The Benefits of Business Blogging

What is a Blog?

According to Pyra Labs/Google, creators of Blogger, “A blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically — like a journal.” The term is actually weblogs coined by Jorn Barger in 1997.

Weblogs exploded in 1999 when several companies and developers created the first blogging software. Movable Type, WordPress and Pyra Labs (now a part of Google) offered people the chance to express themselves with easy-to-use tools. They could write posts, add photos, link to other blogs and publish everything themselves without knowing any HTML. Since then, the number of blogs on the Internet has exploded from a few thousand to an estimated 50 million by 2005. 

Blogging entered the limelight during the run-up to the 2004 elections when the top political bloggers were invited to attend both the Republican and Democratic conventions as members of the press. This was a savvy move for attracting younger voters. Not only are young adults more likely to read blogs, they are also nine times as likely to have their own personal blog. Young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 make up 25% of all adult bloggers but only 9% of the general adult online population. As they grow older, these young adults will bring their blogging habits with them into the mainstream. Blog use has grown significantly in the past year — online consumers who regularly read blogs increased from 2% in 2003 to 5% in 2004. (Source: Forrester).

Business Blogging

While blogging started as a form of personal expression, it has evolved to include business blogs, which serve as corporate tool for communicating with customers or as a method for employees to share knowledge and expertise.

For business owners without the time to learn HTML or the money to hire a designer/developer, blogging offers an inexpensive method to get their company’s name out on the Internet without the expense of advertising.

Companies can also use blogs to provide internal teams with frequent project updates, or to deliver product support information to customers. In contrast to ordinary Web tools that aren’t designed for frequent updates, blogs make it easy to create new material on a daily or hourly basis. Old entries can be edited easily and comments from readers can be added which make blogs an excellent forum for discussion. 

Are blogs good for business?

Blogs aren’t for everybody. But unlike other ideas that got puffed up during the Internet bubble, they are becoming a big deal, especially in terms of improving communication with customers, particularly the affluent male, broadband-connected ones that form the core blogging audience. Most companies believe that they need to “message to” their customers - as opposed to having a conversation with them. Blogs can be a natural, easy extension of an existing relationship or a forced march into openness that will come across as insincere. Monster.com gave its team of career advisors, who usually write career how-to articles, an external team blog where they discuss everything from Monster’s paid time-off policies to how the pennant-winning Red Sox affected workplace productivity. The blog has relevance because its authors, who are already writers, regularly field and answer Monster user questions.

In some companies, legal or regulatory requirements mean that nothing ever gets released to the public without extensive legal review. Blogs can’t create customer dialog if the company isn’t comfortable having those conversations in the first place. There may be some areas - such as product development or recruitment - that make better starting places for external blogs. 

A company could simply repurpose press releases on its blog, but nobody would ever read them. Asking for feedback or addressing a customer question in a productive way would be much more valuable. Stonyfield Farm has blogs that focus on women’s issues and the environment — two causes that the company supports and believes differentiates it from other yogurt companies.

Consumers use blogs to have conversations about the companies they do business with. Companies that join these conversations will be most successful if they can connect at an emotional, personal level. Jonathan Schwartz, president of Sun Microsystems, maintains a blog where he shares his thoughts about the business with more than 100,000 visitors each month.

Having a blog also means that a company has to be willing to listen - especially when visitors are allowed to post comments. Acknowledging customer ideas and concerns demonstrates that a willingness to listen and take action. Clip-n-Seal makes a device that can quickly close plastic bags. It uses its blog to post “unexpected uses”, such as protecting diving knives from rusting in salty water. Actions like this will give web users more of a reason to return to a site beyond purchasing a product or service. 

Giving customers a view of the inner workings of a company has tangible rewards. Consider the Microsoft Developer Network’s Channel 9 blog, which shows video clips of Microsoft engineers talking about their current projects and invites developers to add their comments. Microsoft had always considered itself to be open to developers but wasn’t perceived as such because access was so limited. Channel 9 not only gives Microsoft a way to be more responsive, but it has also helped the company revamp its image with a core constituency.

One of the biggest benefits of blogging is the effect it has on a company’s search engine ranking. Because blog postings are heavily linked to one another search engines will look upon that content as being more important. The result: Companies have already started strategically using blogs for search placement. For example, executives at Pheedo actively posted and promoted their blog on RSS advertising and as a result, the blog appeared at the top of Google search results for the keywords “RSS advertising.”

Turning the web into a big conversation

One key difference between blogs and other types of consumer-generated content on the internet - such as discussion boards and forums - is the interconnected nature of blogs. Blogs often contain links that reference other blogs, Web sites, and files — which is why news spreads so quickly across blogs. Most blogs are also feed-enabled, which makes it easy to distribute blog postings in RSS, a simple content syndication mechanism. As a result, blog readers don’t need to make a special trip to a Web site to read the blog — instead, they can scan headlines that are pushed to feed aggregators like NewsGator, Bloglines, or My Yahoo! The beauty of RSS is that it makes it actually feasible to follow and read hundreds of blogs. Yahoo!’s integration of RSS feeds means that adding a blog to a My Yahoo! page is as simple as clicking on a button. Also, as users come across a posting in Yahoo! search results, they can also add the blog to their content pages with a single click.

Many blogs offer “trackback,” a feature that shows when other sites link to a specific post. The good news: frequent linking in and out of posts means that the posts can be found more readily and can be ranked more highly by search engines like Google. The bad news: ill will toward a company can spread at viral speed. 

At a minimum, companies should track what is being said about them on blogs. Using blog search engines like Bloglines, Feedster, and PubSub, companies can find blogs that discuss topics of interest. These search engines offer the ability to create custom feeds that monitor every blog posting that contains a keyword such as a company brand and deliver those postings as a feed that can be ready by any web browser.

Rather than just lurk as readers, companies can make their first forays into blogs by providing comments to posts on others’ blogs. For example, if a concern is aired about a product, it’s easy to respond to the post with a suggestion on how to solve the problem. This will help to defuse tricky situation, clarifies a company position and demonstrates goodwill towards consumers. Companies should provide employees with training and clear guidelines on what can and should be said on the external blogs, and should start with just a few comments to gauge reaction.

Blogging Internally

A natural place for companies to start supporting blogs is within the enterprise, especially if information must be shared among employees working in different locations or during different shifts. Departments that have information-intensive projects — such as IT or product development — are also ideal candidates for internal blog use. Blogs provide institutional, searchable knowledge management with the added benefit that everyone can easily participate. 

The operations and engineering team at the Disney ABC Cable Networks Group used blogs to log help desk inquiries during its round-the-clock shifts, replacing an email-based system. Not only did shifts know that a bug had been resolved, but they were also able to search the blogs to see if a solution had been used before. Moreover, Disney installed a feed reader - NewsGator - that was integrated into Outlook so that the information could be pushed to people, rather than requiring them to come to a site to read the updates.

The result: Not only did email flow die down, but less energy went into political finger-pointing because transparent blogs meant that there was no way to hide mistakes.

Individual team members can be given a blog on which they can give progress updates. That way, rather than having to constantly check to see where colleagues are, team members can simply check their blogs. IT departments have often used a related technology called “wikis,” which allow users to modify a Web-based document — revisions can be tracked, as well. Tickle, a media company that provides assessment tests, recently underwent a search engine optimization process and the manager used wikis to update four different departments on specific keyword strategies and site changes. Used together, blogs and wikis can become a powerful, easy-to-use combination.

How to start a business blog

Can a company survive without blogging? Sure, in much the same way a company can make do without a Web site. You won’t go out of business, but your competitors will have the advantage of a new tool to connect with your customers. Stormlab advises clients to pay attention to blogs and when they feel they are ready to start, to take the following steps:

Start small: Select a product team that’s already communicating regularly with its customers to pilot the initial efforts. One idea: Address frequently asked questions (FAQs) in a blog format. Functional areas like recruitment are also a good, non-controversial place to start. For example, a recruiter at Microsoft maintains a blog where she discusses topics like what the company looks for when hiring an inbound product manager.

Establish guidelines on who can have an officially sanctioned company blog: The selection criteria for a corporate blogger range from general writing ability to proximity to real customer interactions. Start with just a few trusted individuals and provide clear blogging guidelines, making clear to the other employees in the company why these “testers” were selected.

Launch with a dozen already-published postings and post frequently: When the blog becomes public, readers will want a bevy of rich content to peruse - the goal is to have them come back or, better yet, add the blog to their news aggregator. Follow this up with frequent posts to drive readership. Many blogging services allow authoring in advance. Posts can then be scheduled for future publication.

Measure the results: Blog-specific metrics like traffic levels and unique users are essential, but companies should also track incoming links as a measure of the blog’s influence using a service such as MeasureMap (http://www.measuremap.com). Tying the impact of blogs to concrete business goals can go a long way toward justifying the additional risk and exposure that blogs represent. Some examples include comparing blog-reading customers versus nonreaders in customer satisfaction surveys, monitoring the volume of transactions that originate from blog postings, and measuring the reduction of customer service inquiries. Finally, companies should take into account metrics like goodwill, loyalty, and brand equity, which although difficult to measure quantitatively, they will be evidenced through anecdotal comments left in the blog.

Twitter  Buzz  Delicious  Digg  Reddit  Stumble