Well, I would imagine that most of you reading this post are currently in the middle of figuring out how a corporate blog is going to help your company in 2009 with all of your new social media initiatives. Search no further, as the answers are all around you.
I daily talk to Marketing Directors who are researching corporate blogging software to gather more information on how the blog can help them create community to drive business. If you take anything from this post remember this. People can only JOIN your community if they can GET to your community. As a company you should let your blog work for both. You must be found for people to participate in interacting with you. So, your first order of priority with your blog is making sure to blog for search engine optimization. If you can leverage a blog to allow you to live at the top of the organic search rankings the community aspect will follow.
The benefits of blogging can trump many other types of on-line strategies because of their ability to aid a company with all of their main initiatives at once. We need to win search...done. We need to relate to customers on a personal level....done. We need to create community....done. We need to grow our search traffic.....done. We need to drive our bottom line...done. We need an affordable on-line marketing solution...DONE. All can be accomplished if the blogging architecture is correct.
Don't fear the blog, embrace it. Stop researching, stop worrying, stop thinking about "I hope this works". Embrace a blogging strategy and the desired results will follow. It is time to get to work on your business, it is time to concentrate on return..it is time to blog.
