Three Best Practices to Launch a Successful Company Blog.

Several of my clients and friends are starting to blog, and it is a pleasure to see. They waited to blog until the time was right for their companies and their personal resource management.  Like me, many are blogging to market a business with a goal of sales.

If you are ready to launch a successful company blog, this post is written for you. Focus on these three areas to achieve your business goals:

1. Build your platform.
2. Build your content.
3. Build your community.

Build your platform.

WordPress.com or WordPress.org? (Answer: WordPress.org) Remarkablogger says:“For business marketing, you want to use WordPress on your own server, which means WordPress.org…But, with great freedom comes great responsibility…; you are responsible for managing everything and keeping it updated.”

Thanks to my friend and colleague Willie Jackson, @willieljackson , for guest posting the next section.  Take it away, Willie.

Willie Jackson:

”The pros and cons have been well-outlined by creators of the platform, but here are four reasons why you should consider a “self-hosted” WordPress.org blog:

1. Search Engine Optimization – Google loves WordPress. It allows you to rank competitively using a completely uncustomized blog or website. To get the absolute best SEO performance from your blog, however, consider one or more plugins that add additional benefits such as the All in One SEO Pack, Automatic SEO Links, and Google XML Sitemaps. [JKS: Thanks to @ChrisBrogan for more on “Build Passport Accounts and Plugins.]
2. Credibility – You are an authority in your field and your blog reflects this expertise. The self-hosted version of WordPress is almost required for credibility.
3. Flexibility – WordPress Frameworks like Thesis and Reptile add another layer of powerful flexibility such as layout changes, color adjustments, font, and color customizations. These Frameworks allow users with very little technical experience the ability to customize blogs with the confidence of an experienced website administrator.
4. Room to grow – While there is a chance that you might outgrow the limitations of the WordPress.com platform, it is highly unlikely that you will ever outgrow a self-hosted WordPress.org site. A self-hosted WordPress website offers you virtually unlimited customization possibilities. Want to work with a designer to bring your vision into life? Easy. Want to give your users the ability to share your posts across the web with a single click? Piece of cake.”

Thank you, Willie.

Build your content (it will evolve).

First, determine your business purpose.

• What is your goal?
• Who is your ideal reader?
• What do you want your reader to do and feel?

Next, determine your categories and keywords, which will be used as tags.

Third, determine your strategy and for that I like Brian Clark’s three-step blog launch blueprint on Copyblogger.com:

1. Cornerstone articles – Assuming you have already researched your keywords, these are the main search terms you will use in search engine optimizing your blog.  They are the reason people will consistently read you.  They are what your blog is about.  Consider writing five cornerstone articles (also called flagship content or pillar articles) as you launch, 500 to 700 words each,  and collect them on a landing page.  Before your launch, also write the “About” post.
2. Networking – create awareness and build relationships.
3. Attraction – a single piece of content that gets people linking to your blog.

And finally:

1. Include keywords, variations of keywords and synonyms in your writing, H1 and H2 title tags and related paragraphs, links and landing pages. Remember, search engines must find you.
2. Decide how often to post; a minimum of two to three times a week for the first year.
3. Determine how long.  200 to 500 words per post.
4. Create an editorial calendar. You can develop multi-part tutorials or pick a theme for each month (“How to revitalize your agency’s mission.”) and let your multiple authors interpret the theme.
5. Use photos and video.  Spice it up.  DesignSpongeOnline.com is a soothing extreme.
6. Include your personality.  It is you people care about.
7. Soft launch before you publicize your blog, instead of backdating content.

Build your community (it will also evolve).

Your tools are links, plug ins, and the social media micro-blogging trio: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

For example, we’ve added

1. “Share this”
2. Follow us on Twitter
3. Digg and
4. del.icio.us plugins to our blog, and created link-worthy content.

I will write more strategy in future posts on how to build your community; in the meantime,  thanks to @ChrisBrogan for the best post I’ve seen to date on this subject: “25 Ways to Build Your Community.”

Here are some of my favorite articles on blogging: del.icio.us .

At Softscribe we guide our clients into blogging and other interactive venues as they are ready for it.  If you want to discover the success of more sales and relationships in your target markets, feel free to contact me now.

What about you? What is one best practice you have developed as you blog?

Tagged as: b2b marketing, digital marketing, information technology companies, Julie Squires, marketing blog, marketing to government, Public relations, public relations & marketing, public relations and communication, Selling to federal government, social marketing, social media marketing, social media public relations, Softscribe, Softscribe Inc., technology marketing, technology public relations

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