Corporate Blog: the Key to Benchmarking
Telling stories, getting closer to the audience, generating quality content that increasingly connects the customer with the brand is, in short, the essence of a successful corporate blog.
Any business that doesn't have a blog is taking the first steps towards failure. Companies have found themselves between a rock and a hard place since they’re starting to see results, so they’ve decided to get down to work.
Likewise, it has become a very serious matter, as many companies have seen how their presence and visibility has grown thanks to the implementation of this type of blogs.
From here, the need arises not only to create them, but also to take care of them, to give them a suitable format and providing quality content and contrasted information.
Do you want to know first-hand how to create a corporate blog? Grab a pen and paper because we’re about to tell you all about brand blogs: what they are, how they’re created and the importance they’ve acquired within marketing strategies.
Let's get started!
What is a corporate blog?
Corporate blogs are websites that contain articles that have been created by a company or brand.
These articles are usually published on a regular basis and are mainly used to provide their users and target audience with valuable, current, useful and interesting information on topics that have to do with the company in question.
Likewise, corporate blogs are a very beneficial online channel to inform potential customers about topics that are of interest to them about the sector in which you operate. In this way, you can take advantage of the opportunity to let them understand that you’re a reference in your area of work.
However, we can't forget a very important detail. Corporate blogs are a great tool to favour web positioning in search engines. If you update your most relevant content, users will value you more, they'll spend more time on your website, and it'll get a better reception.
Characteristics of business blogs
When we talk about blogs, we immediately associate it with freelancers who are looking to promote and give visibility to their personal brand or simply people who want to talk about a specific topic, tell personal stories and decide to do it through blogs.
However, corporate blogs are something more: they’re becoming the key tool for brands and companies to position themselves and gain an audience.
Therefore, this type of corporate blog has a series of characteristics that make them different:
- The writing and maintenance of blogs found on company websites doesn't fall to a single person, so the responsibility for their management is shared. There will be a person in charge of designing the strategy and the editorial calendar. Then come the copywriters and people in charge of associating in each section.
Important note: if you don't have enough knowledge about how to create and develop a business blog, it’s best to delegate these functions to someone or to a company specialised for this purpose.
It isn't enough to put it in the hands of the millennial who knows about computers and moves like a fish in water on the net and no, it isn't worth it: remember that cheap is usually expensive.
- By creating a blog, you can reflect the company's philosophy, which is a very good opportunity to talk face to face with your target audience. Setting a style and tone of communication can show your character and what differentiates you from the competition.
- This type of corporate blogs are mainly focused on attraction selling. They move away from any kind of direct selling and seek to attract the customer by providing valuable information. They want to make the customer feel free to decide to buy, as opposed to the invasive methods of traditional advertising.
These are the 3 most important characteristics of a corporate blog. Knowing them and taking them into account is a very important step towards achieving a successful blog, and that gives notoriety in the network and in your work area.
How to create a successful blog?
We’ve come to the key point of the article, in which we’re going to tell you how to implement a blog in a business strategy.
As you'll see, it’s a process that takes shape little by little, which requires effort, perseverance and, above all, taking into account several aspects that, all together, will make the blog gain notoriety and be successful.
Discover the 10 steps needed to create a successful blog.
1. Research and inform yourself
In a corporate blog, you can't write about anything without having a minimum idea of what you want to do. First, you have to develop a good content strategy that revolves around a relevant topic.
To do this, it'll be necessary to research and gather valuable and contrasted information to write the posts.
Therefore, any error in the writing of a post can have a negative impact on the reputation of your brand.
2. Write non-stop
But, if I’m not a copywriter, journalist or writer, how can I start writing? This is the question that many people ask themselves when faced with the responsibility of writing a blog.
Sometimes these doubts arise because we've never seriously started writing. Think of blogging as another way of demonstrating your worth, experience and knowledge on a particular topic or giving advice to your audience.
Don't be afraid, take those fears off your shoulders and start writing without looking back.
3. Tell me a story
What better way to capture your audience's attention than by telling a good story, right? It’s an unbeatable opportunity to make a difference, to offer a differential value to your products.
In these corporate blogs you can tell real or invented stories, or even anecdotes that may have happened to you that can arouse emotions among potential customers.
This is what we call Story Telling
In this way, you'll be able to build a relationship of trust with them and lay the foundations for a future business relationship.
4. The title
The importance of choosing a good title is paramount. You have to think that you only have one chance to capture the readers' attention, and the title is the main opportunity to achieve this objective.
To have the winning title, you need the following:
- It shouldn’t be longer than 70 characters.
- It must include keywords.
- Be brief and direct.
- Create expectation.
- Don't write in capital letters.
- Google the title.
5. The first paragraph
With the title we've captured the reader's attention, now with the first paragraph we want them to continue reading and not leave the website.
Also, in a brief and concise way, you must provide a fairly general, clear and striking idea of the advantages that the audience will find if they continue reading the article.
6. Good images
A picture is worth a thousand words. We have to accompany our article, our story, with good images that capture the reader’s attention.
Don't forget that to have a corporate blog in optimal conditions, you should look for good images with high definition that show and capture correctly what we’re trying to say. Don't fall into the temptation of being like those blogs with small, blurry images that you don't really know what they are.
7. Optimise the content
We’re entering a very striking area. The audience that follows you will take your content and analyse it to evaluate the professional characteristics and commercial qualities of your company, information about the quality of your products or services, in other words.
Google does the same with blog content. It tracks the entire web, looking for updated and relevant content (SEO positioning comes into play here) to offer it to its users.
When it comes to the layout of the post, these details must be taken into account. Therefore, it’s essential that the content is informative, easy to read, without spelling mistakes, adjust the density of words, if possible, try to respect the new trends in terms of SEO.
8. Generate empathy
This is the main quality that a person in charge of a corporate blog should have. He or she should write in a friendly, non-technical way that is well understood, but without neglecting professionalism and always showing what he or she wants to say.
9. Make the post easy to read
With regard to the previous point, you must remember that there will be a high percentage of people who will either not get past the first paragraph or won't read half of the article. This is a fact that you must take into account
Therefore, in order to try to improve the bounce effect, the content must be readable for your type of audience. There are different techniques that can help you to do this, such as:
- Don't use very long paragraphs.
- Introduce several subtitles.
- Highlight keywords or phrases in bold.
- Add key quotes between paragraphs.
10. Call to action
It’s essential to add a call to action in all blog articles. It’s also important that you not only invite the reader to share the content, but also remind them that if they need any professional support, you’re there to provide them with the help they need.
Advantages of creating a corporate blog
If you've reached this point of the post, in which we've already told you everything you need to know about corporate blogs, and you’re still not convinced that they’re the best option to gain notoriety, it’s better that you pay attention to the following lines.
Here, we’re going to give you 5 more reasons why you should implement a blog to become a reference in your sector:
- Improve your company's reputation. If you manage to create valuable content with contrasted information, your brand will gain prestige and reputation in the digital world, and you'll be seen as an important source of information.
- Generate visits to the web. If you work well on SEO and content, let me tell you that you’re on the road to success and users interested in your content will gradually arrive.
- Improve your web positioning. The blog has some characteristics that make it an easier way to position than websites.
- You can get to know your audience better. Humanising the brand and making it more accessible to the public makes them feel comfortable and relaxed to establish a relationship with the company. In this way, they'll see more sincere and clear opinions on topics to be discussed in the blog.
- Social media content. Interaction on social networks is the basic pillar to establish a cordial relationship with customers. Apart from generating traffic and web positioning with a corporate blog, we can't forget to share, generate debate, comments, give the option to share and strengthen the link.
With this post, we wanted you to discover the possibilities hidden in the creation and proper maintenance of a business blog, being one of the best ways in digital marketing to gain notoriety with your brand and be a reference in your sector.
In short, we hope that we encourage you to create a corporate blog, or if you already have one, to motivate you to continue with it and to continue creating valuable and quality content to reach more target audiences and achieve your goals.
