Social Media Tools: Blogs

From Wordpress, to Blogspot/ Blogger, to a Blog on a website – you’ll be in good company if you choose to start blogging. Technorati tracks more than 100 million blogs floating around the blogosphere; and among those hundreds of millions you’ll find companies like Southwest, Apple, Best Buy, and General Electric.

Whether you choose to have your CEO blog, your communications department, team members from various departments (Nuts about Southwest,) or even customers themselves (Apple,) blogging will open up a portal of communication between your company and your customers.

The benefits of blogging go beyond the ‘relationship’ and ‘reputation’ building of social media – A frequently updated blog also offers a wealth of SEO benefits.

Later we will discuss some tactics for incorporating your blog into your overall social media strategy, but for now; here are a few tips to keep in mind:

1. A good blog is 2/3 monologue, 1/3 conversation.

The content of the blog may be informative, opinionated, or entertaining – but its tone should always be conversational and should frequently address the reader with questions that invite dialogue. How can a blog become more than one-sided?  The comments section of a blog is a great way to keep the conversation going and build a relationship with readers. Even if you disagree with a comment that is posted – it’s important to post a reply whenever possible. I would recommend ending every blog with a question that invites response; such as:

“What do you think we could do to improve our wine list?” or,  “ I think blogging is an important part creating small business success – feel free to share blog success stories and links in the comment section below!”

2. A blog needs to have personality

It doesn’t matter if every comma is in place or if every sentence is complete (though, good grammar is obviously important for readability and credibility,) but it is absolutely key that a blog and blogger have a personality and voice. It doesn’t matter what it is – funny, serious, insightful; but a blog that sounds like a press release might as well be, well… a press release.  Likewise, while blogs can be a good place to debut new products or promote something special – a blog that is nothing but promotion will be nothing but spammy in the eyes of readers.

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