Posts Tagged ‘Blog Visibility’

Business Blogging

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Not long ago, blogging was considered as an online diary or journal where the writer documented his/her day to day activity. It was a space for people with creative bend to showcase their talent. It was personal and it was only shared with a select few. Circa 2011 and blogs have evolved into a vital communication tool that every brand is looking to incorporate in their marketing plan.

blog-blogging

Keeping this in mind, it is important that this social media tool be well understood and its potential be highlighted. Here we look at key ways of making a corporate blogs work for your brand. To start with, a corporate blog need not be serious and perched on an ivory tower. Like any other social media tool, blogs too can help you build a friendly relationship with your consumer. Splash some creativity and humor in the content, especially, if your brand personality is such. Be vibrant, colorful and vivacious. It can go a long way in making your blog reach out to your target audience.

Colorful Heading

A colorful blog title can personify your brand image

Being a blog should not restrict you to just putting up articles. Break the monotony by posting, video blogs and/or photo blog posts. Not only will this make your blog more interesting, it will also present you with the opportunity to showcase your product features without suggesting that you are advertising your product. Also, it can help you in letting the world know about your organization, its culture and ethos of the place. It also helps in building a strong employee-employer relation.

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Add photos to your blog

Another way of building employee-employer relationship is by allowing employees to post on your corporate blog. Empower them to promote the company’s products through informative tutorials, advice, and reviews that not only sell the products, but also offer some valuable tips. Not only will this help in content generation, it will also help in giving face and name to the organization.

Blogs need not always be about the products. It could well become a research platform for your company. Inviting the readers to suggest the kind of product they would want to use can help in getting valuable consumer insight at a very low cost. Adding comments and a rating system can make the blog highly interactive. The aim is to experiment with ideas, something that you can’t do with your website.

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Make your blog user friendly and sharable

An important point to bear in mind is to be unique in your style. Stand out and be seen. Change your blog theme to reflect colorful seasonal themes. Add animation to bring alive your blog. The more effort you put in, the more appreciation you shall get. It is not about being different for the sake of being different, but because you truly are.

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If changing your style is something you cannot suggest as a brand, then choose a very simplistic, neat and corporate look. Have a professional and simple blog design. A clutter free approach helps in easy navigation and a more pleasing experience for the reader. A decent mix of pictures and words will be enough for you to get your point across. Be simple in your language as well. Always remember, the idea is to let people know what you are talking about, not to send them on a wild hunt through online dictionary sites.

Google

Neat and clean look for a corporate blog

Another sure shot way of getting people to your blog and keep them hooked is by inviting guest bloggers. Everyone is keen to know what a celebrity has to say or what a famous person thinks. Having such a person write an article on your post will help you achieve huge readership. Also, sharing of these posts will make your blog achieve virility like never before.

If you don’t have access to celebrities, then turn the table and give access to your readers about inside news and pre launch stories. Share all behind the scene action, through videos, photos, descriptive blog posts, and interview with people who have been part of the development process of the product.

 

Disney

Share exclusive details on your blog

These are just a few ideas on how a corporate blog can help you and your brand connect with your audience and potential customers. Like any other communication tool, there is no set pattern but being clear of the idea and your personality would be a perfect way of defining your blog personality.

Read more about blogging, here.

Generate hits for your blog!!

Monday, October 27th, 2008

Universal truth – We all want attention. Be it in the form of spotlight shining on us, people seeking our autographs or merely getting more readers for our blog. The last one is what we will be tackling in this post. Unlike common perception, it is not a difficult task to generate readers for your blog. And this surely is not by spamming inbox of all your friends!! Your blog must have these features before you start promoting it

Go through these suggestions and try them out for yourself for your blog.

·      Registering at directories:

Like any product listing, blogs too have directories where they can be listed. There are Indian blog directories like ‘desiblogs’ and ‘indiblogs‘ among others where you can list your blog under appropriate section. There are also international blog directories like ‘blogcatalog‘ and ‘mybloglog‘ among others which generate high level of leads to your blog. For bloggers who have been blogging for more than 5 months and have more than 50 articles then you can register it with Labnol – started by Amit Agarwal

·      Linking your blogs:

Ensure that your blog posts have links with other blogs and websites especially if you have borrowed their thought or writing in continuation to that original article mentioned there. Likewise other bloggers too will create links with you and this cross linking between blogs will help in generating traffic.  Most of the bloggers also maintain a blog roll on the sidebar of their blog

Do visit other people’s blogs and leave comments. Everyone likes to know that they have been read and commented upon.

·      Register on User Voting sites:

There are several user voting sites like Digg, Reddit among others. You must submit your blog post to these sites and users who read your post have the option of voting for it. The more the votes your post collects, the higher up it goes in visibility. While there are no written reports but posts with high dig votes also score high with Google search engine.

Digg voting button on blog post

Digg voting button on blog post

Incorporate the Digg voting button in your blog post itself so that readers can vote from there rather than logging on to Digg for that. Currently, there aren’t many Indians using Digg but that’s just  a matter of time. Also if your content cuts geography then these sites will definitely boost traffic substantially.

·      Title of Blog Post:

My experience shows that writing negative framed titles generates more traffic than something that is plain and appropriate. The title of the post has to induce or tempt the reader to click and read more of that post.

For eg. ‘Microsoft’s browser market share under threat’ as title will generate more hits than ‘Google launches its new browser’

·      Emails & Social Networking Sites:

Promote your blog post by aggregate your blog feeds to your profile on social networking sites so that you can drive traffic from your profile site too. Use signatures mentioning your blog title and link in your emails. Read the post Using Facebook to promote brands for information on how blogs can be integrated in your Facebook profile.

·      SEO your blog:

SEO ensures that your blogs gets better visibility and rank higher when a user writes related key words in a search engine. Most of the blogging sites like WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Rediff etc do SEO by themselves. Between all of them, I have found wordpress to be more SEO-ed than others.

·      Sharing and Bookmarking your posts

Make it easier for people to save or bookmark your blog post or send it to their friends. Use tools like Add this’ or Add To Any’ for this. You have to simply register your blog at those sites and select the HTML code that they provide you. Insert the code in the master template so that your each new post will carry sharing option.

Sharing button on the blog post

Sharing button on the blog post

Remember, ultimately the participation of users and hits also depend heavily on the popularity and informatory nature of the topic you have written on.

Read on what are the essentials of a website and essentials of a blog before you start promoting them