Blogging For Business....

If blogging remains a scary concept for you, it's time to bite the bullet and enter the world of the bizzar the surreal and at times the downright dull. Just take a look at one of the many international blog management / directory sites such as www.blogger.com, www.blogcatalog.com or www.blogsearch.google.com and you'll see how the self publishing revolution is thriving with people writing and photo blogging about their everyday lives and opinions.

So how does this effect businesses and what can it offer us? - like it or not you can't stop other people from writing about you in their blogs, so the chances are that as your business grows blogging will effect you somehow. It is how you chose to respond and manage it that sets apart those with a plan from those with problem.

Aside from the benefits of inbound links to your site from relevant content (loved by search engines), blogs offer opportunities for marketing your business to real people. As with everything else online, users are becoming increasingly brand loyal with a growing number of users choosing to subscribe and receive latest blog posts direct from sites they trust via RSS feeds. This means a positive comment about you on a high profile blog can engage with hundreds if not thousands of new people with an endorsement from someone they trust.

More proactively many businesses have realised the benefits of blogging about themselves as an effective way of engaging with clients, staff, and suppliers. Blogs are easy to set up, cost effective to run and an easy way of keeping everyone up to date. At Hydrant we use blogs internally to log and discuss ideas and news among our staff throughout Cumbria. Blogs have also proved highly successful for short term media campaigns for forthcoming events, long term brand evolvement and encouraging customer participation.

There is of course a down-side to blogging. Companies need to be prepared to deal with negative comment. Clear policies for staff blogging, a blogging platform and sufficient resources to respond to negative comment will stand any company in good stead as this medium grows.

Most of all there is no point hiding from it, as we're fast moving towards a world where everything can be ranked, rated, scored and commented on. Businesses who are actively using blogs are simply demonstrating that they care about what is said, listening to customer feedback and trusting their staff to speak honestly - all of which can only be a good things in the eyes of the customer.

Hydrant can provide free advice on setting up and managing business blogging.