Web platforms available today make it incredibly easy for writers to jump in and publish, link, feed, and market globally—without requiring any technical expertise. Many have even left their “day jobs” and have jumped head first into the ocean of full-time blogging, receiving financial support from advertising revenue and, in some cases, investments from strategic partners to help nurture and reach a specific community. For many bloggers, it’s equivalent to winning the lottery—at varying levels, whether it’s money, influence, networking, career advancement, or something else. Many blogs that are generating income offer direct advertising, by which Company X can purchase real estate on the blog page or post. And although many blogs are run as full-fledged media properties, earning millions per year, most are run as independent shops or small businesses. The primary focus for most bloggers is creating the content that defines their brand—not on selling. However, blog networks and advertising syndications are helping bloggers monetize their sites by selling and channeling advertising and, in turn, sharing the revenue based on traffic. Many bloggers also embed a Google Adsense widget on their blogs as a way of generating additional income. (Adsense is a keyword-based window that analyzes the content on the page and serves link-based ads from a Google library that match the existing topics.)

Although many of the same tools and strategies that make blogging so popular and influential are beginning to force new channels of business-to-business communications, most corporations either are slow to respond, thinking blogging is more of a toy than a tool, or treat blogging as another form of content marketing. At the opposite end of the adoption cycle, some corporate bloggers jump in too quickly and neglect to focus on what truly makes a good blog: being a resource for customers and peers, enabling valuable conversations, and creating and maintaining relationships.

Jeremiah Owyang discusses how to get the most out of business blogging (from “Web Strategy: How to Be a Corporate Blog Evangelist,” January 2007):

Owyang clearly defines how corporate blogging needs to shape up. Bloggers need to first define the purpose of their blogs. Owyang also provides several helpful hints about strategic blog deployment:

1. Delight your customers (you’d better say yes).

2. Demonstrate corporate openness.

3. Express goodwill.

4. Provide thought leadership.

5. Mitigate PR damage risks.

6. Control the conversation in your market.

7. Develop a product with customers in real time.

8. Harness a rapid-response tool.

9. Casually release products and get feedback.

10. Create word-of-mouth marketing.

11. Amplify a strategic message.

12. Use your blog as a competitive positioning tool to create visibility and differentiation.

Then there’s the completely opposite type of blog post that wholeheartedly mocks self-centered and useless business blogs, and instructs you how to continue with your less-than-adequate posts. We were amused by Ian Lurie’s blog post “How to Write a Really Crappy Business Blog,” as we think you will be, too.

Those are some of the best corporate blogging tips and some of the worst. If you searched further, you’d find hundreds of posts dedicated to how to blog and why executives should or should not blog. We believe that companies that blog should do so with the intention of speaking directly to their customers; the blog also should be transparent, genuine, and not a vehicle for repurposing marketing content and messages. Transparency is the key to participating in Social Media in general, with blogs and social networks leading the way.

Believe it or not, many company blogs today aren’t actually written by the names associated with the posts. Instead, executives are allowing junior, PR, or marketing personnel to write these seemingly genuine words that are no more real than the quotes in company news releases, as discussed in Chapter 8, “Social Media Releases (SMRs).” You’ve heard the saying that “content is king,” which defined Web 1.0. However, in Web 2.0, “conversation is king.” Blogs are considered the most direct source for reaching people and hosting direct conversations with them in an informational and helpful public forum.

John Cass, a marketer who writes about corporate blogging, discussed how PR people should refrain from being the ghostwriters on blogs in his post “Are You a Sanctimonious PR 2.0 Professional?”

As a follow-up to this post (and in response to Sterling Hager), Kari Hanson discussed the subject of whether to ghost post on her blog, First Person PR. Hanson’s goal as a blogger is to chronicle her experience as she transitioned from an agency to an internal PR role, and to present a first-person case study of what works as she experimented with new Social Media technologies. Her blog is immersed with her thoughts on PR, Web 2.0, and Social Media. Hanson, who facilitated dozens of briefings on behalf of her clients, had a slightly different opinion than Cass.

One of the most common fears or reasons for resisting blog implementation is the concern about inviting and hosting negative commentary. If you open up comments, which we believe you should, the reality is that not everyone will agree with your point of view or commentary. However, it’s a bit unrealistic to assume that these types of comments or exchanges aren’t occurring elsewhere if you’re not blogging.

If a conversation about your company takes place online and you’re not there to see it, does that mean it didn’t happen? Of course not. Inviting comments helps unearth feedback that you might not have otherwise learned. Every negative comment is an opportunity to grow and also shape perception. We highly recommend implementing moderated comments, which enable you to approve or deny comments before they actually appear on the site. The important thing to remember is that as your community grows, the culture for dialogue also takes shape.

Another false assumption is that people will automatically appear if you start a blog. Blogging is an art and a science that combines thought leadership, dedication, passion, empathy, and some publicity and promotion of the content and the ideas embedded in them. Unfortunately, as with all things in Social Media, if you build it, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll come. We have to get the word out through sharing, commenting, linking to other sites, and doing good old-fashioned PR. But over time, it works.

True corporate blogging represents a tremendous opportunity for any business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) company to

Geoffrey Moore’s books Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado inspired a generation of innovative marketing strategies. In 2000, The Cluetrain Manifesto predicted a shift in how companies would ultimately engage with customers—the phenomenon known as Social Media and the notion that markets are conversations and participation is marketing. Put more simply, you can’t market to customers; you must engage with them.

Blogging is considered one form of Social Media, and it has become a viable, respected, and tremendously influential channel for corporate communications and customer relations. Effective blogs have measurable impact on customer service, product development, marketing, PR, sales, and corporate policies. Many businesses are learning to use executive and corporate blogs as a means to tap into this rich and evolving vein of customer relationship management (CRM), and they are experiencing mushrooming support and increased customer loyalty. They’re leveraging the power of Social Media and the prospect of sparking new conversations within markets.

However, many businesses are not capitalizing on this tremendous opportunity, and some are just “dropping the ball” by treating blogging like any other marketing communications program—which it isn’t. Unfortunately, many company blogs fall into the category of online newsletters, sales pitches, and repositories for repurposed news releases. These are age-old examples of one-way communication, where companies push their messages at audiences as a way of attempting to control perception. But this isn’t about using the Web as a one-way medium. Blogs integrate several basic principles of the read/write Web—the introduction of a more dynamic Web where people can also share their voices. To truly leverage the impact of Social Media, the conversation must be two-way. Making the conversation interactive—enabling visitors to read, communicate, and share with company executives and peers—makes corporate blogging effective and very compelling. It also humanizes the company, allowing people to interact with each other, instead of pushing brands to the masses.

Companies truly concerned with their customers (and influencers) on an emotional level will strive to build a bridge to increase traffic and, ultimately, their sales and brand loyalty. One way to facilitate this bridge is to dedicate a portion of the company Web site to invite people to hosted conversations. The “people” we refer to include customers, employees, peers, channel partners, decision makers, and competitors. It’s important to address each of them, acknowledging that crossover exists.

Remember, people blog, not companies. To blog, you must participate first as an individual and a peer. You need to make sure that you start real conversations and have something to bring to the table that is valuable to the party on the receiving end. In addition, it’s important to designate frequent posts to each of the influencer groups. You need to create content that speaks to the different stakeholders that you’re hoping to connect with.

Consider this high-level formula when creating a corporate blogging program and pipeline:

Consistent posting frequency will ultimately help you build your community. Therefore, corporate blogs should strive for at least one post per week that speaks to each of their target stakeholders. Individual posts should share helpful content, information, facts, insight, trends, and relevant initiatives, and those posts should spark conversations through open and inviting dialogue. Responsiveness is also important (and should be considered a required prologue to creating and publishing your content). You need to respond to blog comments. Comment across other blogs and link back to your blog. Extend the value and expertise you possess from your community to other communities. This is how we network in Social Media.

The key to blogging and participating in Social Media is not to propagate or pontificate. Instead of using the corporate blog as an arm of marketing, identify customer pain points and deliver the painkiller in a direct, personal, and believable fashion. Address critical points in each stakeholder group, and do so consistently. Try to segment information across each market to make the interaction more personal and believable. We call this opening up the corporate kimono—exposing the soul and personality of the company to facilitate genuine communication. One of our favorite resources on corporate blogging is Naked Conversations, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. The book explicitly spells out why and how to leverage a corporate blog to cultivate target markets at national and global levels, and its associated return on investment.

Scoble was formerly with NEC and was a blogger who frequently criticized Microsoft. Microsoft, in turn, hired him and encouraged him to continue blogging without censor. Many credit his blogs, along with Lenn Pryor and others, with the humanization of Microsoft among business partners and customers, helping to shift views away from the evil empire façade. According to the Economist, “Impressively, he has also succeeded where small armies of more conventional public-relations types have been failing abjectly for years: He has made Microsoft, with its history of monopolistic bullying, appear marginally but noticeably less evil to the outside world, and especially to the independent software developers that are his core audience. Bosses and PR people at other companies are taking note.”

Another must-read is Debbie Weil’s The Corporate Blogging Book, which demonstrates how companies can use their blogs as a meaningful channel to reach their customers, and how your customers can become your best advocates through blogging. Blogs such as ProBlogger.net and BloggingTips.com actively share tips and techniques on how to write more effective blog posts and advice about how to increase their reach, exposure, and “shareability.” You can take advantage of many other corporate blogging resources to help you understand the power and art of blogging and how to leverage this incredible social channel to foster relationships, convey thought leadership, and earn customer loyalty. You can easily begin your search just by entering “blog tips” into your search engine.

As you explore and define your path to blogging, you must think about how to maximize Social Media, blogging strategies, and the associated opportunities. It’s a good idea to first sit down with the executive and communications team, including business development, marketing, Public Relations, and Web managers. Chart out an official plan, identify prospective participants and writers, establish goals, and dedicate time to making it happen. It’s also imperative to develop blog guidelines and work with legal or internal corporate communications to have these procedures in place before the very first blog is published. Also collaborate with sales and customer service to learn the real pain points and needs of the market. Our best advice is this: Capture it, distill it, and publish often. Most important, read the comments and interact with the people who want to converse with you. It can only help—after all, it’s a two-way street.

At the end of the day, any company that reaches business customers should take the time to understand how its products and services can help those customers succeed. Blogging is about embracing unique technology, and strategically and carefully opening windows to expose the corporate culture. By doing so, the corporate culture will evolve, and a company can quickly prove through open and transparent communication that it possesses important traits (such as leadership skills, years of experience, and customer respect and loyalty). Most of all, communicating through blogs and engaging in dialogue will demonstrate that your company has its customers’ objectives in mind.

Finally, remember this: Learn by reading other blogs and from the successes of others.