Corporate Blogging: A New Marketing Communication Tool For Companies

A corporate blogging is a blog published by or with the support of an organization to reach that organization’s goals. Corporate blogging are giving established companies and obscure brands alike the ability to connect with their audiences on a more personal level, build trust, collect valuable feedback and foster strengthened business relationships. More importantly, these companies are enjoying tangible returns in their blogging investment in the form of increased sales, partnerships, business opportunities, press coverage and lead generation.

In marketing terms, a corporate blogging can bring a human personality to a faceless company, which can create a connection between the corporation and the client. This can lead to deeper loyalty and richer feedback. As of February 2008, over 10% of Fortune 500 companies use corporate blogging as a marketing tool. Why? It is because corporate blogging provides an opportunity for businesses small and large to engage and interact with customers.

Corporate blogs can be classified into six different categories. Each category shares common characteristics and the blog content can be expected to differ between the categories. The six categories of corporate blogging are Sales blogs, Relationship blogs, Branding blogs, Knowledge blogs, Collaboration blogs, and Culture blogs.

The advantages of corporate blogging are:

1) Build rapport with customers. Through the publish of a corporate blog, the company is giving their customers a channel to interact and get to know their brand and organisation in a format that they’re familiar and comfortable with.

2) Free feedback and suggestions from key constituents. Corporate blogging gives the company insights to what people are saying about their products, their brand, their competitors, their marketing from the comfort of their office chair.

3) Increased website traffic from higher search engine rankings. It is Because blogs are so easy to publish, the company can adding new content to their website more frequently. Search engines favour websites with fresh content and ranks their blog higher in search results, which in turn results in a greater number of referrals from search engines to their website and blog.

4) Position the company business as a thought leader. One of the most effective marketing strategies is “Show, don’t tell”. The company can use their corporate blog to take advantage of this strategy by demonstrating their expertise and experience in their industry through commentary, guides, analysis, etc. The quality of their blog content reflects the quality of their organisation.

References:
http://www.backbonemedia.com/blogsurvey/
http://www.corporateblogging.info/basics/corporatebloggingprimer.pdf
http://www.netdynasty.com/articles/pr/corporate blogs/