Corporate Blog Guidelines

First there was junk mail in your home mail box and then there was spam (term for junk email). This is why it is important to not SPAM your blog. You might be saying how can I be spammy in my blog? Here are a few things you should do in your posts:

• Be relevant and authentic in your posts.

If someone arrives at your site via search, the content better have some useful information for the potential customer.  If it doesn't, your blog will sound like one of those rarely-read newsletters that accompany the monthly utility bills, and they'll move on with no compelling reason to learn more about you.

• Keep Content Format Clean.

Avoid using:

• All capital letters
• Multiple exclamation points
• Underlining things that aren’t links
• Highlighting text
• Excessive bolding
• Multiple font colors in the same post

Of course, the intention of the sender is to grab your attention with ALL THAT FANCY STUFF!!! But the truth is, if a company has to work that hard to make its content look enticing, then the content is probably not all that valuable.

Keep your content formatting clean, simple, and consistent. Images, hyperlinks, and some bolding here and there to call out key points are just fine. But if you spend more time formatting your content than you spend writing it, this is a red flag.

• Don’t Stuff Keywords.

The biggest problem with keyword stuffing is this: it is a huge turn-off to your blog visitors since it interferes with their ability to read your content.  The second problem is that overusing keyword phrases is a turn-off to search engines since it can be indicative of content spam.

There is a natural balance to using keyword phrases within your content, and it is in your best interest to stick with this balance. There isn’t necessarily a ratio you need to worry about – a simple way to check the balance is read your posts out loud and see if they sound natural.

Remember that it is the search engines job to deliver the most relevant content to the searcher. Follow these guidelines to optimize your content for the engines and ultimately the force that drives them - the searchers.

Wal-Mart is attempting to bounce back from its earlier attempts at blogging, which the blogosphere denounced as a disguise for the company's PR department. Wal-Mart learned right then that it needed to be authentic online at all times...

Honest reviews about the products they sell are obviously a good thing, and fake reviews only accenting the positives would not be authentic, but how is that going to drive consumers to the store to buy that product if its own employees are giving it a bad review? Is authenticity enough?

"Words, once they are printed have a life of their own."-Carol Burnett

When you walk into a book store what books tend to attract you most?  I'm guessing a majority of you would either say title or cover design?

In my opinion, title.

So, now put that in perspective of search engines.  Search engines love titles.  Why?  There are several guidelines search engines use to find the best and most relevant content for the inquirer.   One of those guidelines are page titles.  The more relevant the title relates to what the searcher is looking for and of course related to your content, the better.  So, when your focusing on blogs related to your organization and want to win search, make sure you name that blog exactly what the content is about.  Here at Compendium, we focus on several categories we want to win…and the splendor of it all, the “compending process” within our software, makes this goal a simple and efficient process!

Problem #1: How can we acquire new customers?

Brainstorm Idea: Pay people to search our URL

If only it were that easy, except it is…

This is a great question that came into Blogging Best Practices 

...Our main hurdle is this, we can provide guidelines and tools to employees and let them blog at will. However, when the comments hit the fan, do we allow the bad coverage and address or just deny the bad coverage and act as if we can do no wrong?

Answer:

Great question Dan. With Compendium Blogware, all comments are moderated. The question is where do you draw the line on what gets published and what get's buried?

Blogging Best Practices call for as much transparency as possible. However, you of course want to screen out inappropriate material, off topic things and just basic immaturity.

However...the issue comes in about actual negative comments that might just be true. Every organization has to make their own decision but again, I think most Corporate Blogging strategies should consider that these are great opportunities to participate in the discussion.

You have to assume that if a person is motivated enough to post a negative comment to you...chances are they are going to tell others of there negative feelings as well. The key is to participate. Head off the discussion by explaining why this situation happend or how you have addressed a legitimate failure.

The general rule of thumb is that you would sure rather have people complain to you than feel they have no outlet and complain to the world in their own blog or social network. The conversation is going to happen weather you are there are not....so you better be participating.

Of course with easy to use blogging software, you at least have the ability through your blogging soltion to keep your business blogging under control. 

Thanks for the question. Chris

Okay, so my blogging bright and early every morning pledge didn't hold for a few days this week, but I'm back on the wagon and ready to talk about content frequency again.

I was in a meeting last week with our PR firm, who has decided to start blogging with Compendium. The owner of the PR firm (Chris Dittoe) had a great idea that came up with a pretty darn good idea of having a rotation schedule for content creation. Every single person in his organization will be blogging (wohoo!) which is a great mentality. Some clients have indicated that they're going to set aside 15-20 minutes at the beginning of each day to have their employees write, but Chris suggested a rotation schedule so that employees have certain days where they should plan on writing.

I think this is a great idea and makes for better blogging because a) people won't tire of content creation b) there is a guideline as to what's expected from those participating and c) by spreading the content contribution around to several people, he's going to get a lot of different perspectives and insights that just wouldn't be possible if it were only Chris blogging (not that we wouldn't enjoy reading his blog...).

So my point here is to find what works for your organization. Try the rotation schedule, the top 'o the morning approach, and more. It's funny how the same themes that run throughout marketing also apply to blogging (marketers are supposed to test, track, and adjust, right?). Well, no surprise...it's the same thing here.

• Start with descriptive blog post titles.
• Include keywords in the title and in the body text specific to your organization for those terms you want to optimize for search.
• Be consistent, three or four posts per week is a good amount.
• Include links within your posts to other relevant resources.
• When your blog post was inspired by an article you read, link to it as a reference.
• Comment on other blogs within your topic area and include a link back to your blog.
• A great resource is a post from the copyblogger, Internet marketing strategist Brian Clark, titled SEO Copywriting 2.0.

In the last few weeks, as we've met with beta clients and potential clients, I've started seeing a pattern with respect to the questions that organizations ask. Perfect blog fodder, of course.

A lot of those questions surround the guidelines for business blogs. And although Compendium Software is software provide rather than a services agency, we are happy to offer insight and education when it comes to tactics that help an organization achieve blogging success.

And corporate blogging guidelines DO play a key in your company's blogging success because it will impact the nature of the content generated within the organization, the frequency at which is generated, and the quality of it.

So where to start? Below you'll find a quick and dirty list of what to consider with respect to your for blogging guidelines.

1. Who do you want to blog?

2. How often should they blog?

3. What should they blog about?

4. What should they not blog about?

5. Who should approve the content?

What's pertinent to your organization? How would you implement, modify, or amend these?

As Chris mentioned in his last post, Risks in Corporate Blogging,the key is to utilize a blogging platform that is able to reinforce these guidelines with the appropriate features, workflow, and approval processes. It will only help with your blogging success, while at the same time, making it easier for you to control and leverage the power of blogging within your organization.

If blogging is so great, you may be wondering why more companies aren't blogging. Good question. And the answer is a four letter "F" word. No, not that one! It's F-E-A-R that's keeping them from leveraging blogs.

Fear that if they open up the organization and allow several people to share their thoughts and point of view, they may be opening themselves up to liability issues, public criticism, and more. It's a scary thing, isn't it? On the one end, you want your organization to be authentic. You want freedom of speech to prevail. And on the other end, you have the responsibility to represent your organization in an appropriate and consistent manner.

Control and compliance mechanisms and a checks-and-balances approval process which ensure that, if needed, content is checked before it hits the web, is a way to put the fear at bay. At the same time, there must be a happy medium between complete lack of control and absolute control, or else your employees aren't going to want to blog. No one likes having their words completely taken out of context or scrubbed down to the point that they lose their original message. But, as we both know, if an employee is "trash-talking" the organization and wants to publish it to his or her blog, the issue probably runs deeper than just wanting to write something nasty, and corrective measures need to be taken.

In the email marketing world, there is a fine line between delivering messages of relevance and delivering junk that your readers will eventually tune out of. The same goes for the corporate blogging world, but more on the internal side. There is a fine line between compliance and "censorship" and the definitions and guidelines may be different depending on the company.

The good thing is that just like with the email example, where unsubscribe rates and low open rates will tell you whether you have crossed the line, the same is true in the blogging world. If frequency of content contribution goes down, or many employees stop blogging all together, your company may have solved the fear issue but needs to reevaluate if there is middle ground that solves the fear aspect and keeps your employees engaged.