Why should my Business Have a Blog?

Quite right - lookout for Google's 'Freshbot' which crawls regularly for new content.

Note too that if you suddenly stop adding new blogs/stories etc, then Freshbot will make a note of this and stop visiting, with the obvious effect on search rankings.

c.

On 15:46:23 28 May 2004 Tristam Bielecki wrote:

Search engines crave timely and fresh information that is frequently updated. Weblogs (Blogs) provide this type of content and as a result are often indexed more frequently than other sites.

This means that any of your business data sitting in your blog will be tracked and indexed often by Google et al and your site will have higher visibility in search results listings.

If you are looking to improve your search rankings, are unhappy with the ROI you get from internet advertising and have timely information to provide to your customers and prospects, then business blogging could provide a solution. Consider the following benefits of having a business blog:

• Higher search rankings on Google with no paid-submission
  
• Other search engines will most likely position you higher too
  
• Pay-per-click (PPC) is great but free marketing has infinite ROI
  
• Create visibility with information by sharing with your customers and prospects
  
• Fresh information appears on Google in only a few days, not weeks
  
• Other business bloggers will point prospects towards you for free

I would argue that PR should be involved right from the very beginning.

PR should recognise and emabrce the blogs as they also provide a method to improve customer communications - take the Macromedia example, where the corporation actively encourages employees to blog about their products so they can help customers out with any queries they may have.

Everyone has heard the stories of employees being fired for their blogs. However some companies have a more tolerant attitude. What is really good to hear is that Macromedia actually encourages employees to blog so they can answer questions from customers. In fact it is a core part of Macromedia's marketing plan.

''We needed a mechanism to communicate incredibly quickly,'' said Tom Hale, Macromedia's senior vice president of business strategy. ''We hit upon the blog strategy as a mechanism to do that....People really liked hearing directly from Macromedia experts, and getting really fast response,''. Currently there are at least 16 blogs run by employees at Macromedia assisting customers with their questions.

This is an excellent practice by a company that doesn't need the extra exposure that blogs can offer. Instead it is using blogs to make the company more approachable. Something that larger corporations are often criticized for not being. This is probably why Microsoft is so tolerant towards employee blogs, including John Porcaro, a group manager for Microsoft's Home and Entertainment Division who makes no secret of his Microsoft employment.

Being more approachable would or at least should be a PR goal for these larger firms, thus PR should not take such a negative view. PR firms are beginning to utilize blogs as a new conduit for send press releases - why not go one step further and take ownership of their own conduits?

On 14:11:50 29 May 2004 Alex Chudnovsky wrote:

This is all interesting but I think as soon as someone says a wrong word in business blog (say about backlog that company officially refuses to admit to), then PR will get involved and that person is likely to get a reprimand if not outright sack. After that everything posted will have to be sanctioned by PR, and I doubt more people will be willing to post in fear of losing their job.

So, it will be PR Dept who will be responsibel for posting "business blogs", well, I think there is name for that kind of posts already - press releases!

I agree.

Blogs are personal online diaries. One can't just ad a blog to any site - have the webmaster share his personal thoughts with the rest of the world, for example. My first job was for a site publishing product directories in the engineering and defence industries. I can't think of any way a blog could  work in that context.

Fresh content can be added in different formats and there are ideal formats for each site.

Lawrence

Sounds like a discussion forum like this one ;)

>Every way I look at it I can see only downsides of blogs
>in business, at least for majority of companies who can't
>handle the beast.

Like all things technology it depends how you use the blog. Someone mentioned that a blog is a personal diary. While that is true of many blogs on the Internet it is not true of the technology. The technology is merely a database driven website - yes designed with a personal diary in mind but who says you need to restrict it to that? A business that uses a blog cleverly can use it for a variety of purposes. Article publication, education, customer support, industry news to name a few. All a blog does in my opinion is make it easier for companies to publish stuff on a regular basis. What that 'stuff' becomes depends on the business.

Macromedia is a good example of a good use of blogging, Marketing Vox is another. I have heard stories of disgruntled and bitter employees using blogs to vent their frustrations, but lets face it they've been doing that in the tabloids, the media and the courts for years now. You can't stop someone with a grudge from having a moan. It's human nature.

While Alex makes a good point in that business will need to be very careful what they do and don't allow employees to write I don't see it as a downside, simply another opportunity to use some technology and impart useful information. Yes how blogs are used is important, very much so, but a blog used to it's full potential is much more useful than the weekly press release.