One of the key benefits every organisation should consider when planning a corporate blogging initiative is how this could participate in its efforts to develop strong website awareness as well as build and sustain traffic.
While there are many methods available to drive more traffic to a website and improve organic search rankings, blogging and blog marketing are very effective ways to increase substantially traffic to a site and provide some of the best marketing ROI in this area. Large corporations and web technology-based companies are already reaping such benefits from corporate blogging.
By nature, blogs automatically draw high rates of traffic and are indexed frequently by search engines, making them very popular as “traffic generators”. With the rising popularity of social media sites like Digg, Technorati or Reddit (just to name a few) a blog post submission to either of these sites will launch your CRM efforts out into the rest of the Web, drawing more readers and potential clients back to your site to read the full story.
An obvious and important aspect is that your blog should relate to the website topic(s) - which is not always the case - and should preferably be updated at least three to four times a week, although daily posting draw more traffic.
You may also want to consider using cross-sell techniques into your blogging initiative. When mentioning other services or products in your posts, link to those related pages within your website. Linking to the site throughout your posts is indeed an excellent move. Since the blog is to be used as a vehicle to send traffic to the website, you will also need to include links that goes to your site on the sidebar.
In addition to that, getting your blog indexed by all major search engines is critical for successful corporate blogging. If you have regular postings, this will happen naturally. You will also want to register in several relevant blog directories, so that your blog can be easily found by anyone doing a search on specific topic(s). Promote an RSS/Atom feed prominently as well. This will automatically drive more traffic, plus links, all of which will make your corporate blog a "traffic driving tool" … not only for the blog itself, but also for your website.
Finally develop the interactive nature of your blog. Add voting capabilities so that your readers can click a button to vote thumbs up or down on each post. Offer prizes to the user who provides the most relevant comments per month (think gift cards, discounts, sample products, free access to your service, etc).
Website traffic can be elusive, but with some effort and a bit of creativity, a corporate blog can bring in loads of high quality, interested visitors with minimum marketing investment (except your time to provide relevant and high-quality content to your readers). Blogs are highly overlooked as marketing tools and it would be a mistake for an organisation to ignore the possibilities they offer.
Debbie Weil's "The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right" and "Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers" by Robert Scoble, are definitely excellent resources on this topic. “Blogging for Business: Everything You Need to Know and Why You Should Care” by Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos is also a highly recommended reading.
These 3 excellent books are available online through your SaaShop. Just select one of these suggested reading to get further information and shop online! They are easy commuter reads, and at the end of the day, offer comparable advices about writing punchy headlines, sharing expertise (yes content matters!), posting often and being genuine.
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