Online PR: News and Views from ://CORPORACT

Online PR: Blogging Software & Marketing

How do I get blogging? 

Blogging software is excellent value and comes with design templates and free tools to aid online marketing.  You can host a blog yourself or opt for a hosted blog.
Below are some of the popular blogging platforms.  A number of open source options are also available:
•    Blogger (www.blogger.com) is owned by Google and is a popular free option.
Wordpress (www.wordpress.com) is an open source alternative for download. Wordpress is used by many personal bloggers.
Movable Type (www.movabletype.org) is a paid-for service that is downloaded for management on your servers.
Typepad (www.typepad.com) a paid-for service.  This hosted online service is ideal for smaller businesses.

Inbuilt Marketing Tools

Blogging software offer inbuilt marketing and content tools that provide extra ways to promote your blog and in turn your business.  These tools can take the form of RSS and pinging, as well as the blog specific marketing opportunities in the form of trackbacks, comments and social bookmarking.  Look to integrate your business blog with other marketing activities.  For example, your blog posts could appear in your eNewsletter.

Search Engine Optimisation.  Search engines like well labelled business blogs. With regular posts, categorised content and search engine friendly links, addresses and keywords of posts that reflect your target searchers’ behaviour, your should attract good traffic levels with little effort.  Blog postings of a main blog should be placed in categories enabling tagging by different keywords.
Businesses will benefit from having a keyword strategy.  You should identify the terms you want to optimise during your set up process.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary)

An RSS feed allows you to subscribe to receive news that is of interest to you.  RSS is an XML-based system for aggregating and rapidly scanning information from blogs, news and current event websites or from other websites that frequently update content. 

To read RSS feeds, you need a Feed Reader (or Aggregator) which is a piece of software that allows you to receive and read the RSS feeds to which you subscribe.  RSS feeds are usually identified by an orange symbol or small orange rectangles with RSS or XML text in them.

Ping
A 'Ping' is an Internet programme that lets you verify that a particular Internet address exists and can accept requests.
Pinging in the blog world is when you inform blog search engines and other tracking services that you have updated a blog. The search engine then visits your blog to record and index the new content immediately.  This means that the search engines contain current information of what has been written about on blogs. 

Trackback

Trackbacks are used primarily to facilitate communication between blogs and track conversations going on between different blogs.   

They allow a blogger to show that they have commented on an original post in their own blog and will automatically send a notification to the original author and create a link to a post in their comments section.

Permalink

Short for permanent link. This is a page a blog creates when a post has been entered.  It is the permanent URL or address of a post on a blog which allows it to be found and referenced easily.

Social Bookmarking

If you create bookmark links for your blog it will make it easy for visitors to save and share your content.

Glossary

The concept of blogging has spawned a wave of new vocabulary.  Below is a brief glossary.  A definitive list can be found at Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogroll.

"Blogging" (from the verb ‘to Blog’) means authoring, maintaining or adding content to a blog.
“Blog Posts”, “Posts” or “Entries” are individual articles published on a blog.
A “Blogger” is a person who posts these entries.
A “Blogging Platform” is the software which is used to create the blog.
“Blogosphere” is the overall term given to the blogs on the internet or the blogging community.  Anglosphere is sometimes used to describe UK element of the blogging market.
“Blogroll” - yes you did read that correctly - is a list of links to other blogs that a blogger considers to be recommended reading.
“Blogorrhea” - something to watch out for and meaning excessive and/or incoherent chattiness in a weblog.

Online PR: Getting Started with your Business Blog

A corporate blog should be established with a clear business goal and strategy in mind.  Ask yourself these questions:

Why do we want to blog? This may be for marketing purposes, to position an expert, attract a niche community, internal communications etc.

What are our aims and objectives?  Before you get started be very clear about what your aims, objectives and area of focus are.

Who are your authors?  Business blogs can have either single or multiple authors.  Individual authors can be assigned to cover their own categorised topics.  This can add the benefit of a wider variety of rich content that attracts more attention and enables content to be delivered in different ways.  Blogs set up for internal communications purposes are often made accessible to all employees. 

What do we want our blog to look like and how much content should it contain? For a blog to be effective you have to maintain it well and keep it up to date with interesting content.  Typically a company site should contain between 5 to 20 posts per month.

A corporate blog should not be a corporate brochure. View it as an online magazine or newsletter.  Conversational style and humour make more interesting reading.   

The use of images and rich media will add interest.  Podcasts and videos can be integrated into your blog.  However, you should use animation only when it adds additional power and features.
It is also important to present a transparent, human face for a company.  Be authentic and acknowledge mistakes.

If you want to present a unified presentation of the company do ensure that you have an editor or authors are good at expressing themselves in writing and that your content is right for your target audience. Often the people that have the most to say have the least time to write and those that have the most to write have the least to say. 

For brand continuity reasons, do ensure that your corporate blog’s design is in line with your company’s website. 

How shall we managing comments?  Decide before you launch how you will elicit comments and feedback and deal with comments when they come in. Creating a corporate blogging policy with guidelines is a good starting point.  Your blog editor should be responsible for ensuring posts pass the standards set by the company.

Below are some extracts from the Social Media Guidelines published by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (http://www.cipr.co.uk):

•     If contributing to a blog which recommends a service supplier, you should declare any financial interest you or your clients might have in that supplier. In fact the normal rule should be that in commenting or contributing to any blog you should state the business you are in.
•     Where a blog is run without oversight by the supposed author, serious questions of integrity arise.
•     ‘Off the record' does not really apply in social media - conversations or emails with a blogger may be considered to be in the public domain and posted online without your permission.
•     You should be careful not to reveal sensitive corporate information before it is formally released, e.g. financial figures; new clients etc.
•     Great care should be taken with the laws of defamation, e.g. repeating possible slanders or libels posted elsewhere.
•     Employers should provide their staff with detailed guidance on their social media policy.

Who do we want to attract/what is your community of interest?  Take time out to do your research and understand your market.  Read other blogs and find out who is influential. 

Is your blog intended for business to business (b2b) activity or business to consumer (b2c)?
A b2b blog may be designed to:
•    Showcase a company's expert or expertise on a topic;
•     Voice a company views on issues providing useful background for journalists looking for story ideas; or
•    Be designed to help attract new visitors to the different categories that are blogged on.

://CORPORACT is a London based award winning online PR and corporate communications company.

Online PR: To Blog or Not?

Blogs can be established for either personal or business use. Unlike personal blogs, business blogs can be used in a variety of ways to communicate both interactively and broadly with stakeholders within communities of interest.   

Blogs will personalise a business and provide a much higher level of trust.  If businesses are encouraged to engage in blogosphere they will become part of conversations that discuss their business or brand. 

What is certain is that employees will be blogging anyway and often on blogs that record unfavourable comments about companies.  If employees are provided with complete information they will become online ambassadors and will facilitate positive peer to peer conversation that will help a company.

Although blogs can be inexpensively and quickly established, are easily updated and managed and offer numerous business benefits, many UK organisations and PR professionals have avoided or are reluctant to engage in blogging because of the perceived risks involved.  However, most risks can be minimised if considered from the outset.  Below are two illustrations:

Reputation Management .  A blog can damage a business reputation - and fast.  The Internet speeds up communication and makes a business of passing on adverse comment or gossip.  It is an interconnected level playing field where anyone can publish anything in response to any view. Employees or other bloggers can also write negative or defamatory comments.  Blogs thrive on unregulated conversation.  There are plenty of humans out there on the look-out for weaknesses to infiltrate.

Businesses can minimise risks by setting up clear blogging guidelines.  Moderators or a sign up process can limit contributors.  Alternatively, you can reduce the need for moderation and go for the less interactive route of a separate email submission form.  We would also recommend setting up your weblog on a separate subdomain - a separate web address built on an existing domain name (http://prblog.domain.com).

Content Management.   Although quick and easy to establish, blogs are not necessarily a cheap content delivery strategy and do need to be monitored.   Blogs can be time intensive and although simple and inexpensive to set up, they will live or die by their content. 

Designate an editor to manage and monitor content.  Consider multiple authors or contributors rather than one person - a company executive may not have the time to produce good content and is likely to need to be careful about what he/she says.

://CORPORACT is an award winning London based online PR and corporate communications consultancy.

Online PR Blog: Blog Characteristics

Why blog anyway and what's the big deal?  This is a question my team at ://CORPORACT is often asked by those clients who are considering a corporate blog as part of their comms strategy but are unsure as to how (and why) they should get started.

A blog (an abbreviated form of “Web Log”) is a website containing a “log” or diary published on the internet, where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.

Many blogs focus on a particular topic and may feature links to other sites.  Others are more like personal journals, presenting the author (or blogger’s) thoughts, news and views.

A blog is a modern day version of a soapbox.  These cyberspace soapboxes are low cost, easy to use publishing platforms on which bloggers can write, express their opinions or concerns, publish their personal diary, deliver an impromptu speech, or release frustration on any topic of their choice.   

Today’s bloggers, unlike the soapbox orators who have assembled at London's Hyde Park’s Speaker’s Corner since 1872, can publish their opinions immediately and ensure they are instantly accessible to a global audience.

Blogs offer plenty of variety but these are some consistent characteristics that can be applied to all: 

Online Publishing Made Easy.  Blogs have made us all online publishers. Blog interfaces are easy to use and can be authored and managed by people with no technical know-how.  You can publish as much as you want, any time you want. You’re in complete control.

Interaction & Comment.  Blog posts are designed to encourage feedback.  They can be used to develop a network with any community of interest; a place where people can interact with one another and obtain access to timely information.  Comment is the single element that differentiates blogs from most website content management systems.  All blogs feature functionality that allows visitors to post comments or ask questions regarding a blog post.

A  Reference Library.  Blogs are like online reference libraries - fully categorised by topic providing a structure for visitors who can quickly find either archived or current content they are interested in.  Each post can be categorised under one or more categories that you have set up.

Past posts are stored in an archive area.  A link to each archive will normally appear in the sidebar of the blog and allow visitors to refer to posts and see when they were posted. You can usually choose the length of time that these categories cover.  For most blogging platforms the standard is monthly. 
Business blog archives are often used as a knowledge base by new employees to help them get up to speed with what is happening at an organisation.  Past posts can also provide useful background for potential clients.

Search Engine Optimised.  Search engines love blogs because of the links and addresses.  They are a great way to be discovered.

Fostering Loyalty.  Blog posts can be an indispensable tool for public relations, and can foster loyalty among stakeholder groups. 

And remember:  the more often you post, the higher your search engine ranking will be.

://CORPORACT is an award winning London based online PR and corporate communications consultancy.

Online PR: Business Blogging Benefits

Business is being encouraged by the online community to embrace blogging as a method of connecting with stakeholders.  Brands with reputations to manage are engaging in blogosphere in order to enter into dialogue, develop relationships and create networks online.

Many organisations are now successfully using blogs proactively to dominate their niche and market themselves efficiently to both existing and prospective customers.  Others are monitoring what is being said in blogs and interacting or responding on a spontaneous, reactive basis.

Blogs are powerful communications and from a business perspective if well managed, will help an organisation:

• Enhance its online visibility, build brand equity and reputation;
• Foster debate;
• Influence the influencers;
• Stimulate interest in a business or create a buzz around a topic;
• Open up marketing and PR opportunities;
• Drive traffic to a website - blogs attract the search engines.
• Stimulate interest in a business or topic;
• Draw attention to a blogger (or author) or establish an opinion leader;
• Provide an environment in which you can tell your side of the story (in your language);
• Promote products or services;
• Improve internal communications;
• Aid research and development within new, existing or niche markets;
• Attract new business opportunities.

Blogs: Just a New Method of Content Delivery

"As happy a man as any in the world, for the whole world seems to smile upon me! " (Samuel Pepys)

The concept of blogging (writing a “diary” or “journal” that is available for the world to read on the web) is a truly unappealing pastime if you prefer to keep yourself to yourself. Many UK professionals still think it is far too risky to "expose" themselves by allowing employees to post random comments on a corporate blog.

It's surprising, therefore, that for a nation known for its reserve, it is estimated that Anglosphere blogs accounts for about 2.5 million of the global total (and growing).

At ://CORPORACT (http://www.corporact.net), we view a blog as a cost efficient, powerful marketing tool and content delivery method.  Many of our clients are now successfully using blogs proactively to dominate their niche and market themselves efficiently to both existing and prospective customers. Others are monitoring what is being said in blogs and interacting or responding on a spontaneous, reactive basis.

For those concerned about the unregulated nature of blogging, guidelines can be set to control a corporate blog, its subject matter and overall content framework. 

Bloggers don’t subscribe to a code of conduct, but then neither did Samuel Pepys when he wrote his globally published diaries.

Now there’s a thought.  Imagine Pepys hooked up to the World Wide Web?

Date: 1600’s. Crucial point in Britain’s history. Interesting employer. And there’s this guy writing about his social network – his frequent visits to pubs, wine, women and song, trading news and enjoying wild parties.

So has the desire to share news and views really changed or only the method of content delivery?