what you do.
2. Be dependable. If you only post once a week, that’s OK — your readers will get that. But don’t post every day for a month and randomly drop to once a week without warning. Need help maintaining that regularity? Consider using a professional blogging service, such as Beezcontent.com — you’ll get the benefits of regular blog posts written by professionals, while still keeping your own time.
3. Be someone. Don’t lose your voice in an effort to be completely corporate or professional. People read blogs because they like the bloggers — they want to know what you have to say … so say it.
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